February 18, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Daniel Drezner says he's lonely because the Pew Centre pegs him as an enterpriser, a group which consists of him and some dorky guy who owns an air-conditioning repair guy in Dubuque. Me, I just feel like an idiot: I'm an upbeat.
Upbeats express positive views about the economy, government and society. Satisfied with their own financial situation and the direction the nation is heading, these voters support George W. Bush’s leadership in economic matters more than on social or foreign policy issues. Combining highly favorable views of government with equally positive views of business and the marketplace, Upbeats believe that success is in people’s own hands, and that businesses make a positive contribution to society. This group also has a very favorable view of immigrants.Defining Values
Very favorable views of government performance and responsiveness defines the group, along with similarly positive outlook on the role of business in society. While most support the war in Iraq, Upbeats have mixed views on foreign policy – but most favor preemptive military action against countries that threaten the U.S. Religious, but decidedly moderate in views about social and cultural issues.
If I've recently expressed positive views about the government, I apologize. The doc and I are still tweaking my meds.
I'll join the chorus of complaints about the questions: what if I believe neither that "Poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return" nor that "Poor people have hard lives because government benefits don't go far enough to help them live decently"? I can pick the answer which I know it's fishing for--we don't need to increase government benefits--but I sound like I actually believe that the poor are leading soft lives of luxury down there at Cabrini Green. Also, I had to peg myself as a "moderate", when what I needed was a slot that said "My extreme views on most issues make both conservatives and liberals want to throw things. At me."
Posted by Jane Galt at February 18, 2007 9:51 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>I'm an upbeat as well! And never have I been more depressed.
It's odd that strong agreement with the statement "Government is almost always wasteful and inefficient" can be interpreted as a "very favorable views of government performance." I honestly wonder if there isn't a bug in the scoring.
Posted by: Leigh Hunt on February 18, 2007 10:48 AMMeg, stay away from the meds. From seeing you on blogging heads, you don't need 'em. (if only I were more ambitious and a little older.)
Posted by: aaron on February 18, 2007 11:15 AMLuckily I didn't get any images, but your use of the word peg caught me after an unfortunate reading of the local arts and entertainment rag.
Posted by: aaron on February 18, 2007 11:20 AM"...some dorky guy who owns an air-conditioning repair guy in Dubuque."
I was under the impression that A. Lincoln ended the possibility of some guy owning some other guy about 150 years ago. What did I miss?
Posted by: Ed Reid on February 18, 2007 1:37 PMThis quiz was even more annoying than usual. For the most part I either wanted to agree with both contrasting statements or disagree with both statements. (E.g., Believing that the government is almost always wasteful and inefficient do not rule out the possibility that it sometimes doesn't get the credit it deserves.)
What, one wonders, are they trying to find?
Posted by: Scott Wood on February 18, 2007 1:47 PMThis is a really strange test, because I also scored enterpriser, while being totally against the Patriot Act or the War in Iraq. I suspect that the weighing of the answers inside the algorithm is somehow strange.
It is also interesting to see that I am clearly one of the 10 per cent below the 30 years-age-line...
What always amuses me about you Americans, is your definition of "liberal", which seems to consist of what was regarded as liberal during the French Revolution (basically Rousseau and socialism).
I got pegged as an upbeater, too. The question that I thought was particularly lame was the one about whether I think the government should tell the public schools what kind of books they can carry in their libraries. My preferred answer would have been: "But I don't think there should be such a thing as public schools."
Posted by: Jasper on February 18, 2007 2:43 PMHave you stopped beating your wife?
Do these people even know that there's such a thing as libertarianism? Someone really should tell them...
Posted by: US on February 18, 2007 3:33 PMI choose ""Poor people have hard lives because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return" . Likewise many other questions I want to mix and match the answers.
Posted by: doctorpat on February 18, 2007 5:25 PMI was also labelled an upbeat despite opposing the Iraq war and having voted for Kerry. There should be some indication of how closely you match the group. Are you a good fit or are you a bad fit but an even worse fit with the other groups?
Posted by: James B. Shearer on February 18, 2007 7:14 PMVery unsatisfactory. I, like Drezner, scored "Enterpriser", and reading the description recognized myself not at all. Very poor questions.
Posted by: Jens on February 18, 2007 8:12 PM"Predominantly white (91%), male (76%) and financially well-off (62% have household incomes of at least $50,000, compared with 40% nationwide). Nearly half (46%) have a college degree, and 77% are married. Nearly a quarter (23%) are themselves military veterans. Only 10% are under age 30."
x
x
x (This is the first year I broke this mark, though I broke it by 80%. My low end expected income when I graduated was 50k. Graduating from undergrad in 2000 was worse than an mba in 2001.)
x
0(not married)
0(never enlisted, but I work for them)
0(1 year away from the big 30)
Upbeat as well.
The test was actually pretty on for me, although I had to say that the poor had it easy. I mean relatively easy - its not Calcutta in the 1980s.
But anyone who has read any of my stuff knows that I think we could do a lot more.
However, they said upbeats answered strongly yes to the following four question and at all four I exclaimed, definately!
1) Business makes a reasonable and fair profit
2) Government is better than people give it credit for
3) Immigration is strengthening our nation
4) As Americans we can solve our problems and get what we want
I guess thats why it makes sense to say upbeat. I think the cynics are generally wrong about business and government.
We live in beautiful times, even if its not the late 90s anymore.
Posted by: Karl Smith on February 18, 2007 10:01 PMWhich category you ended up in seemed to have a great deal to do with which party affiliation you chose.
