NewsAndAnalysis.org

Start: Political Platform Survey

 

Design your own political platform

 

Description:  Below is our tool designed to identify which political platforms are most desirable to Americans.  We anticipate that the results of our survey will be political platforms that are somewhat dissimilar from the familiar Democratic and Republican platforms.

 

We define a "political platform" to be a collection of policy options for a set of issues with some issues being deemed more important to the platform than others.  For example, one platform might be created by selecting "Option A" for all issues and rating "Abortion" and "Social Security" as the most important issues.  Another platform might rate national security issues as most important.

 

How is this tool different?  It's our analysis, not the survey, per se, that will be different.  Typical surveys or polls seek opinions about certain issues, yet examine the results as though the issues were largely non-related.  An example finding from a typical survey might sound like: "45% of all respondents felt that abortion should be legal."  Little is learned about how each person views all issues.  Our tool links together the respondent's answers for all issues into a single "platform" and then examines which platforms are most prevalent.  (Explanation: Ideology Clustering)

 

Not perfect, but manageable and informative:  We realize that our survey does not capture all issues or policy options that may be important to all respondents.  Allowing for extensive nuance in this survey would create meaningless results.  Namely, the data would be too scattered to form the "clusters" that will indicate consensus.  Our approach is to seek out broad areas of consensus before more detailed assessments are performed on the "winning" platforms.

 

The questions:  The survey will consist of three questions for each of 14 issues.  The first question will ask the participant to select one of two policy options.  An overly simplified example is: abortion should be a) legal or b) illegal.  We recognize that many participants will not be fully satisfied with either option offered.  Therefore, the second question asks the participant to rate the extent to which they agree with the option they selected.  Participants can claim that they agree with the choice "barely," "partially," or "mostly."  The less a participant agrees with an answer, the less the answer is weighted as part of their overall platform.  Last, each participant is asked to rate the importance of the issue to their overall platform: low, medium, high.  For example, some participants may consider a politician's stance on abortion to be of high importance, while his/her stance on immigration is of low importance to the respondent.

 

Results:  We will collect your inputs during Summer 2006 and release a report in August or September 2006 outlining the survey results and our analytic methodology.  The timeline of our report depends in part on the level of response we receive.  Our intent is to help Americans better understand the political platforms that are most representative of public opinion.  We do not side with any particular political party or political ideology.

 

Directions:

• Select the link below to start the survey

• Enter the personal data requested.  We will not ask your name, etc.  If you provide your email address so that we may notify you when our results are ready, we will not use that email address for any other reason... or provide it to anyone who will.

• For each of the 14 issues, select which policy "option" best reflects your view.  If you disagree with both option A and B, select the best - or least bad - option.

• Rate the extent to which you agree with the answer you chose: barely, partially, or mostly. (click the link for elaboration)

• Rate the importance of each issue to you: low, medium, or high. (click the link for elaboration)

Take this survey only once.  Provide an answer for all questions.

 

Start: Political Platform Survey