Quiz

Is the Quiz a Trick?

The Advocates for Self-Government is a libertarian organization. We make no attempt to hide that fact. When people first encounter the Quiz, their occasional reaction is that it must be a trick - that we're trying to swindle people into scoring libertarian so they'll think they're libertarian and support libertarian causes.

This is an understandable reaction But the answer is no. The Quiz is not a trick, and it's not designed to produce false libertarian scores.

It would be very easy to produce a Quiz in which lots of people who weren't libertarians or libertarian-leaning nevertheless scored libertarian. It's much harder to come up with a short, fast Quiz that gives accurate scores, and new political insights, to the vast majority of takers.

An accurate Quiz has been our goal from the beginning -- because there are very good reasons for NOT wanting a one in which non-libertarian-leaning people score libertarian.

1) If the Quiz were obviously fake, people would simply ignore it and our goal of changing the political map to include libertarians and others would never be accomplished.

From the start, we've realized that the Quiz must be accurate if it is to be taken seriously by scholars, journalists, teachers, and others as a tool of political analysis. Liberals must score liberal, conservatives conservative, libertarians libertarian, etc.

2) People who are momentarily tricked into defining themselves as "libertarians" aren't going to be very happy when they find they've been deceived. A deceptive Quiz in which non-libertarians consistently scored "libertarian" would win libertarians more enemies than friends.

3) A Quiz in which almost everyone scored libertarian would be enormously wasteful of the limited resources of libertarian activists and the various libertarian groups who use the Quiz as outreach, to identify libertarians and libertarian-leaning people. These groups want a tool that will "filter out" poor prospects and that will let them quickly identify those people most receptive to libertarian ideas. A Quiz in which conservatives, liberals, moderates, socialists and so on scored libertarian or libertarian-leaning would be worthless for outreach.

4) A Quiz in which virtually everyone scored libertarian would devalue or dumb-down the word "libertarian," making it almost meaningless. The Advocates has always emphasized the importance of presenting the full, uncompromising libertarian philosophy to the public, and it would be counter to this goal for us to publicize a Quiz that watered down the meaning of "libertarian."

Incidentally, one proof that the Quiz isn't designed to make many or most people score libertarian is obvious: most people who take the Quiz DON'T score libertarian. The percentage of libertarian scores seems to match very nicely the 15%-25% estimates from various sources of how much of the American population is libertarian or libertarian-leaning.

We believe our Quiz model is more sophisticated, more inclusive, and gives far more insight into American politics than the left-right line. And thus it is far more useful to anyone who wants to understand American politics - students, political scientists, journalists, and others.