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Am I Left or Right Wing?

Why a single line keeps giving the wrong answer, and what to check instead.

September 24, 2026
1 min read

If you are asking "am I left or right wing?", you are asking an economic question and expecting a whole identity back. The left-right line is about who should own and steer production, tax, and welfare. It is a bad summary of how you feel about speech, surveillance, borders, or drugs.

The economic test

On PoliMap, a negative economic score is left and a positive score is right. Left-leaning answers favour public ownership, redistribution, and regulation. Right-leaning answers favour markets, private ownership, and a smaller fiscal state. The cutoff we use in the interface is modest: past -2 you are on the left side of the chart, past +2 you are on the right, and the middle is a real place rather than a shrug.

Why that is not the whole answer

A person at -6 economic and +7 social is not "the same left" as a person at -6 economic and -7 social. One wants a strong state. The other wants equality without it. Those are left-authoritarian and left-libertarian positions. The same split exists on the right, between conservatism and libertarian capitalism.

A practical way to settle it

Take the 20-question test and read the economic number on its own. Then read the social number before you tell anyone the label. If you want a human comparison rather than an abstract cell, the people map shows where public figures land on the same two numbers.

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