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The #TOpoli twitter feed has been cluttered with messages (presumably generated by the Star rather than sent individually by users) regarding how they are classified on the "Political Sentimeter" at the Star website.
So, never entirely adverse to killing time while something compiles, I went over to take the quiz. It shunted me into the "Post-materialist left" category, (about 2% of the people tested, compared to 25% of the people for the "Social Democratic Left").
Now, some of the characteristics of this group fit. However: "[They] are the most politically engaged of any group [not really] and the least likely to identify with a religion [really, really, way off]. Members of this group are technophiles [OK, within limits, although I'm also quite non-techie when it comes to things like reading or cooking], tend to be younger [not unless they have a really skewed sample], are racially diverse [WASP, and my ancestors are all English and Scots, with a bit of Irish and German thrown in, and all my grandparents and all but one of my great-grandparents were born in Canada], and have lower incomes than other groups [no]". In addition, of the main axes involving political opinions, I have a greater affinity with other groups on two clusters ("Radicalism" and "Traditional Values") than with the one that I've been grouped with.
They create this sort of classification by arbitrarily prioritizing some traits over others, and deliberately making others vague. (Does a concern with "Taxes" mean thinking that they are too low or too high? Does "traditional values" mean thinking that more teaching of Classics, Dante, Milton, and the Quadrivium should be done, or that 1950's suburban innovations should be treated as sacrosanct? Does being a technophile mean that you are relatively expert with computers and the like, or does it imply a preference for gadgets over older technologies in domains like leisure reading, or home workshops?)
They provide enough information regarding methodology to show that this is actually a serious project. The fundamental problem is not methodological, but lies in the assumption that the groups are reducible to anything like the small number of sets they model. A consistent Jacobite (off the chart for conservatism) or Jacobin (off the chart for radicalism) would also not map well.
In other words, most of the markers aside from the particular set of coherent beliefs which I do tend to match on don't apply. I'm older, better off, more religious, less "diverse" and probably more conservative in ways the Star doesn't ask about (No questions like "Do you think that Latin and Greek should be taught in High School?" On the other hand, I'm also open to deschooling society, which probably drops me back in the category.). Put even more bluntly: as a predictor of anything other than the same things they have already measured (which is not prediction but tautology), it's useless.
So, never entirely adverse to killing time while something compiles, I went over to take the quiz. It shunted me into the "Post-materialist left" category, (about 2% of the people tested, compared to 25% of the people for the "Social Democratic Left").
Now, some of the characteristics of this group fit. However: "[They] are the most politically engaged of any group [not really] and the least likely to identify with a religion [really, really, way off]. Members of this group are technophiles [OK, within limits, although I'm also quite non-techie when it comes to things like reading or cooking], tend to be younger [not unless they have a really skewed sample], are racially diverse [WASP, and my ancestors are all English and Scots, with a bit of Irish and German thrown in, and all my grandparents and all but one of my great-grandparents were born in Canada], and have lower incomes than other groups [no]". In addition, of the main axes involving political opinions, I have a greater affinity with other groups on two clusters ("Radicalism" and "Traditional Values") than with the one that I've been grouped with.
They create this sort of classification by arbitrarily prioritizing some traits over others, and deliberately making others vague. (Does a concern with "Taxes" mean thinking that they are too low or too high? Does "traditional values" mean thinking that more teaching of Classics, Dante, Milton, and the Quadrivium should be done, or that 1950's suburban innovations should be treated as sacrosanct? Does being a technophile mean that you are relatively expert with computers and the like, or does it imply a preference for gadgets over older technologies in domains like leisure reading, or home workshops?)
They provide enough information regarding methodology to show that this is actually a serious project. The fundamental problem is not methodological, but lies in the assumption that the groups are reducible to anything like the small number of sets they model. A consistent Jacobite (off the chart for conservatism) or Jacobin (off the chart for radicalism) would also not map well.
In other words, most of the markers aside from the particular set of coherent beliefs which I do tend to match on don't apply. I'm older, better off, more religious, less "diverse" and probably more conservative in ways the Star doesn't ask about (No questions like "Do you think that Latin and Greek should be taught in High School?" On the other hand, I'm also open to deschooling society, which probably drops me back in the category.). Put even more bluntly: as a predictor of anything other than the same things they have already measured (which is not prediction but tautology), it's useless.
