The Political Compass is an online test, made in the UK by a political journalist and a professor of social history. It places people’s political views on two axes:
- Socially liberal to socially conservative
- Economically liberal to economically socialist/communist
The compass uses these two axis to assign political views. The Political Compass uses a two-axis chart, with each test-taker falling between -10 and +10 on each axis.
The X-axis measures economic positions, ranging from the far left, “Communism” (-10) to the far right, “Neo-liberalism” (+10). The labels vary on different versions of the graph, but this range measures how much a person thinks that the government should interfere in the economy.
The Y-axis measures social positions, from “libertarian”/” anarchism” (0 to -10) to “authoritarian”/”fascism” (0 to +10). This range measures a person’s view on how much the government should interfere in personal or social matters. The test consists of 62 statements in six categories, covering areas such as economics, religion, culture, and what governments should and should not be allowed to do. The respondent can answer each proposition with one of “Strongly agree,” “Agree,” “Disagree,” or “Strongly Disagree.” The result is that a person’s ideological position is placed somewhere on a graph like the one above.
