There's Something About Bill: Survey Says

A version of this article appeared in this week's Santa Fe Reporter.

By Dave Maass
davem@sfreporter.com

Come primary night in Iowa, if a Democratic caucus-goer's candidate doesn'tlook like he or she will make the 15 percent threshold to stay in the game, the voter can switch affiliation.

Bill Richardson is still polling in the single digits in Iowa, and as the days count down to hours, he may have to consider nudging his supporters to back the candidate with the closest platform.

Several Web sites have simplified the selection process to an easy survey; answer the policy questions and the sites generate the most similar candidate. SFR plugged Bill's policies into the top quizzes to determine his best second choices.

ABC News' Match-o-Matic
(www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/)

This 11-question survey by ABC and USA Today focuses primarily on the issues of the Iraq war, immigration and health care. The survey says his second best match is Hillary Clinton, while Joseph Biden came in a close third.


USA Today's Candidate Match Game
(www.usatoday.com/news/politics/)

Although this quiz' questions are identical to ABC's, it's far more interactive and produces different answers. The results show Hillary Clinton is his second choice, and John Edwards is his third.



Minnesota Public Radio's Select a Candidate
(minnesota.publicradio.org/projects/ongoing/select_a_candidate/)
MPR's site generates candidate matches with a 15-point questionnaire. Bill's second choice slot here is a three-way tie between Joseph Biden, John Edwards and Barack Obama. Each agrees with Bill on 75 percent of the issues.


Glassbooth Election 2008
(www.glassbooth.org)
Founded by Rock the Vote and OnTheIssues
.org, the site allows the user to assign 20 points of "weight" to 13 issues, followed by a 20-question survey. Hillary Clinton again is Bill's second choice with an 80 percent position similarity. Mike Gravel comes in third with 79 percent.



VA Joe's Candidate Calculator
(www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html)
More than 1.5 million people have used this fairly vague questionnaire. Like the results from MPR's game, Bill's second choice is a three-way tie between Joseph Biden, John Edwards and Barack Obama, all of whom agree with him 87.5 percent of the time.



Go To Quiz' Pick Your 2008 Candidate
(www.gotoquiz.com/candidates/2008-quiz.html)

At GoToQuiz.com, users can create quizzes like "How Pittsburgh are you?" and "Am I a lesbian?" Bill's results have Barack Obama and Chris Dodd tying for second with 85 percent agreement on issues ranging from the death penalty to Darfur.