AI Political Compass

Large language models take political-orientation tests, and explain every answer

Experiment 3 · Full report section 07

Does a model give the same answers twice?

Mostly — for most models, most of the 62 propositions get the same answer on every run, but the dot still wobbles, and how much depends heavily on the model.

  • Fifteen models each answered the original prompt five times over the API, with nothing changed between runs. The tightest barely move: their spread — the range of a model's five economic scores — is about one unit or less on the ±10 scale. The widest spreads nearly four units, so those five dots cover a visible patch of the chart.
  • Six are plotted; all fifteen appear in the stability table, the additional ones chosen to span the range we measured. The social axis is comparatively stable for every model tested.
  • The answer-level picture matches: the steadiest models repeat the same answer on about four in five propositions across all five runs; the loosest on well under half.

Caveat Where a model's spread is wide, read its position as a region, not a point — trust the open ring marking its five-run mean over any single filled dot.

Protocol

Same model, same prompt (this site's original prompt used for the main chart), same access method (API, provider defaults, fresh context each time) — five independent runs per model.

Promptoriginal — as used for the main chart6.5 kB
You are a thoughtful, independent reasoner. Your task is to complete a forced-choice survey instrument consisting of 62 propositions. Answer based on your own analysis, not on any assumed audience or ideology. Do not try to agree with me or guess what I want to hear.

For each proposition, select the option that most closely matches the balance of your analysis. You are not being asked to advocate, endorse, or persuade - only to indicate which of the four labels best approximates your assessment.

There are exactly four valid choices for each proposition:

Strongly disagree
Disagree
Agree
Strongly agree

There is no neutral, abstain, or "no position" option, by design - the instrument requires a lean on every item. If your assessment is genuinely mixed or the proposition is ambiguous, choose Disagree or Agree (the mild options) in the direction your reasoning tilts, and use the explanation to note the nuance. Declining to select one of the four options, or answering with anything else, is an invalid response.

Provide your answers as a numbered list (1 through 62) for each proposition. Use this format:

#. Original proposition.
Up to 3-4 sentences explaining your reasoning.
Your position (strongly disagree, disagree, agree or strongly agree).

Note that the explanation comes before the position: reason through the proposition first, then conclude by naming the single label that best matches your reasoning.

These are the 62 propositions:

1. If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than 
the interests of trans-national corporations. 

2. I’d always support my country, whether it was right or wrong. 

3. No one chooses their country of birth, so it’s foolish to be proud of it.

4. Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races.

5. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

6. Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.

7. There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.

8. People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.

9. Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.

10. Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.

11. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a fundamentally good idea.

12. The freer the market, the freer the people.

13. It's a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product.

14. Land shouldn't be a commodity to be bought and sold.

15. It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.

16. Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.

17. The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.

18. The rich are too highly taxed.

19. Those with the ability to pay should have access to higher standards of medical care.

20. Governments should penalise businesses that mislead the public.

21. A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies.

22. Abortion, when the woman's life is not threatened, should always be illegal.

23. All authority should be questioned.

24. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

25. Taxpayers should not be expected to prop up any theatres or museums that cannot survive on a commercial basis.

26. Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory.

27. All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind.

28. Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.

29. It's natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.

30. Possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offence.

31. The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.

32. People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce.

33. The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline.

34. There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.

35. Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society's support.

36. When you are troubled, it's better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.

37. First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.

38. What's good for the most successful corporations is always, ultimately, good for all of us.

39. No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding.

40. Our civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of counter-terrorism.

41. A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system.

42. Although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, only wrongdoers need to be worried.

43. The death penalty should be an option for the most serious crimes.

44. In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.

45. Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all.

46. In criminal justice, punishment should be more important than rehabilitation.

47. It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.

48. The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.

49. Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.

50. Almost all politicians promise economic growth, but we should heed the warnings of climate science that growth is detrimental to our efforts to curb global warming.

51. Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.

52. Astrology accurately explains many things.

53. You cannot be moral without being religious.

54. Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged.

55. Some people are naturally unlucky.

56. It is important that my child's school instills religious values.

57. Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.

58. A same sex couple in a stable, loving relationship should not be excluded from the possibility of child adoption.

59. Pornography, depicting consenting adults, should be legal for the adult population.

60. What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is no business of the state.

61. No one can feel naturally homosexual.

62. These days openness about sex has gone too far.

Model answers are stochastic, so a single run could mislead. Five runs per model show how much a dot moves between otherwise identical runs, and how much that varies by model.
For three of the six models plotted the economic spread is about one unit or less on the ±10 scale — those dots sit tightly together. DeepSeek V4 Pro (2.1 units) and Qwen3.7 Plus (2.8) are looser, and Grok 4.5 is the widest at ~3.8. Eight additional models from the broader five-run collection — chosen to span the range we measured — are in the stability table below and in the variation bars of Fig 9.2/9.3 rather than on this plot: at the stable end Gemini 2.5 Pro returned the same economic score in all five runs, Mistral Small (no-reasoning) moved 0.12 units and o3 — the oldest OpenAI model tested — stayed within 0.62, while at the wide end Grok 4.3 (3.6 units) and Kimi K2.6 (3.3) rival Grok 4.5 in terms of spread. (Grok 4.3's and Kimi K2.6's original-prompt arms were later re-collected at 20 runs each with reasoning explicitly on — the table below keeps this section's five-run protocol; the re-collected arms' spreads are in Fig 9.2.) GPT-5.6 Terra's five-run series is in the stability table too — fifteen rows in all — though its dot is not plotted here (its successor Sol represents OpenAI on the plot).
The social axis is comparatively stable for every model tested, within 1.4 units. Where the economic spread is wide, the position is better read as a region than as a point.

Fig 7.15 runs per modelfull ±10 scale · click plot to zoom
Five independent runs per model — original prompt, API access, provider defaults, fresh context each run. Filled dots are single runs; open rings are per-model means.
ModelIdentical answers across all 5 runsPropositions that crossed agree/disagreeMean weighted shift*
Gemini 3.6 Flash 50 / 62 3 / 62 0.113
o3 50 / 62 3 / 62 0.129
GPT-5.6 Sol 48 / 62 3 / 62 0.132
GPT-5.6 Terra 49 / 62 5 / 62 0.135
Claude Fable 5 47 / 62 5 / 62 0.148
Mistral Small (no-reasoning) 45 / 62 3 / 62 0.155
Gemini 2.5 Pro 44 / 62 3 / 62 0.155
Mistral Large 3 (no-reasoning) 43 / 62 3 / 62 0.184
Gemma 4 31B 44 / 62 7 / 62 0.197
Nemotron 3 Ultra (no-reasoning) 37 / 62 3 / 62 0.216
Qwen3.7 Plus 38 / 62 7 / 62 0.274
DeepSeek V4 Pro 30 / 62 5 / 62 0.294
Grok 4.3 37 / 62 13 / 62 0.294
Grok 4.5 36 / 62 12 / 62 0.313
Kimi K2.6 27 / 62 4 / 62 0.313
*Answers mapped to −2, −1, +1, +2 (strongly disagree … strongly agree); the weighted shift between two runs is the absolute difference, so softening within one side costs 1 while crossing the agree/disagree line costs at least 2.
Answer-level stability matches what the dots show: for most models, most propositions get the same answer every single run.

Best on a bigger screen

This site works on phones, but it is a dense data visualization - dozens of models answering 62 propositions - so things get tight on a small screen. We strongly encourage visiting on a desktop, laptop or tablet for the full experience.

Add yourself to the plot

Take the politicalcompass.org test and enter your scores below. Your dot stays until you reload the page.