Political View Assessment

What is your political view? On health care, military, foreign policy and culture. Find out if you're a Canadian hippy or a Canadian Nazi. The key assumption of such a spectrum is that people's opinions on many issues correlate strongly, or that one essential issue subsumes or dominates all others. For a political spectrum to exist, there must be a range of beliefs. Political systems in which most people fall clearly into one group or another with almost no one in between, such as most nationalist controversies, are not well described by a political spectrum. In Iran, for instance, a political spectrum might be separated along the issue of the clergy's role in government. Those who believe clerics should have the power to enforce Islamic law are on one end of the spectrum, while those who support a secular society are on the other; moderates fall at various points in between. In Taiwan, the political spectrum is defined in terms of Chinese reunification versus Taiwan independence.

Are you a Canadian...leftist? rightist? libertarian? totalitarian? Find out in this quiz. In some cases, especially in democratic countries without a "first past the post" voting system, multiple spectra can co-exist. For example, from its founding in 1901 to 1909, Australian politics had three poles, each centred on a strong political party: the Free Trade Party, the Protectionist Party and the Australian Labor Party (ALP), a situation that Alfred Deakin referred to as the "game of three elevens". However, by 1909, the Free Traders and Protectionists had merged to become the Liberal Party, in order to negate the ALP (which had also adopted protectionist policies). This continuum remains dominant in federal Australian politics.