Scoring the candidates

This online poll showed up in my e-mail the other day. The way it works is that the poll questions ask you your opinion on a number of issues, and weights them by how important they are to you. When you are finished, it gives you scores for all the Presidential candidates. The higher the score, the closer he/she is to your own personal views.

I wasn't too surprised by my scores. Dennis Kucinich came out best with a 74, followed by Mike Gravel with 64. All the major Democratic candidates lumped together: Edwards 45, Obama 44, Richardson 41, Clinton 40. Ron Paul was the only Republican to get a positive score with 20. All the other Republicans were in negative numbers, with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee at the bottom of the pack.

The 2Decide organization, which is sponsoring this poll, also is keeping track of which candidates are the respondents' top preferences. Surprisingly, Dennis Kucinich is the top choice of those taking the poll so far. (I did some checking around, and I could find no connection between 2Decide and the Kucinich campaign.) It's likely safe to say that this poll has circulated around Democrats more than Republicans thus far, but it does seem to show that Kucinich is not nearly as out of step with the views of the average Democratic voter as the media and the major candidates would like you to believe.

2Decide has also created a chart that you can use as a quick way to compare where all the candidates stand on a number of issues. Check this stuff out.