How the test works. All of it.

The 12 axes

The test measures 12 separate axes in four families. Each runs from -100 to +100 between two named poles, and a score near 0 means your answers balanced out. Keeping the axes separate means views that a broad average would hide stay visible: someone can favour free markets and tariffs at the same time, or be secular and still cautious about new technology.

A family score is the plain average of its axes: Economy averages ownership, markets and welfare; State averages authority, security and structure; Society averages morality, religion, technology and culture; World averages trade and foreign policy.

Statements and keying

The bank has 162 statements, written for this test and drawing on published frameworks: the Pew Research Center political typology for the range of issues that separate voters, Moral Foundations Theory for values such as care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity, and the Nolan chart idea of measuring economic and personal freedom separately. Each statement is checked for plain language, a single clear idea and neutral wording. No statement names a party, a politician or a current campaign.

The test comes in three lengths that measure the same 12 axes. Quick has 36 statements, Standard 72 (including every Quick statement), and Deep all 162. 15 statements, all in Deep, also touch a second axis.

People tend to agree with statements, whatever they say (acquiescence bias). To cancel this out, every axis has statements keyed in both directions: some where agreeing points to the first pole, some where it points to the second. Someone who agrees with everything lands near the middle, not at one end. The table counts each axis's statements by the pole that agreeing points to.

Every statement has a short explainer behind an "Understand this statement" button: neutral background, the main reason people agree and the main reason people disagree. It never suggests an answer, and opening it has no effect on your score.

The answer scale

Each statement is answered on a 5-point scale. Answers are stored as whole numbers from -3 to +3, so the scale keeps room to separate a firm view from a mild one:

• Strongly disagree: -3
• Disagree: -2
• Neutral: 0
• Agree: +2
• Strongly agree: +3

Neutral counts as an answer and pulls that axis a little toward the centre. A skipped statement is left out of your score entirely.

Scoring

Each statement has a weight of +1 or -1 on one main axis, and at most one smaller weight of +0.5 or -0.5 on a second axis. Agreeing moves you in the direction of the weight, disagreeing the opposite way, and stronger answers move you further. For each axis:

• Axis score = 100 × the sum of (weight × answer ÷ 3), divided by the sum of the weights' sizes, over the statements you answered that touch that axis. It is rounded to a whole number from -100 to +100.
• Skipped statements are left out. An axis with no answered statements scores 0.
• Because the score is divided by the largest possible total, it reflects how consistently you leaned one way, not how many statements you answered.

Worked example. "Essential services such as energy and water should be publicly owned." has a weight of -1 on Ownership. Answering Agree (+2) on this statement alone gives Ownership a score of 100 × (-1 × 2 ÷ 3) ÷ 1 = -67, toward Public. With more statements on the axis, each one moves the score less.

The result page also shows a two-axis summary for comparison with classic compass charts: across is your Economy score, and up and down is the average of your State and Society scores. World has no place on a two-axis map. That summary hides detail, which is why the 12 scores come first.

Matching

Every ideology, historical figure and country has a profile on the same 12 axes, from -1 to +1 on each. Your scores are divided by 100 so they sit on the same scale.

• Distance. For every axis the profile has a value for, take the difference between you and the profile, square it, add these up and take the square root: the straight-line distance between two points in up to 12 dimensions.
• Match percentage = 100 × (1 - distance ÷ the largest possible distance), rounded and never below 0. The largest possible distance is 2 × the square root of the number of axes compared: the gap between two complete opposites. 100% means the same position on every axis.
• Ranking. Matches are ranked by distance per compared axis, so a profile with a few blank axes is compared fairly with a complete one. Profiles with fewer than six known axes are left out.
• Your opposite is the ideology with the largest distance from you.

Because the largest distance is the gap between two complete opposites, most profiles land between about 50% and 90% for most people. Read the order of your matches more than the exact number. A match is a similarity, not an endorsement: it does not mean we recommend an ideology, that a historical figure would agree with you on today's issues, or that you belong to any group.

