Eight Dimensions of American Politics

Political opinion is usually summarised as one line from left to right, and that line is real: Americans' views on guns, welfare, abortion, race, immigration and defense all move together. But they do not move in lockstep. A factor analysis of 83 policy questions from the 2024 American National Election Study finds eight distinguishable dimensions, six of them strongly tied to the left–right axis and two — distrust of government and the wish to hand decisions to experts, business leaders or referendums — largely independent of it.

This test asks every ANES question that belongs clearly to one of the eight dimensions — 73 in all, in the ANES's own wording — and scores you against the ANES respondents, weighted to represent US adults. A question that bears on two dimensions counts toward both. For every dimension and for the overall left–right score you see where you fall among all Americans and among self-identified Democrats, independents and Republicans, with the three parties' distributions drawn on top of each other. The overlap is the point: on most single issues, a fair share of Republicans sit left of the median Democrat and vice versa.

The overall left–right score is a single factor fitted through all 73 questions: the one dimension that runs through the eight, scored directly from the items. In the ANES it correlates 0.80 with respondents' own liberal–conservative self-placement and 0.77 with party identification. The questions are American; non-Americans can take it, but the norms describe where Americans stand.