A Friend Wants To Compare Views

Your friend took the test and wants to see how your views compare.

Take the test (it's anonymous, nothing is collected). When you finish, you'll see a side-by-side comparison: where you both agree, where you differ most, and the middle ground between your views.

Your friend's political profile
Before you begin

Which ideology do you think you most align with?

Your selection is anonymous. Your responses are recorded anonymously and may be used for research into political attitudes: no account, name, or email is ever required. Learn more.

The 17 Ideologies

Click any ideology to read what it actually means, where it shows up in real politics, and reflection questions to figure out if you align. Every entry links to serious academic sources.

Showing all 17 ideologies alphabetically

Where Each Ideology Stands

Which ideologies sit at the extremes of each axis, for quick reference.

Ready to take the test?

The political compass test, rebuilt to be accurate

Find out where you stand.

Five dimensions, 80 questions, 17 named results. Takes 5 to 15 minutes depending on which version you choose.

Economic
Social Values
Civil Liberties
Governance
System Trust, New

Want to understand what the results mean?

In-depth definitions, real sources, reflection questions

Choose your version

Global Political Compass
The original test. Questions framed for any democracy, compared against 75 world figures and 50 countries.
US Political CompassNew
The same test rebuilt around American politics: US policy debates, results explained in US terms, and comparisons to US political figures.
Just launched, built for American politics
Every question is grounded in the debates Americans actually have: healthcare and Social Security, the Second Amendment, abortion, the border, NATO, Taiwan, and Ukraine, the Supreme Court, and trust in institutions from the FDA to the press. Your results are explained in US terms (where you sit relative to the parties' coalitions) and compared against American political figures. If you've taken the global version, this one will tell you something new.

Choose your test length

Quick
30
questions
Quick
6 questions per dimension, mixed together. Covers the basics.
About 4–5 minutes
Recommended
50
questions
Standard
10 questions per dimension, mixed together. Enough for a detailed result.
About 7–9 minutes
In-Depth
80
questions
Full
All 80 questions, 16 per dimension. Best if your views are complicated or hard to pin down.
About 12–15 minutes

No account needed. No agenda.

Already taken the test?
Paste two results links and see how the views compare side-by-side.
FindMyPolitics is now an official partner of discord.gg/politics
Official Community Partner

We've teamed up with discord.gg/politics: one of the largest dedicated political communities on Discord, where people across the entire spectrum debate, argue, and actually talk to those they disagree with. It's exactly the kind of place this test was built to start conversations in.

Take the test, then bring your result somewhere it'll get picked apart by people across the entire spectrum. Compare compasses, defend your answers, find out where you really stand once someone pushes back.

Join discord.gg/politics
↓ Why this test is different
Why I built findmypolitics.com

The original Political Compass has real problems.
Here's what I did about it.

The Political Compass test has been around since 2001. Millions of people have taken it. It's also been systematically criticized by political scientists, researchers, and journalists for over two decades. I decided to make something better.

