FAQs
The chart actually only has six mainstream ideologies. When you think about the complexity of politics and the nuances within each individual ideology, we could have divided them into many more! True, we also include what we call the seven “semi-mainstream” ideologies, and to be fully inclusive of the political extremes, six “fringe” ideologies. But most people fall within the six mainstream ones. The purpose – and strength – of the two-axis chart is to accurately reflect one’s political position more than the rudimentary left-right continuum.
Each answer on our quiz expresses an opinion about the particular topic. Taken in aggregate, those answers comprise a set of political beliefs that correspond to a particular location on the two axis chart. Our research demonstrates that each and every such location on the chart represents a set of beliefs about how much government should regulate different economic and social matters, according to the particular ideological zone it occupies. In other words, there are no “dead” zones for political cynics or malcontents. To be sure, some people care more deeply about some political issues and not so much about others. But it would be a mistake to dismiss an ideology for its relative moderation or for having views that appear more reactionary than philosophical. So yes: centrism and populism are indeed ideologies.
There are many possibilities in describing someone’s politics once you advance beyond the simple left-right continuum of economic freedom. As we explain elsewhere on our site, we didn’t invent the idea of mapping relative economic freedom (on the x-axis) against relative social freedom (on the y-axis). These just seem to be the two dimensions that matter to most people, ideologically speaking.
In a perfect world, we’d be able to test on three or more political dimensions and display a person’s unique coordinates accordingly, but our brains are geared to two-dimensional charts. It’s what we see and comprehend best. Fortunately, the two dimensions we utilize in our chart are the key ones for most political ideologies. Those other dimensions – military hawkishness, environmental protectiveness, and deficit hawkishness – are very useful, however, so we include them separately.
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