By Cathy Maestri
InstantRiverside.com

Not sure which presidential contender you’re going to vote for? Want to see if the one you do plan to vote for actually matches your views?

You might be in for a surprise — a really big surprise. (This may be purely anecdotal, but a friend who took an online quiz basically realized he’d been a staunch member of the wrong party.)

USA Today has the Candidate Match Game, sort of a bar-chart horse race that lets you see who comes closest to your views as you go. It’s quick, easy — and made me laugh out loud.

NBC News offers the exact same questions but a different format on its Match-O-Matic quiz. I did them side-by-side to make sure my answers were identical; strangely, my top two matches were reversed. Still, the results were close enough.

Quiz site SelectSmart.com lets you put a priority on the importance of the questions in its Presidential Candidate Selector. The top results matched those in my USA/NBC quiz, though in yet another order. What’s hilarious is that the bottom match of the 31 possible candidates is the one on my car bumper sticker — Stephen Colbert. Of course, when you consider that Colbert is a walking parody, that’s perfect. (Kudos to whoever wrote the accompanying candidate profile of Colbert.)

The GlassBooth 2008 Presidential Candidate quiz lets you weigh the importance of the issues before you answer the questions — again, my results were fairly similar to the previous polls.

The okcupid.com Political Test focuses on philosophy rather than candidates (though one post-quiz question asks which Republican candidate is most likely wearing a toupee, while another asks which Democrat would most likely survive a “Survivor”-like challenge).

The Washington Post’s Choose Your Candidate quiz is divided by party and based on real statements by candidates — it’s thorough, but not as much fun as the others.

And here’s American Public Media’s Select a Candidate quiz:

Filed under Vote, Headline, Uncategorized

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Not working? Click here!