What's wrong with the original test
01
Everyone ends up in the same quadrant
The Political Compass is widely criticized for tending to place respondents in the libertarian-left quadrant. Many of its questions are written as value-laden statements rather than neutral policy questions, and critics argue this framing nudges results in a consistent direction. When a large share of results cluster in one corner of a four-quadrant grid, the grid stops telling you much.
Source: Eysenck, H.J. (1954). The Psychology of Politics. Routledge, the origin of the two-axis model the Political Compass builds on. Framing and clustering criticisms have been widely discussed by political scientists and journalists.
02
Two axes can't capture modern politics
The economic left-right axis and a single social axis fails to distinguish between, say, someone who is far-left economically but wants maximum personal freedom, and someone who is left but trusts institutions to deliver change, people with very different politics who would score identically. Political scientists have long argued that political identity requires multiple independent dimensions to describe accurately. The American National Election Studies uses many more.
Source: Nolan, D. (1971). "Classifying and Analyzing Politico-Economic Systems." The Individualist. Feldman, S. (2013). "Political Ideology." Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology.
03
Questions are vague and outdated
Questions like "the rich must pay more taxes" don't specify more than whom, compared to what, or by how much, making them meaningless for distinguishing political positions. The questions were written in 2001 and haven't been updated, meaning they miss entirely the fault lines that define politics today: platform moderation, vaccine mandates, climate sovereignty, institutional trust.
Source: Multiple methodological critiques compiled at politicalcompass.org/faq. Academic criticism: Bobbio, N. (1996). Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction. University of Chicago Press.
04
No explanation, no context, no nuance
The original test places a dot on a grid and offers nothing else. No named ideology. No explanation of what your position means. No historical or global context. Research in political psychology consistently shows that people understand their own beliefs better when given comparative context and plain-language descriptions, not abstract coordinates.
Source: Converse, P.E. (1964). "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics." In Ideology and Discontent, ed. Apter, D. Free Press. Jost, J.T. (2006). "The End of the End of Ideology." American Psychologist.
What I built instead
The core difference
Five independent axes, not two
Economic, Social, Civil Liberties, Governance, and System Trust. The last one is unique to this test. System Trust is what separates a cynical leftist who thinks the whole system is rigged from a progressive who wants to work within it. No other test measures that.
Political Compass: 2 axesThis test: 5 axes
Mathematically balanced
Every axis has exactly 8 questions that push left and 8 that push right. Each question was reviewed to make sure neither the framing nor the content gives one side an unfair advantage. You can inspect the full question set yourself.
Political Compass: documented left biasThis test: 8 questions each direction per axis
Every question has context
Every question has an optional ⓘ button. Click it and you get real background on what the debate is actually about, what the numbers are, and what both sides argue. The goal is that you're answering based on the substance, not just reacting to how a question is phrased.
Political Compass: no contextThis test: sourced context on every question
Current, specific questions
The questions are about things actually happening: NATO funding, encryption rights, the 2020 election result, trade tariffs, police reform. They're specific on purpose. Vague questions produce vague results. The goal is to surface real differences in how people think, not just put them in a broad bucket.
Political Compass: 2001 questionsThis test: current, specific debates
17 named, defined results
You get a named ideology with a full definition, real-world examples of people and movements that fit it, and a plain-English explanation of where it sits on the traditional left-right spectrum. The results are written for someone with no political background, not for someone who already knows what "libertarian socialist" means.
Political Compass: 4 quadrants, no explanationThis test: 17 ideologies, full context
Global and historical context
Your results include a comparison against 50 countries (or all 50 states in the US edition) and 75 historical and contemporary political figures. Knowing your score is one thing. Knowing you sit closer to Angela Merkel than to Bernie Sanders is something you can actually picture.
Political Compass: no comparisonThis test: 50 countries or 50 states, 75 figures
A note on non-partisanship
I built this test with the goal of helping people understand their own political values, not to push them toward any particular conclusion. The question set is mathematically balanced (verifiable by inspecting the source code). Questions are framed using the strongest version of both sides' arguments. Results describe ideological traditions as they actually exist, not as caricatures. If you find a question you believe is biased, the contact information below is genuine, feedback on findmypolitics.com is taken seriously.

If you're looking for a political compass alternative, a more accurate political alignment test, or just want to understand where you actually stand, this is what I built it for. findmypolitics.com is free, anonymous, and takes 5 to 15 minutes.

About the creator
Liam Petry
Liam Petry, 17

I started this because I wanted a better way for young people like me to understand their actual politics; the test was actually meant to just be for me. But then I realized the impact it could have, so I spent a great deal of time improving it. My goal is simple: build something that overtakes the original Political Compass.

As a high school student, I'm currently in the process of looking for summer internships and research collaborations. If you're interested in working with the dataset alongside me or collaborating on something, reach out, please!

How this was built

Everything of substance on this site is mine. I wrote all 80 questions in both the global and US editions and the sourced context behind each one, designed the five-axis model and the scoring math behind it, wrote every ideology definition, and placed all 75 political figures and 50 countries myself. The political thinking and the methodology are entirely my own work. What I am not is a programmer. To turn that work into a site I could actually ship, I used Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, to help write the front-end code. Claude built what I did not have the coding ability to build on my own, but it did not decide what this test measures, how the questions are worded, or how you are scored. That part is all me.

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Your answers stay on this page.

Your Political Profile
Full Analysis
The Political Compass, Where Do You Land?

The political compass plots your economic views (left = government should reduce inequality; right = free markets) against your social views (libertarianBelieves in maximum personal freedom and minimal government control over how people live. = more personal freedom at the top; authoritarianBelieves strong government control and social order are necessary, even if it limits some personal freedom. = more order at the bottom). Hover over any dot to see who it is.

Most Similar Historical Figures to You
Your Five Dimensions Explained
Closest Political Ideologies

These are established political traditions your answers most closely match. Think of them as nearby neighborhoods on the political map, most people blend elements of several.

Where in the World Are You?
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More left-wing than you
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More right-wing than you
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Closest country
Share Your Results

Save the card below as an image to share on Reddit, X, or Discord. The full link gives a richer view.

A note on these results: No test can fully capture the complexity of your political views. Treat this as a starting point for reflection, not a definitive label. Figure placements are academic estimates, reasonable people disagree. Country data is based on global survey research. Your responses are recorded anonymously and may be used for research into political attitudes: no name, email, or account is ever required or collected.