Political Compass: Canada 2008 Edition!

Just a quick update on the Canadian federal election: the folks at the Political Compass (that try to popularize charting political identity on a two-dimensional chart instead of the single-dimension left-right axis) have completed a chart plotting the overall positions of the major parties in this election (including the Tories, Liberals, NDP, Green, and Bloc).

I’ve always found this way of looking at political identity to be very interesting, and although it is not without its flaws, I think it largely deals with most of the issues of identity. It’s interesting to note that between the 2008 chart and the 2005 chart (technically should be 2006, since the voting day was in January 2006):

• The NDP have become slightly more left-wing and slightly more authoritarian;
• The Bloc have become slightly more libertarian;
• The Liberals have become significantly more authoritarian, but have had their former position essentially occupied by their informal partners, the Greens;
• The Tories have become both significantly more right-wing and significantly more authoritarian.
• The Communists are so far to the left they aren’t even on the chart (just kidding).

Although it is important to note that individual candidates in these parties probably vary quite a bit; the Greens, for example, probably have the most variation on the left-right axis of all the parties, and the Liberals probably have most variation on the libertarian-authoritarian axis (from anti-choice, anti-gay wedding, anti-fun assholes to those useless shits otherwise known as ‘left-liberals’).