Political quizzes compared: what each one measures

Political quizzes come in two families. Some place you on a map of political values: where you stand on the economy, on social questions, sometimes on more. Others match you to the candidates on your ballot. The first kind helps you understand your own views; the second helps you choose between people running for office. Both depend entirely on the questions their makers chose.

Below are the best-known ones, described from their own websites as of October 2026. Where a site doesn’t say how many questions it asks, we counted them ourselves.

At a glance

Pew Research Center’s Political Typology Quiz

Pew’s quiz finds which of nine “political typology groups is your best match, compared with a nationally representative survey of more than 10,000 U.S. adults.” Pew, a nonpartisan research organization that takes no policy positions, built those groups from a survey of 10,357 adults in November 2025, using a statistical technique called cluster analysis on 30 questions about values and beliefs (Pew Research Center). This is the ninth typology since 1987.

The quiz has 21 questions; three of them ask two things, for 24 answers in all. Some ask you to pick which of two statements comes closer to your view; others use a labeled scale. There’s no “not sure” option: Pew asks you to “pick the answer that comes closest to your view, even if it isn’t exactly right.” Your result is one of the nine groups, such as the Left-Out Left or the Pragmatic and Polite Right, with charts showing how your group answered each question. It doesn’t match you to candidates or parties, and you don’t need an account to see your result.

The Political Compass

The Political Compass, which dates from 2001, asks you to react to 62 propositions over six pages, by our count. Each has four answers, from strongly disagree to strongly agree, with no neutral middle. That’s deliberate: a “don’t know” option “makes it too easy for people to duck difficult issues,” its FAQ says.

You get two scores: an economic one, from left to right, and a social one, from libertarian to authoritarian. The makers describe the project as “a journalist and an academic working on the inadequacies of simple left-right political identities,” and say they don’t publish the scoring: “we have a strict policy against releasing this information.” The test is anonymous and answers are “totally unrecorded.” The site is funded by “sponsorship and seminars” and by licensing its images to publishers (About). It also publishes its own charts placing parties and candidates, but it doesn’t match you to them.

8values

8values is an open-source quiz with no named author; its code is public under an MIT license. It has 70 statements, by our count of its question file, each answered on a five-step scale with “Neutral/Unsure” in the middle.

It scores you on four axes, each between two values: economic (equality or markets), diplomatic (nation or globe), civil (liberty or authority) and societal (tradition or progress). It also names a closest-matching ideology from a list of about fifty, which the site itself calls “much less accurate than the values and axes, so don’t take it too seriously.” No account is needed.

ISideWith

ISideWith is a candidate matcher, started in 2012 “by two friends with two very different views of politics.” Its 2026 midterm quiz matches you with candidates, and its elections page covers the races on your ballot, “every state, district, and office.” It also matches you with parties and ideologies. You answer as many questions as you like, from about 270 across 18 topics, mostly yes, no or a more detailed stance, and you can rate how important each issue is to you. Its FAQ warns that results are less accurate for people who answer fewer than 15 questions.

There’s no account; you can leave an email address to save your results. The site is funded by donations and affiliate links to retailers. Its privacy policy says it does not currently sell or share personal information as California law defines those terms, and that it “may use and disclose de-identified or aggregated data for any purpose, including, without limitation, for research and marketing purposes.” Its methodology page notes that the answers it collects come from a survey that “is open and opt-in rather than a randomly sampled poll.”

Candidate quizzes from newsrooms

Some newsrooms build matchers for their own races. In 2026 the nonprofit Texas Tribune offers voter quizzes for three statewide races: U.S. Senate, governor and railroad commissioner, with five to eight questions each. Each question offers one position per candidate, “drawn from Texas Tribune reporting,” with links to the articles behind it. The Tribune credits its scoring method to the voter guide THE CITY built for New York’s mayoral race.

One long-standing matcher is being rebuilt: the nonprofit Vote Smart lists Vote Easy(er) as “coming soon in 2027,” as a perk for paying members.

We the Panel’s quiz

We publish this guide, so read this part with that in mind. Our quiz has 21 statements, each answered on a five-step scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, or with “I’m not sure what this means,” which leaves the statement out instead of counting it as neutral. The statements feed three scales: the economy (shared responsibility or self-reliance), society (change or tradition) and trust in the political system.

Your economy and society scores place you in one of nine types on a fixed three-by-three map, and people with clear views on trust also get a trait, Outsider or Institutionalist. It doesn’t match you to candidates or parties, needs no sign-up, and our method page lists every statement and which way it leans. We keep an anonymous copy of your answers, without your name, email or IP address, to count how the country splits.

Pew’s quiz also has 21 questions and nine groups, but the two are separate and built differently. Pew’s groups come from clustering a large national survey, and they are redrawn with each edition. Ours are a fixed grid with cut-offs that stay the same, so a member’s movement over time shows up as a move across the map. Our guide to political typologies explains the difference.

Which one fits what you want to know?

• How your values compare with the country’s: Pew’s quiz compares your answers with a nationally representative survey.
• A quick picture on two axes: the Political Compass, the original economic-and-social map.
• More dimensions, including foreign policy: 8values.
• Choosing between candidates on your ballot: ISideWith or a local newsroom’s quiz. Check the candidates’ own statements and records too.
• Where you sit among nine American types, and how that changes: our quiz, and the panel if you want to keep track.

Whichever you take, remember that a quiz reflects the questions its makers chose. When researchers simulated 500,000 versions of a voting-advice quiz, they found that “the specific selection of statements has a considerable impact” on the advice it gave (West European Politics). Taking two quizzes that ask different things is a good way to see past any one of them.