Published: October 20, 2007 11:45 pm            

MARK BENNETT: Let's play select-a-candidate

Web site offers multiple choice quiz to show you which presidential hopeful’s views match your own

TERRE HAUTE — You’ve got couples over for burgers and Coronas, or cheese and Chianti, if that’s your thing. Someone says, “Let’s play euchre.”

But, swept up by the spirit of civic duty (or maybe that second glass of Chianti), you blurt out, “No, let’s play Select A Candidate.”

Once the blank stares fade, you guide the gang over to your computer, log on, punch up minnesota.publicradio.org and click on “Select A Candidate/President.”

Of course, they’re still staring. Then you ask a buddy, “So you like that Giuliani guy, right? I’ll bet you a tank of gas that he’s not the best match for your opinions on the issues.”

With that gauntlet down, he retorts, “Hey, pal, you think you’re Ted Koppel or somethin’? You’re on.”

So suddenly, your dinner party is huddled around the iMac in your living room, navigating the Minnesota Public Radio Web site and watching your buddy answer a series of questions on everything from the Iraq war to immigration, K-12 education, stem cell research, ethanol funding, abortion and the death penalty. Each seems simple enough. The multiple-choice answers offered come from positions already stated by one or several candidates, and the respondent weighs each question by also indicating how important they consider the issue to be.

Then, just when it seems like Select A Candidate might be the best thing since Twister, he gets to this question: “What do you think should be done — if anything — in the wake of the near collapse of companies specializing in subprime mortgages, and the foreclosures of homes?”

Maybe a second Corona.

Finally, he’s answered and weighed all 15 questions, and clicks on the button “select a candidate.” Then the results pop up, listing the candidates in order, from the one who most closely matches to the least. At the top is, to your buddy’s surprise, Republican actor and former senator Fred Thompson, followed by two Democrats — New Mexico’s governor, Bill Richardson, and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. Rudy Giuliani, the Republican former New York City mayor, is third.

“You owe me some gas,” you tell your friend.

This clever Internet feature is the brainchild of Bob Collins, managing editor of online news at Minnesota Public Radio. Collins came up with the idea in 2000, when a candidate for Minnesota state attorney general won the Republican Party nomination largely because her last name was Anderson — a familiar moniker to Minnesotans.

“People ended up going to the polls with little idea who this candidate was,” Collins said. “It made me feel bad as a journalist that the public knew nothing about these candidates that we’d been covering.”

So in 2002, Collins created a Select A Candidate survey for the Minnesota governor’s race. In 2004, he and MPR did one for the presidential elections. Then last year, Select A Candidate expanded to the races for Minnesota’s U.S. Senate and House seats, governor and attorney general. Right now, MPR Web visitors can do a 2008 Select A Candidate for president or Minnesota’s Senate race.

It’s an enlightening exercise, with or without burgers and beer.

“The chances are, you’re going to match up with a candidate who’s not the one you think will match up,” Collins said.

In fact, the candidate most often showing up atop MPR survey-takers’ lists is Duncan Hunter. No, he’s not the heir to a chocolate cake mix fortune. (You’re thinking of Duncan Hines.) Hunter is a Republican congressman from San Diego, who is indeed running for president. In fact, out of the top six, the only two names that really ring bells are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The others are liberal Congressman Dennis Kucinich, conservative Congressman Tom Tancredo and Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd.

Collins doesn’t pretend to think Hunter, Kucinich, Tancredo or Dodd will become president. But when survey-takers see their opinions align with those candidates more closely than a Giuliani or a Clinton, it should make them think more deeply about the votes they’ll cast in primaries this winter and the general election next fall.

The political atmosphere is ripe for Americans to question their own voting tendencies. There is no incumbent president or vice president seeking the Oval Office. President Bush, a Republican, has stubbornly plodded ahead with an unpopular Iraq war, and the Democratic Congress has failed to alter that course. So voters could break links with their old party ties in search of any candidate capable of positive change.

“I think people are a little bit more inclined to learn about who they vote for,” Collins said.

Of course, Americans don’t choose presidents solely on particular issues, which Collins emphasized. That’s why Kucinich, the No. 1 MPR Select A Candidate match in 2004, didn’t win that year. Likewise, some may vote for Fred Thompson even though they disagree, for example, with his stated opinion that U.S. forces need to stay in Iraq for as long as it takes for Iraqi forces to take over.

Three factors drive American voters, explained Marjorie Hershey, political science professor at Indiana University — party affiliation, some issues and the candidates’ background and personalities. It’s common to see party links and key issues — such as dissatisfaction with the Iraq war in the 2006 congressional campaign — decide elections. But when candidates’ personalities overwhelm the issues, voters may not get what they expect, Hershey said.

“I think that’s the biggest potential concern in voting,” Hershey stated to the Tribune-Star last week.

“When people vote for a candidate because he or she seems very likable, or vote against a candidate because he or she seems cold, I wonder why they feel that’s a relevant consideration,” she continued. “You and I won’t be going out to dinner with any of these candidates, and people in Washington work with presidents because presidents have power, not because they’re likable. So other than thinking about politics as a source of entertainment, voting for a candidate because of his or her likability doesn’t really bring us much in terms of responsible government.”

That’s why it was refreshing to hear Collins say Web traffic to MPR’s Select A Candidate site is already strong, with nearly 6,000 visitors daily. That should grow to 60,000-plus as the January caucuses and primaries near, he said, and by next November, it could reach 200,000 per day.

The public radio network’s idea got an indirect boost when a Quad Cities TV station, WQAD, copied the MPR survey on its Web site, and then famed shock jock Howard Stern spotted it and gave it his endorsement. Collins isn’t bothered by the lifting of the MPR creation.

“That’s what I said four years ago, ‘Why haven’t more people stolen this idea?’ Because, to me, it’s perfect,” Collins said.

The site lists the candidates’ opinions on issues, all culled from their speeches, debates, position papers and Web sites. Because some candidates tend to flip-flop — or as they put it, “evolve” — Collins constantly updates the Select A Candidate data. The issues chosen are those most frequently mentioned on the campaign trail. Respondents get to decide which ones they deem as most important.

And it was inspired by that one odd election outcome in Minnesota seven years ago.

“Frankly, I needed a gimmick to get people interested in learning about the candidates,” Collins said. “It was kind of a sneaky way to get people to take their medicine.”

Actually, Select A Candidate pairs well with Chianti. Try it.



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

        

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