Fixing the Washington Post Democratic Candidates Quiz

By Robert Ellison.

The Washington Post has a fun quiz that asks you 19 questions and then tells you which Democratic candidates you agree with the most. I took it last year and it said Warren, which I agreed with, but they have just updated it:

"Since we first published this guide in November, new candidates have joined the race and several others have dropped out. We have included everyone polling at least 1 percent in The Post’s national polling average. This new version adds questions on such topics as gun control and the criminal justice system."

Taking the quiz it now thinks I'm in the Yang Gang, even though I gave a thumbs down to universal basic income (my objection is that as much as I'd like $1,000 a month from the government I don't need it, there are much better things to spend it on). My full breakdown was Yang, Warren, Buttigeg, Sanders, Klobuchar, Steyer, Bloomberg, Biden and finally as a last resort Gabbard.

I think the problem with this sort of quiz is that it doesn't let you indicate how much you care about each issue. I'm totally fine with legalizing marijuana at the federal level but it's not the first thing I'd want any democratic president to work on. So I downloaded my results and fixed this by force-ranking the scale. My #1 was eliminating the electoral college and #19 was letting all prisoners vote (I agree with Sanders here, but he should work on it after he fixes the pot law which is #18 on my list). Once weighted on this scale my #1 issue is worth 1.00 points and #19 is just 0.05.

With this list Warren is restored to the top spot. In order I now have Warren, Yang, Buttigeg, Kloubuchar, Steyer, Sanders, Bloomberg, Biden and again if some form of green room food poisoning kills the top eight, Gabbard.

I'm a little surprised that Buttigeg is so high up this list and very surprised that Sanders (who I voted for in the last primary) is so low. Without any policy assistance from WaPo I'd go Warren, Sanders, Kloubuchar, Biden, Yang, Buttigeg, Steyer, Bloomberg and (sorry again) Gabbard. Although, full disclosure, if it would get rid of Trump I'd vote for a McConnell/Graham ticket.

If you want to try this and save a few minutes here's my spreadsheet. Add your quiz result in columns B through J and then rank the issues in column L from 1 to 19 where 1 is the most important to you.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Fixing the Washington Post Democratic Candidates Quiz #politics #election ##resist How to rank policy issues by importance to fix the Washington Post which democratic candidate do you agree with most quiz and discover who you should vote for in the 2020 primary. )

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