If I selected "Strongly Democrat" or "Leans Democrat" it pegged me as a "Conservative Democrat." If I chose "Independent" it pegged me as "Upbeat" and if I chose either of the "Republican" labels it marked me as an "Enterpriser."
This was without changing any of my other answers.
Posted by: don on February 19, 2007 1:06 AMThough I am eager to participate in any polls, I have never, ever responded to one that I thought was well written. All too often the choices are too limited to encompass my real opinions, and I'm always stuck choosing the least bad option (which is generally conservative leaning). It's most egregious when the polls are taken before an election. Though I'm lucky enough to always have Libertarian candidates on my local ballot to vote for, somehow those candidates are never included in polls. Right now I want to tear my hair out every time some news person or pollster talks about the '08 elections and makes some comment about the fact that there is no Republican candidate who wholly opposes the Bush Administration's policy in Iraq. Never mind that Rep. Ron Paul announced the formation of his exploratory committee in the beginning of January and has consistently opposed the War in Iraq from the beginning! Heaven forbid regular Americans learn that there is a candidate who might appeal to them.
It's situations such as these that make me more inclined to believe in wild conspiracy theories.
Posted by: Christina on February 19, 2007 9:49 AMLong-time lurker, first-time commenter. This test, as with most such tests, is complete bunk. To label me as having highly favorable views of government is ludicrous after I say I "Most elected officials don't care what people like me think", "Elected officials in Washington lose touch with the people pretty quickly", "I worry the government is getting too involved in the issue of morality", "Government regulation of business usually does more harm than good" and especially "Government is almost always wasteful and inefficient"
Clearly this quiz is poorly designed; whether willfully so to tilt results in a way favorable to the Pew Center or just through carelessness I don't know. It seems like they may need more categories, since reading the descriptions I wouldn't want to be labeled as any of the above.
Moreover, why should my personal financial condition be a relevant input to discerning my political philosophy? It undeniably is a force in forming people's philosophies, but using financial status to impute political beliefs seems subject to wild inaccuracies. Last night, for example, I had dinner with a quite financially comfortable friend who is also a raging socialist...
Posted by: GDM on February 19, 2007 12:12 PMI achieved "Disaffected," and am I smug! Although, the description of the category is so gloomily despondent that I might as well go contemplate suicide now.
Posted by: rafinlay on February 19, 2007 2:10 PMI came up "Enterpriser." They don't have a libertarian category (and as others have noted, many of the questions didn't offer a libertarian answer), so I think they're hammering square libertarian pegs into the round "Enterpriser" hole.
Posted by: markm on February 19, 2007 2:55 PMAgreed. I got enterpriser too though I responded with "very liberal".
Posted by: Randy on February 19, 2007 3:22 PMWasn't Cabrini Green torn down? Thought I read that.
Posted by: Mike Jenkins on February 19, 2007 8:12 PMI'm a market anarchist and ended up as a liberal. I know that at least half of the questions provided no reasonable way of answering, and at least 5 times I nearly closed the window of the site and gave up.
What surprises me is that the Pew Center is one of the few that has conducted surveys of political opinion that classified people as liberal, conservative, populist, or libertarian, based on their feelings toward intervention in personal activities and economic activities. Still not complete, because of the wide range of views on the military among libertarians, but better than it had been. Now they seem back to the bad old days of political illiteracy.
Posted by: Less Antman on February 19, 2007 9:11 PMI came across as an upbeat as well, in spite of several explicit positions that "upbeats" are said to hold which contradict specific answers I gave to the survey questions. "Favorable views of government" was only the tip of the iceberg.
I suspect it's just another problem with classifying people who socially liberal but not Democrats.
Posted by: DaveL on February 20, 2007 10:44 AMChalk me up as another enterpriser.
>
You can blame FDR for coopting the term "liberal" - here in the US, it now means (roughly) "socialist", while free market advocates are "libertarians", "conservatives", or "right wing".
Posted by: Rob Leder on February 20, 2007 12:35 PMMy last post was a response to this:
"What always amuses me about you Americans, is your definition of "liberal", which seems to consist of what was regarded as liberal during the French Revolution (basically Rousseau and socialism)."
Wouldn't let me quote it for some reason...
Posted by: Rob Leder on February 20, 2007 12:38 PMIt had me as an enterpriser. Much of that was spot on, except they said I was probably against gay rights (wrong) and strong supporter of the GOP (wrong).
I think it's none of my business who you sleep with (unless it's me) and I am not a strong supporter for the GOP, I'm strong anti-Democratic Party. There's a huge difference in there.
Posted by: Veeshir on February 20, 2007 1:01 PMAll the questions appear to be false dichotomies, largely based upon typical D vs R phrasings.
The strongest country has an excellent military and excellent diplomacy and a unified vision and no qualms about using them appropirately. Duh.
Poor people have hard lives because they lack the skills and the drive to succeed in a target-rich economic environment. Or because they made bad choices. Or because they had lousy luck. Government had little to do with it. Duh.
Enterpriser here. However, I went back and pretended that I wasn't doing well financially, and it then reassigned me to "disaffected". The survey assumes that personal experience overrides abstract principles.
I'm also pretty sure that the survey page lies and that the age-sex-voting categories are factored into the evaluation of the answers.
Posted by: Twill00 on February 21, 2007 7:47 AMThe universities teach classes on how to write neutral questions and, after a 100 years of polling, bar tenders, bus drivers and even baby sitters know how to write a neutral question with comprehensive answers. Yet the pros write biased questions with biased answers.
Public opinion is supposed to shape the replies to these polls but it seems the polls are designed to shape public opinion. Tail wagging the dog stuff - they been doing it for years.
Posted by: sol vason on February 23, 2007 3:37 PM