When it comes to politics, cynics like to note that ultimately, all the candidates are virtually identical in terms of their fundamental beliefs. Some even like to say that in the end, Republicans and Democrats are all basically the same as well. As it turns out, according to the Political Compass and their test of political ideology across axes of left-right and authoritarian-libertarian, the results may be a little surprising:

The results show that in terms of their placement along the four quadrants of left-right and authoritarian-libertarian, almost all of the candidates, Democratic and Republican, place in the authoritarian-right category. According to these results, the only “true” liberals are Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.

Am I surprised? A little bit. Am I shocked? Not really.

p.s. In case you’re curious, my position on the political compass is below.