Politics and Simulation

It's federal election time in Canada - 5 glorious weeks of campaigning. Of the four parties currently represented in parliament, only two parties have a realistic chance of forming a government - the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party.

I'm glad we now have electronic voting. Here's a screen capture from my circuit simulator.



Our national public broadcaster, the CBC, also has an online election app where you can answer a series of questions on national policy and it will tell you where you are on the political spectrum, and what party you are closest to based on each party's respective policy statements. Here's the graphic of my outcome (I'm the check-mark, if you're wondering where I am politically).



CON = Conservative Party
LIB = Liberal Party
NDP = New Democratic Party
GR = Green Party
BQ = Bloc Quebecois (a Quebec separatist party)

It tells me I'm closer to the Liberals, but just by a hair. I'm pretty equidistant between the two frontrunners. The oval is the standard deviation of my answers. It appears that I am quite centrist, with slightly right leanings. But if this were the United States, our Conservative Party would be considered socialists, the Liberal Party as communists, and the rest of the parties as wacko-commie-fascist-Islamist-Maoist-Marxists-Nazis.

Of course, this is all based on what parties say. What they do is an entirely different matter.