Online Presidential Candidate Selector Quizzes

The 2008 United States general election is drawing closer and soon a new President will be voted into office. In these final months, citizens may wish to clarify the remaining Presidential candidates' positions on values and issues. Three Presidential selector tools are available to the web-surfing voter to aid him in casting his vote in the Presidential election.

WQAD.com's Select-A-Candidate Quiz

WQAD is a Moline, Illinois, radio station which put their quiz online in July 2007. On their website, they state that their Presidential selector tool is based upon the Minnesota Public Radio quiz. The WQAD Presidential candidate selector tool was promoted on Howard Stern's radio program and on various online blogs.

I took the WQAD Presidential candidate selector quiz on April 17, 2008. At that time, the quiz contained fourteen questions. I had already taken the Minnesota Public Radio quiz and recognized the similar format. The WQAD quiz seemed to be worded in simpler terms than the MPR quiz. Many questions required a 'yes' or 'no' or an 'oppose' or 'favor' answer. Besides selecting the answer that matched my own position, I was asked to rate how important each issue was to me by clicking one of four bubbles from 'not important' to 'very important'.

I found the results from this Presidential candidate selector tool were slightly different than the results I received from the MPR quiz. The difference may have come from the slight variation in the wording of the questions.

My results showed the candidate with the closest match to my answers ranking first and the others ranking after him or her in descending order. Along with the name and photo were two columns, one listing the issues in which the candidate and I agreed and the other listing the issues in which we disagreed.

By clicking on an individual name, I was taken to a screen which showed his or her position on the quiz issues. By clicking on 'View Candidate's Positions and Sources' I saw the individual responses to each item on the Presidential candidate selector quiz and supporting evidence of their positions, including statements each had made publicly and their official votes on related legislation.

I could further click on a candidate name and go to his or her campaign website.

The WQAD Presidential selector quiz I took was a bit dated. My results ranked only the Republican and Democratic party candidates and included Republicans Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, who have withdrawn from the campaign.

Minnesota Public Radio's (MPR's) Select-A-Candidate Quiz

The Minnesota Public Radio website clearly states that its Presidential candidate selector tool is meant "to introduce you to the candidates who are running and their positions on the issues."

Minnesota Public Radio has done this type of quiz in the past. In 2002, they presented an online candidate selector tool for the Minnesota gubernatorial race, followed up by a Select-A-Candidate quiz in 2004 for the Presidential candidates. In 2006, MPR expanded their quizzes to include the United States Senate and four U. S. House races, besides those for governor and Minnesota Attorney General.

In 2008, the quiz includes not only the Presidential but also the Minnesota U. S. Senate candidates.

In past years, the quiz would be followed up by results which contained clickable links to web pages showing the candidates addressing specific issues. These pages had just about anything you would need or want to know about each candidate.

I took the MPR Select-A-Candidate quiz on April 10, 2008. Like the other two Presidential candidate selector tools I looked at, the MPR quiz presented issues in a question format. There were sixteen questions ranging in topic from the war in Iraq to domestic policy issues. Here, too, I was asked to rate how important the issue was to me but there were three bubbles on which to click instead of four. These ranged from 'not at all' and 'somewhat' to 'very'.

After I took the quiz, I clicked on the 'Select A Candidate' box and saw my results. The candidates whose positions most closely matched my answers and priorities appeared at the top and the others were in descending order of agreement. The issues were listed in order. An issue that appeared in bold face letters was one in which I felt strongly and a green mark beside an issue indicated that the candidate was in agreement with my answer.

The MPR quiz is meant to change over the course of the election year as more issues become important on the campaign trail.

On the MPR quiz I could see how closely my answers matched those of other participants of my age, gender, income level, or geographical area. On the results page I could educate myself about the stance of any candidate on all of the issues by clicking on his or her photo or name. I could also see each candidate's stance on a quiz question by clicking on the particular issue. The positions on the issues were supported by various cited sources like Fox News Sunday, the New York Times, public speeches, their campaign websites, interviews, and their own voting records.

Selectsmart.com Select-A-Candidate Quiz

While doing research for this article I happened upon a Presidential candidate selector tool that seemed to me to be the most thorough of the three quizzes. I took this quiz on April 17, 2008.

Selectsmart.com's quiz was updated in March 2008 to reflect the men and women who are still in the Presidential race as well as those who were in the race at the beginning but withdrew or suspended their campaigns.

This quiz offers 26 questions. The questions were asked in the context of what my ideal candidate would have decided in the past few years as well as what he or she would decide about key issues in the future. Instead of bubbles to click, I was asked to rank the question's importance to me by a slider bar that had three positions ranging from not important to very important.

Some of the additional questions had to do with my ideal candidate's preferred marital status, age range, campaign experience, and professional experience.

One of the biggest annoyances to this quiz was the ads at the end that I was presented. Each had a fill-in field and I had to scroll down to reach the Skip button.

Eventually, four or five ads later I got to the page that showed the thirty men and women who had been considered as possible Presidential candidates and had not decided to run, had withdrawn, or were still running. What I liked about this was that besides the Republican and Democratic party candidates, the Libertarian and Green party candidates were listed. Each man and woman was listed with the percentage of positions they had taken which agreed with mine.

A very nice feature of the results page for this Presidential candidate selector tool is the ability to click on a name in one column and another name in the column beside it so that the positions on the questions could be compared side by side. Again, the positions are detailed and very well documented.

Of the three quizzes I took, I felt this one to be most informative. The status of each candidate, even the ones no longer running, is up-to-date and includes who they endorsed if they happened to withdraw from the race.

Of course, Presidential candidate selector quizzes are not magic dartboards by which to make your final decision. These three quizzes can help you clarify the issues in the Presidential campaign, act as a springboard for further research, and allow you to discover which issues you hold dearest to your heart and which are not that important to you.