Candidate Calculator

If you haven’t seen this site yet, you should go there and answer the questions and let the Candidate Calculator tell you which candidate most closely matches your political ideals. The site asks you whether you support or oppose or are unsure about a long list of issues, and gives you the opportunity to rate the importance of each issue. After you select your position (with or without rating importance) the Calculator analyses your responses and tells you which candidate is most closely aligned to your philosophy.

I’ve done this three times. The first time I used the Calculator was a couple of weeks ago, and I did not use the Importance factor, and my candidate was Tom Tancredo, Congressman from Colorado. The second time I did use the Importance factor and my candidate was Mitt Romney. Both times were prior to Republican Fred Thompson entering the race and before Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback withdrew from the race. The last time was today, using the Importance factor (though likely with different levels than before) and the result showed that, again, Tom Tancredo is the candidate most closely aligned with my political views.

Here are my most recent results. I would be interested in knowing which candidate each of you matches with best, so please post a comment with your results.

Top Picks

Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo (R) 84.81% match

California Representative Duncan Hunter (R) - 83.54%

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) - 78.48%

Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson (R) - 70.89%

Middle of the Pack

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R) - 68.35%

Kansas Senator Sam Brownback (R) - 63.29%

Arizona Senator John McCain (R) - 63.29%

Businessman John Cox (R) - 59.49%

Texas Representative Ron Paul (R) - 59.49%

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) - 53.80%

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) - 39.24%

New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) - 27.85%

Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd (D) - 27.85%

Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (D) - 27.85%

Bottom of the Barrel

Delaware Senator Joseph Biden (D) - 24.05%

Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) - 18.35%

Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich (D) - 17.72%

Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (D) - 13.92%

I am not all that surprised at those who were the Top Picks and the Bottom of the Barrel. However, some of those in the Middle of the Pack did surprise me (Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, all too high).

The overall results of the 1,293,843 participants of the Candidate Calculator are as follows:

Gravel - 13.06%

Giuliani - 12.18%

Romney - 11.35%

Kucinich - 9.40%

Huckabee - 7.31%

Biden - 7.22%

Cox - 6.25%

Clinton - 4.59%

Tommy Thompson - 4.40%

Obama - 4.18%

Dodd - 4.17%

Hunter - 4.01%

Tancredo - 2.81%

Fred Thompson - 2.73%

Paul - 1.93%

Richardson - 1.68%

Edwards - 1.36%

Brownback - 1.02%

Mccain - 0.34%

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