How populist are you? A Guardian quiz

December 4, 2018 • 9:45 am

Greg Mayer sent me a link to this Guardian quiz, “How populist are you?”. Click on the screenshot to go to the 20-question quiz, which takes a bit of demographic information and then asks you to rank your views on various social, political, and economic issues.

 

Here are the positions of various leaders:

And my own position—on the line connecting Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders, on the populist left, firmly in the left, but close to the populist-nonpopulist line. I don’t know what this means except I’m on the right side (i.e., left side) of history.


 

Where do you fall? I’m sure some readers will have pungent remarks about the questions.

h/t: Greg

112 thoughts on “How populist are you? A Guardian quiz”

  1. Least similar to tRump (what a surprise) and most similar to Iglesias. For whatever it’s worth, on US political spectrum quizzes I tend to fall into the libertarian left quadrant. I can’t help but to wonder how my more moderate answers affect the results, as I always answer in my head “well, that depends on…(what you mean exactly or the specific situation)”.

  3. Non-populist left, generally a little to the left of your own score and less populist than Obama

    2. I have the same problem (I use Firefox with some ad- and popup-blocking add-ons; perhaps that’s the cause).

    3. It confused me at first, but for me the question fades out and is replaced by the next question in situ.

  6. Well the bit that bothers me on this thing is that someone answered took the quiz for the politicians which means that their positions on the grid is really only a guess.
    I hate that. You wouldn’t want someone to answer a quiz about you based on news bites and other snippets of information would you?
    While those results MAY be accurate, I/we have no way to know that with any real certainty imho.

    1. I am ambivalent about many of these things – for example I think marriage should be banned altogether! 🙂 I mean not recognised as a state institution. Whether people want to marry in some ceremony is up to them, but I do not see that it is anything to do with government, or why they should be advantaged in tax. I suppose that puts me at some extreme! 😉

      3. Recognition for default inheritance purposes and protection of children makes sense, I think.
        I was talking taxes with a New Zealand friend recently and was surprised to discover that NZ taxes every taxpayer as an individual without regard to marriage status – no change in rates. Quite unlike the US. But NZ does a lot to keep its individual taxation as simple as possible, and people with only salary/wage income have no need to file tax returns at all.

        1. I think – in NZ, if you’re married (OR de facto/living in sin – the legal status of your cohabitation is of no interest to Inland Revenue) and if your wife/hubby isn’t working, you can claim them as a dependent for tax purposes.

          If you only have salary/wage income, your tax was deducted by your employer. You don’t need to file a return unless you have significant other income, OR can claim expenses (dependent relatives etc).

          That’s as I dimly recall.

          cr

  8. I’m just below and slightly to the left of you. I align most closely with Obama and am, thankfully, way off Trump.

  9. Ended where I expected, but that was the point of this ridiculous quiz. The questions are loaded (one could drive the answer any which way one wants as the the point of each question is obvious), simple minded and far too few to make any real predictions.

    A parlor game at best.

  10. Ended up in the 5th hexagon to the left on the x axis, most like Obama least like Trump. Easy to game these questions though if you could be bothered.

  11. No shock here: non-populist right, about three ticks off both axes near the junction.I am closer to being non-populist left, than I am being populist right. Looking at the distribution of responses, it’s no surpose either where the majority of the Guardian’s readership lays. Impressive that they got Bernie and Angela to respond though. . . .

    1. That’s just the part that bugs me DrBrydon. Bernie and the rest did NOT take this quiz.
      Quoting, ” we asked a number of experts to take the same quiz as if they were the politician in question”
      Yeah, that bit really bothers me and strikes me as wholly dishonest to the core.
      How do we know that is where those politicians would have landed? It is pure speculation as I see it.

  12. I would question the validity of their scoring, given how they rate Macron as almost middle-of-the-road in terms of populism. The man is an incredibly out-of-touch elitist investment banker. He makes Mitt Romney look salt-of-the-earth. His elitist policies nearly saw Paris burned to the ground in the last few weeks because he was more interesting in virtue signaling to his buddies at Davos than with the welfare of the working class people of France.

