The last day of the campaign – as from midnight tonight we must all fall silent and let the voters ruminate. Still undecided who to vote for? Or who you would vote for were you French? Try one of the on-line tests to see which candidate most closely fits your vision of the world. Even if you’re not eligible to vote it’s fun and quite instructive. I spent a happy hour trying five sites, each offering multiple-choice questionnaires. Two of them were created by students of Sciences Po and most have tested the questions on all 12 candidates to see whether they conform to the questionnaire’s image of them. The five I tried are Politest; Sitoyen; Quel candidat; Pourquivoter; and Polimetre.

Your level of French has to be reasonable, particularly for Politest which was created by former students of Sciences Po and is perhaps the most serious. In most, however, the questions can be worked out with a modicum of vocabulary, and it’s always interesting to have a non-French take on these French issues – for example employment charges. I have the feeling that if you say the 35 hour week should be repealed you are automatically classified somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, which you then have to rectify by saying you believe the frontiers should be closed to illegal immigrants, especially those coming en masse from Mongolia.

A disadvantage is that most questionnaires insist you give an answer to every question: not all give a Don’t Know option. It’s also quite hard to choose between 1) taxes should be lowered when the State can afford it, 2) taxes should be lowered so businesses can invest and 3) taxes which weigh heavily on the poor should be lowered: all three seem to me justifiable. Or again, 1) rather than assisting people, they should be taught responsibility, 2) the worst off should be helped by the state but people should not expect everything from it and 3) the state’s duty is to help everyone live decently. You can tell that those two examples come from the Sciences Po questionnaire. Another test asks you to make a straight choice of the most important issue in the campaign – they then ask you to choose between (French) unemployment and global warming. That is always the weakness of multiple choice questionnaires.

Having taken note of your political views, several then either ask directly which candidate attracts you most (I suspect many otherwise undecided French women will vote for Ségolène Royal through gender solidarity), or they offer a series of wider questions to see what sort of person you are, for example “Do you think Zidane was justified in head-butting Materazzi?” which is a simple test of nationality. There is no Have Never Heard of Either option.

Finally the results may surprise or even shock. One (the Sciences Po one) had me voting for Generation Ecologique – not an option since the candidate didn’t get 500 signatures. Two had me voting Sarkozy and one Royal (neither of whom would I vote for if I had the vote). The fifth and most accurate had me voting……ah, but that would spoil it. Have a go yourself.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 7:13 am and is filed under Political, Amusing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.