Every statement counts toward exactly one score, and every statement counts the same. Your six answer buttons are worth −3, −2, −1, +1, +2 and +3. Skips are left out entirely.

Half of each score's statements are worded so that agreeing pushes one way and half so that agreeing pushes the other. That cancels out the habit some people have of agreeing with most things.

A score is the average of your answers on its statements, scaled so that answering +3 to everything one way gives the end of the scale: −10 to +10 for Economic and Social, 0 to 100 for Progressiveness, where 50 is the middle. Quick uses 12 statements per score, Standard 20, Deep 30. If you skip more than half of a score's statements, your result says so.

Only Economic and Social place you on the map. Progressiveness is a separate measurement and is never a map coordinate.

Each ideology is a rectangle on a 20 by 20 grid. The centrist zone covers −1 to +1 on both scores. Rectangle sizes are layout decisions. A bigger rectangle doesn't mean a bigger or more important ideology, but more people will land in it.

A score of exactly 0 sits on a dividing line. The map gives that tie to the right or libertarian side, and your result names the region on the other side too.

Some regions are broad positions the two scores measure directly, like Social Democrat or Minarchist. Others are specific movements (Juche, Peronist, Gaullist) or are defined by a commitment this test doesn't ask about, such as religion, monarchy, ecology or foreign policy. Those carry a tag on the map. If you land in one, your result says so and names the closest general position.

Ideologies also differ on culture, which the map doesn't use. When your progressiveness score points the opposite way from your region's usual stance on change, your result flags it.

Several labels describe a historical movement or regime. A description summarizes what the movement said it stood for; what governments that used the name actually did is a separate question the map doesn't settle.

Your result page says how often you'd land in the same region if your answers were drawn again at random from the ones you gave, repeated 1,000 times. Clear means 70% or more, Likely 40 to 69%, Toss-up under 40%. The dashed shape on the map and your card covers about 95% of those redrawn positions.

This measures how consistent your answers are with each other. Someone who mixes strong left and strong right answers gets a wide shape even if their average lands mid-region. It can't tell you whether you'd answer the same way next month. Only a real retest can do that.

With 104 regions and only a few dozen statements, many results are Likely or Toss-up. That's the honest picture: the map has more detail than a short test can pin down.

The percentage compares your three scores with estimated scores for each person. It doesn't compare individual issues.

It starts at 100% if you're on the same spot and drops 10 points for every point of distance between you. Distance counts both map scores plus progressiveness, with 10 progressiveness points worth 1 map point. Anyone 10 or more points away is 0%. Percentages are rounded to the nearest 5 because each person's placement is itself an estimate good to about a point.

People's scores are judgment calls based on their public record. They aren't sourced individually yet. Historical figures are judged against their own era, so a 19th-century reformer can score as progressive while holding views that would read as traditional today.

The bars on each ideology are PoliAxis's ratings of that ideology's typical position, from 1 to 5. They are not calculated from your answers, and individual adherents vary.

Market and Welfare mostly track the economic axis; Liberty mostly tracks the social axis. State measures how much the government does, which is a different thing: a Nordic-style welfare state is large but protects civil liberties, while an autocratic capitalist state is small in the economy but tightly controls politics.

Established. Describing politics with an economic dimension and a separate personal-freedom or authority dimension is a long-standing approach in political science and in popular tools.

Analytical interpretation. Which statements represent each score, and where each ideology sits relative to the others.

Judgment calls. Region boundaries and sizes, the six characteristic ratings, every public figure's placement, and which labels count as specific movements.

Not yet tested. PoliAxis hasn't been tested on real respondents. Nobody has measured whether retaking it gives the same result, whether its statements group into the three scores the way they're meant to, or whether the three scores are as independent as the design assumes. The accuracy figures on the home page come from a simulation, not from real retakes.

Known weak spots. A few statements touch more than one score: religion shaping laws and strong government action on climate are scored as progressiveness but also involve state power. Some statements are factual claims rather than values, such as whether welfare discourages work or whether gender roles come mostly from society. People who agree on values can disagree on facts like these.

Your answers, and a short history of your past results for retake comparisons, are saved only in this browser. When you finish, PoliAxis sends your three scores, your region and the test length, with a random ID that stops the same person being counted twice. It doesn't send your answers or anything that identifies you. Those numbers power the "Everyone else" comparison.

Turning this off stops future results from being sent. Results already sent stay in the totals.

If research sharing is offered on your result page and you tick it, your individual answers are sent too, with the same random ID, so researchers can check whether the statements work and whether retakes agree. It's off unless you turn it on.