  13. About 5 hexes WNW of Jerry, which is a bit further from both axes than I expected. I now should ponder both my ideological stance and the test’s validity, but what’s really on mind is finding a better way to describe a vector on a hexagonal tiling than using East-West, North-South terms.

      1. Yep. In hexagons, I fell at (-7.5, -7.5). Which still makes it damned difficult for someone else to see where that is w/o having to count the stupid hexagons. Esp. since you need to do so on both axes, as the stacking results in horizontal hexagons covering more distance than vertical ones…

  14. A bit farther NNW than PCC(E)…closer to Bernie Sanders, but how do you pin down good answers to some of those one-word “questions”?

  15. About 3 to the left of the line. Like Obama most unlike Trump. Never really understood the agree verses strongly agree answer.

  16. 6 hexagons to the left of Barack Obama. I “feel” slightly more centrist and even less populist than that…

  17. I am one hex above Bernie Sanders – more exactly, my position with respect to Sanders is the same as Sanders’ position with respect to Iglesias.

  18. A bit left & up from PCC
    (The Guardian test reminds me of the long-existing Political Compass — http://www.politicalcompass.org)

    An anecdote: far away and long ago (Buenos Aires, early 1960s) an earlier version of the political compass was posted in the halls of the Science Faculty. One stood at the posting and “took” the test by totting up scores in one’s notebook — so essentially anyone around could see one’s results. It was amusing when one of the more rabid left-wing activists (a Communist Party member, too) discovered that his score put him close to Fascist & Nazis. He was not amused but many of us were…

  20. I’m midway between Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama, about where I would expect to be.

    So how did they get all those world leaders to take their quiz? 😁

  21. Non-populist Left; on the edge of the map. Guardian has identified me as exactly opposite of Donald Trump.

    Most of my answers reveal that I do not hold politics against anyone and that politics has very little to do with the success (or failure) of civilization.

  22. Exactly midway between you and Barack Obama.
    How did they get his score, or the scores of other people on the display?

  23. The summary picture shows a kind of ‘heat map’ where people tend to be, I think, and if so it shows that most people are to the left.

  24. Exactly the same place as PCC-E. Like most of these “surveys”, the generality of the questions asked render the results almost meaningless. And I wonder who might fall in the “non-populist left” (I don’t consider Obama, the quintessential centrist, to fall in that category).

  25. Non-populist centrist here. I’m exactly on the y-axis and a few hexagons down on the non-populist side of the x-axis. Most like Macron and least like Sanders (no surprises there). If I’m honest I didn’t expect to be quite so non-populist, especially in a Grauniad test. It also confirms my self-perception of being fairly centrist (I despise far left and far right in roughly equal measure).

        1. I think it’s the way I answered around special interest groups etc. I think those answers are way different depending on what country your from and since I was “the rest of the world” I don’t think it lines up. In particular, the US has powerful lobby groups like the NRA that influences legislation despite what the populous wants. It also allows huge donations to parties. This makes it for more likely that special interest groups run things. In Canada, there is no such thing as lobby groups like what the US has and there is a cap on what political parties can take as a donation.

          1. That, plus you led me astray by mixing up your quadrants. 😉 (I did the same thing in my first post about my results.)

            No lobbyists–how refreshing that would be!

  27. Populism runs along two axes, but neither necessarily aligns with “Left” and “Right.” Among Americans, at least, there are “cultural” populists, like Pat Buchanan and George Wallace (and, now, Donald Trump). And there are “economic” populists; two of the most representative examples from the last century would be Robert M. La Follette from Wisconsin and Ralph Yarborough from Texas. And, then, there’ve been politicians who’ve been both (think Louisiana’s Huey Long).

    I abhor cultural populism. And while I’m not an economic populist (I support free enterprise and free trade), I can make common cause with them on some issues. Which is why I ended up on the grid within spitting distance of Barry O. and Manny Macron, I guess.

  28. Hm. I am most similar to Evo Morales (although some six hexes less populist than him) and least similar to Donald Trump.