How profiles are built

• Ideologies (124) are placed at the mainstream position of each tradition, as described in standard reference works and the tradition's own key texts, not at its most extreme branch. Where a tradition is split on an axis, it sits nearer the middle.
• Historical figures (258) are people who have died or retired from active politics, scored from documented views: their own writings, speeches and actions, and reputable biographies. When there is no reasonable basis for a view on an axis, for example an 18th century writer on artificial intelligence, the axis is left blank and skipped in matching.
• Current politicians are shown only after each profile has been fact-checked by hand against sourced public positions, covering all major sides. Until then they are not part of any result.
• Countries (63) are scored from published indicators of laws, institutions and public spending, described below.

Country profiles

The country match compares your scores with a profile of each country on the same 12 axes. A country profile describes the country's policy regime: its laws, institutions and public spending. It does not describe what its people think, and it does not follow the speeches of its current government. A country with a socialist ruling party and a market economy is scored as a market economy.

Take the 12 Axes test and your result ranks every profiled country by how close its policy regime sits to your 12 scores.

From indicators to scores

• Indicators. Each axis rests on two to five indicators: published indices and datasets (V-Dem, Freedom House, the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, IMF, OECD, World Bank, SIPRI, RSF, the World Prison Brief, UN DESA) and coded legal facts (death penalty, marriage and abortion law, state religion, citizenship rules, conscription and more). Every value keeps its source and year.
• Fixed anchors. Each indicator is mapped onto -1 to +1 with fixed anchor values, for example government spending of 55% of GDP is -1 on Welfare and 15% is +1, with a straight line between and anything beyond clamped. Coded facts map each category to a fixed score. Anchors do not depend on which countries are included, so adding a country never moves another.
• Axis score = the weighted average of its indicator scores, over the indicators with data, rounded to 0.05. If less than half of an axis' weight has data, the axis is left blank and skipped in matching.
• Matching works exactly like ideology and figure matching on 12 axes (above).

The indicators

Limits

• Policy regime, not people. A profile says how a country is governed. Many citizens disagree with their own country's laws.
• As of dates. Indices are published with a lag, so most values describe the last one to three years; each value shows its year. Profiles as of 2026-10 (method 2026-10.1). Big recent changes are coded by hand where the data has not caught up, and listed in the profile notes.
• Proxies. Some axes have no single policy index. Technology uses research spending, nuclear power and GM crop rules; Culture uses citizenship rules and the share of residents born abroad, which is an outcome as well as a policy. Treat these two axes as the roughest.
• Coded facts involve judgment. Categories such as the size of the state-owned sector or the role of religion in law are coded from the listed sources by a person, with the reasoning noted where a case is unusual.
• Not a ranking of countries. No position on an axis is better than another, and a match is a similarity, not advice to move anywhere.

Spotted a wrong value or an outdated law? Please tell us via the contact page. Every score traces back to its indicators, so a correction changes the profile in a way anyone can check.

Privacy

• No account needed: the full result works without signing up or giving an email address.
• Your individual answers are stored only if you tick the optional research box, which is unticked by default.
• A result link contains your 12 scores and the length you chose, never your answers.

See the privacy policy for details.

Limitations

No test can capture everything a person believes. Your result depends on the statements chosen, on how you read them and on how you felt the day you answered. Treat it as a starting point for reflection and conversation, not as a label.

• Not a scientific instrument. The test is carefully built and openly scored, but it has not been validated the way academic survey scales are, and there is no reference sample behind the numbers.
• Statements carry framing. Any wording frames an issue in some way. Statements are plain and keyed in both directions, but different wording could move some answers.
• Shorter means noisier. With three statements per axis, as in Quick, one answer can move an axis a lot. Standard and Deep give steadier scores.
• Profiles are simplified. Real movements and people are more varied than any 12-axis profile.

Spotted an error or a statement that reads as slanted? Write to . Ready to try it? Take the 12 Axes Political Test.