Bloodless Coup

Well, far be it from me to find fault with a quiz of any variety (cough cough) but I think these questions are biased, or at minimum do a poor job of measuring the constructs they purport to represent. As someone who is very "blue" (among others for being a feminist democrat with a PhD) I scored quite purple, right in the middle. At first that might seem perplexing, but, if you read the test description, that doesn't really matter. "If you're a blue-stater, you might happen to have learned how often Rush Limbaugh is on the air, but if you're a red-stater, chances are you know it off the top of your head. " Well, in terms of survey results, both of the people described would score the same, since both would know. The difference between the two - happenstance vs automatic knowledge - would not be caught on the test.

Now, if you go by the introductory paragraph, my objections don't matter, because the results don't seem to mean a thing anyway: "Red and blue are states of mind, not actual states. Red and blue aren't absolute predictors of political leanings, either. There are plenty of blue cities in red states, red enclaves in blue states, red-leaning governors of blue states, people who vote Republican but are of a blue state of mind, and so on. It's not as simple as liberal vs. conservative, elite vs. populist, urban vs. rural, religious vs. nonreligious, educated vs. uneducated, rich vs. poor—if it were, the terms "red" and "blue" wouldn't have taken off as the best shorthand for a divided America." The problem here is that this quiz does not test your identification, but your knowledge. In that case then, we would have to assume equal ignorance on the part of both blue and red groups to each other. And you know what my mass politics professor always said about assuming..."we're not economists!!!"

Anyway, maybe I'm just feeling contrary tonight. It's only an e-quiz after all, and maybe that binky the feminist democrat and baltar the libertarian republican score the same is no reflection of test validity.

echoing binky, perhaps, i'd have to comment that all this test appears to assess is how far under a rock the subject lives. (i came up just left of center. and for the record, i knew rush limbaugh's routine off the "top of my head.)