    Nevertheless, I think the results are a bit distorted by local circumstances. I guess strongly believing that important information is being concealed in the interest of a few is a populist answer, but it is a matter of fact where I live, in a maffia-controlled country.

  29. I was exactly on the horizontal line two dots to the left of the vertical line. About as close to the exact center as anyone could possibly get. Just to the right of the French president who was my closest match. I was furtherest from Trump.

  30. Absolutely dead center. As a Libertarian, this is a surprising place to find myself considering most of these quizzes put me at an extreme.

    I like being far from both Trump and Sanders but I am too close to Obama for my comfort.

    1. The interesting thing about being dead center is that the anti-me is also in the center. I reversed all my answers and ended up only two hexes differently. Apparently, opposites cancel out on this quiz which makes sense.

  31. My impression is that a populist is someone the Guardian management don’t like.

    Another popular expression is ‘extreme right’ sometimes used, especially by the BBC, of foreign politicians who are in reality to the left of the British government in most ways.

    1. Yes, “populist” used by the elite for ‘ordinary folks who reject our globalist economics and unfettered immigration policies, and whom we’d like to dismiss by mischaracterizing them as neo-fascists.’

  32. According to the test I am in the non-populist left quarter, but much closer to the center than to the extremes. I am most similar to Emmanuel Macron and least similar to Donald Trump (that’s good 😃).

    The result corresponds quite well to my own assessment, since in recent years I have often agreed with the views of the German Alliance 90/The Greens, especially with the so-called Realo-wing.

  33. I took that test last week, and landed about three hexes to the right of your plot.

    It’s a tendentious, garbage test, full of undefined terms and loaded, moralistic judgements.

  34. I ended up in the non-populist quadrant, just under the horizontal line and far to the left.

    And that’s fair, I suppose. I don’t think “ordinary people” should be listened to any more or less closely than non-ordinary people (equal voice in the vote is necessary, but I think scientists and health experts should be “listened” to most when it comes to matters of science and medicine that “ordinary people” are likely to be clueless or hold unfortunate views about, for example).

    But I also think that I answered a couple of questions differently than the quiz-makers intended. For example, the question about government officials bothered me because I’m sure they meant high-level politicians, but to me a government official is anyone from the President/Prime Minister down to your local city utility, and so judging their behaviors in aggregate is difficult.

  36. I occupy the hexagon exactly midway on a line between AMLO and Barack Obama. More specifically, my political tendance is like that of Rufus T. Firefly in “Duck Soup”.
    Remarkable that the new, rather general questions in the survey pegged us so well.

  39. Huh. I ended up at nearly the exact same coordinates as Jerry.

    Many of the questions are of course horrible. For example, what exactly do they mean by “Socialism?” Do they mean something like the typical MAGA chanter’s conception of socialism or something more like the socialism actually practiced by the USSR?

    1. It’s fairly typical of Faux News and many GOP supporters to see no difference between the social welfare practised by post War UK Conservative Governments and outright communism.

    2. I thought of it as social democracy like what I would consider Canada to be. I would see USSR communist.

      1. A “Western” type social democracy is what I tend to think of when socialism comes up in the context of current politics too, or at least policies typical of such systems.

        I don’t think the USSR was ever really in danger of achieving communism, too corrupt. But communism requires socialism on the long path from start to attaining the goal of communism, i.e. no government and the people own everything. I think the USSR was a socialist state, a distorted one to be sure, far from the theoretical ideal.

        On this quiz questions like this one on socialism aren’t intended to get to the truth of what people actually think or believe, they are just a way to sort people based on their emotional, or Pavlovian even, response to trigger words.

        1. On this quiz questions like this one on socialism aren’t intended to get to the truth of what people actually think or believe, they are just a way to sort people based on their emotional, or Pavlovian even, response to trigger words.

          Which in its own way might say more about the participants’ actual feelings than what they would choose were they thinking critically. (Which is rare, anyway.)

          1. Good point. That sounds plausible and I’ve commented similarly about intoxication.

            It seems to me though that many people are misinformed about the issues that their political sources inflame them about. Their feelings may certainly be genuine but if they knew and accepted what the reality of the issues were they’d feel and think differently about them. Heck, the Republican Party propaganda machine routinely “frames” things to be the exact opposite of what actually occurred / is the case.

