Auto-President Selector

The SelectSmart.com 2004 American Presidential Candidate Selector tells me that my views and opinions are most in line with those of the following candidates:

Cobb, David - Green Party (94%)
Nader, Ralph - Independent (88%)
Brown, Walt - Socialist Party (78%)
Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democratİ(72%)
Badnarik, Michael - Libertarian (29%)
Peroutka, Michael - Constitution Partyİ(11%)
Bush, President George W. - Republican (7%)
Three observations:

I was gratified to see it confirmed that Bush and I agree on basically nothing.

It is nice to see that the selector includes minor party candidates.

The minor party candidates' presence notwithstanding, it will be a cold day in hell before I throw my vote away on a candidate without a chance of winning, in such a close election, where the plausible negative consequences are so dire.

Posted on Oct 7, 2004

Comments

Dude, you live in Cali - your election won't be close at all. Vote however you want, the big CA electoral votes are going dem.

I, however, live in swing state MN and will vote Kerry. Not that I would vote for any of those loser third party candidates anyway (sorry, I am not fond of most of the third parties, they are no better than the big two, just smaller and poorer).

Joe

Posted by Joe Donaghue | Friday, 8 Oct 2004 at 6:05 AM

Actually, Joe, California is currently polling as closer to even than I'd like. The debates have, thankfully, given Kerry a good boost but I'm still waiting for the October "discovery" of bin Laden. See: http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Posted by Peter Hentges | Saturday, 9 Oct 2004 at 10:39 PM

Minor party candidates don't do a great deal of good, it's true, without proportional representation of some kind. Obviously, I'm not holding my breath for that.

Posted by Jeff | Sunday, 10 Oct 2004 at 12:27 PM

Notes from playing around on the selector:

I found it very easy to replicate Jeff's results, getting a 99% Green Party ranking with little effort.

Mr. Bush was harder. But, after a couple tries, I got an 83% Bush ranking.

Mr. Kerry was hardest, perhaps reflecting his positions or, more likely, my lack of understanding what separates a liberal Democrat from a Green. For a long time, I could not get Mr. Kerry to rank higher than the Green Party or Nader. Eventually, with some help from the site's position summaries, I did get Mr. Kerry up to an 86% ranking.

Posted by Steve Anderson | Monday, 11 Oct 2004 at 9:53 PM

I just noticed that you (and I presume, since my results were similar, I as well) have a sharp break at Democrat (72%) to Libertarian (29%).

Makes me wonder if there's room for a truly moderate party out there somewhere. Not that I'd want such a thing for me, but I think it would give voters who are more conservative than Democrats someone other than Republicans to vote for. Like a Nader for the right....

Posted by Peter Hentges | Wednesday, 13 Oct 2004 at 12:34 AM




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