Being a sucker for surveys, I couldn’t resist the Vote Compass survey on the CBC News website. The survey purports to locate your position on the political landscape relative to the various parties. The landscape refers to the issues foremost in the current election.

Vote Compass was developed for the CBC by a team of social and data scientists from Vox Pop Labs. The survey seems sound enough. According to the website, the various parties’ responses to the survey’s questions were determined by carefully researching their public statements and party platforms, and then consulting with the them directly.

The results of a person’s survey are presented in two ways. One, you are situated on a graph with two axes, social and economic. And two, a bar graph suggests how much you agree with the parties. My results are shown on the right.

I am, apparently, situated midway between the Liberals and the NDP on economic issues (no surprise there), but midway between the Liberals and the Conservatives on social issues (big surprise).

As to how much I agree with the parties, another big surprise. According to Vote Compass, I am most in agreement with the Liberals and even slightly more in agreement with the Conservatives than the NDP.

How to explain such an evaluation for a member of the NDP. Is the survey flawed? Not necessarily. It isn’t designed for a person’s general views but rather for views on the issues at the time of an election. And one of the hot issues currently is our country’s history and the place of the founding fathers. Part of the problem on this issue may be with the survey and its tendency to yes/no and scaled answers. I find my views on the issue rather too complex and nuanced for this type of answer. Nonetheless, I do slant conservative on the issue.

Many on the left seem to have decided our founding fathers were a bunch of Nazis, fit only for museum fodder, a view I feel is not only unjust and wrong but manifests a superficial interpretation of history. So I have no quarrel with being judged relatively conservative on the social issues of the moment.

Considering I hold progressive views on most social issues—health care, child care, the justice system, etc.—I may well be differently positioned on the next election’s survey. Or am I—horrors!—a closet Conservative? Perish that thought. In any case, holding views that don’t fit the stereotypical left/right niches isn’t at all a bad thing.

Take the survey. It’s a good look in the mirror.