          2. Oh god, yes. Trump is right about fake news–but it’s mostly on the far right side, Fox news, radio talk shows, etc. And it’s terrifyingly successful.

          3. Trump himself is perhaps the biggest purveyor of fake news. Certainly the most powerful.

            (I have to vent my Trump Derangement first thing in the morning or I’ll feel my whole day is wasted.)

  40. I too ended up very close to Jerry’s coordinates – according to their evaluation I’m most similar to Barack Obama and least similar to Donald Trump. I find this oddly reassuring, though the whole premise of the test is a crock.

  41. A few questions seem to have very broad categories.

    I for example prefer the term “open markets” to “free markets”. Some versions of socialism seem to me a tad more promising than others.

    I respect classical conservatism, but not the form of conservatism dominating the Republican party today.

    One question is “The people I politically disagree with are not evil”. I would answer this one way in the 1980s, but differently today.

  43. Much relieved to find myself on the opposite side of the spectrum from Dump!! I am very slightly left of Macron , many similarities, but I think he speaks better French.

    I found a couple of questions perhaps more suited to the US than UK. 1) Not sure in what context the word “conservatism” is being used. Does it relate to politics with a capital P, or small p or just a tendency tp prefer leaving things as they are if not broken. 2) In the UK a “Government Official” would be a civil servant, but I think in the US the words often refer to a member of Congress or state legislatures, do they not?

    1. It depends on where you are. In Oregon, for example, all employees of State, County, and Municipal governments are considered officials, so that would be very similar to the UK. Other states use different definitions (and have different laws for them relative to citizens).

      So yeah. Very difficult question to answer without knowing what the quiz makers intended.

    2. “Much relieved to find myself on the opposite side of the spectrum from Dump!!”

      Like every other person here… 😉

      Angela Merkel is an interesting outlier.

  45. Two hexes west and one south of Obama. Yeah some of the questions were wierd, but meh, it was okay.

  46. I’m bang on the neutral line, and slightly further left than Pablo Iglesias.

    What a surprise.

    Of course, many of those answers are generalisations and context-dependent; and many depend on how one defines terms. “Do you approve of the Left” ? – depends which bit of the Left we’re talking about, doesn’t it?

    cr

  47. Makes sense for me: flip the left-right axis and I end up with Merkel. So non-populist left-ish, likely because Guardian center is so relatively right to where I live.

  49. I got to ‘non-populist left’, a quarter very uninhabitied by politicians. (Obama nearest)

  51. Don’t forget – the results are going into your dossier and will be sold for marketing purposes.

    1. “I hope you know that this will go down
      on your permanent record.”

      A favorite of mine.

  52. Non populist left pretty much right in the middle of the lower right quadrant. It’s my love of the gays and socialists that did it. 🙂

    1. Lower left quadrant. I misled up my left and right a lot. Probably due to the gays.

  53. Apparently I’m closest to Macron, which doesn’t completely surprise me. I fall ever so slightly to the right in the northeast quadrant.

    I tend to take these surveys with a grain of salt though and this one was no exception. Some of the questions were vague or could be interpreted different ways by different people, as other commenters have touched on. Examples would be the questions about conservatism and nationalism (which are broadly defined concepts) and even church authority.

  56. I’m pretty much along the same line as you, Jerry, but closer to Pablo Iglesias than to Obama. The political writers I am closest to are two Georges, Orwell and Scialabba.

  57. I fell slightly below you on the “Populist” axis, closest to Obama and farthest from Trump. Many of the questions were too ambiguous to give simple “Agree/Disagree” responses – it would take several pages to adequately explain how I feel about socialism, free markets, etc. Still, it was a fun little quiz.

  59. I landed on a tesseract, and facing towards the left I saw the back of my own psyche to the right.
    ‘Tis a Crooked House we find ourselves in, where left and right have lost all meaning.

    I took the test again…and I think I sank his battleship…

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