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.

How the eight dimensions were found, why eight rather than fifteen, and how online takers compare with US adults is explained in the write-up of the test.