When you finish the test and look at your result card, a portrait of a political thinker or leader appears underneath your type with a match percentage. It is the part of the result people share most often, and also the part that raises the most questions: where do a figure's scores come from, why do figures from your own region appear alongside world-famous names, and what stops a moderate politician from matching almost everyone by default?
Unlike the closest ideology match, which only uses the four axes defined in the original 12Axes dataset, the political figure match compares your profile across all twelve axes.
How each figure's positions are estimated
Every entry in our famous political figures collection has a 0% to 100% estimate on each axis where their writings, legislation, and public record show a clear stand. To be eligible for matching, a figure must have positions on at least six of the twelve axes.
When a historical figure had no reason to take a stand on a modern question—for instance, Abraham Lincoln or Adam Smith on artificial intelligence and human genetic engineering on Technology vs. Bioconservative—that axis is left blank rather than filled with a fake 50%. During matching, any blank axis counts as a fixed 28-point difference (UNKNOWN_GAP). If we simply ignored blank axes, a figure scored on only six axes would enjoy an unfair statistical advantage over a figure scored on all twelve; the 28-point gap keeps figures with fewer recorded topics from winning by default.
We also treat historical figures differently from politicians still in office. Living politicians—such as Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, Claudia Sheinbaum, Javier Milei, or Lula da Silva—carry a note on their page stating the public record their estimate is based on, and they are never assigned a computed ideology label because their record is still changing.
The "centrist magnet" problem and how we fixed it
When we built the twelve-axis matcher, we had to address an effect common to multi-dimensional averaging: when most of a reader's twelve scores sit near 50%, a few distinct convictions can easily get diluted in the overall average distance. As a result, figures whose own estimated positions stay close to the middle across many axes—such as Boris Johnson—can end up with an unintended advantage in the matching pool, even when the person taking the quiz has two or three strong convictions pointing toward a very different political tradition.
So that your actual leanings decide who you match, the matcher first measures how far your twelve scores sit from 50% on average. When a profile's overall spread is mild, the algorithm stretches each axis's distance from 50% proportionally (up to an average spread of 25 points, capped at 2.5×) before comparing against the figure list. Profiles that already lean strongly on several axes are left untouched; profiles with gentler leanings get matched on the shape and direction of their views rather than collapsing onto whichever politician sits closest to the middle of the room.
Blending regional and world-famous figures
A comparison is much easier to interpret when it includes leaders whose historical context you know firsthand. By default, the matcher applies a 30% regional target (Math.round(count * 0.3)) based on your browser's language and region tag, which produces a 2-to-3 split on the five-figure results list (40% regional, 60% world-famous); the share card shows the three closest of those five:
- 2 of the 5 figures on the results page come from your own country or region, whenever at least three local figures are available (or from the wider Latin American pool for Spanish and Portuguese speakers in countries with fewer local entries). Depending on where you take the test, that can include figures ranging from Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, to Benito Juárez and Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico, Getúlio Vargas and Juscelino Kubitschek in Brazil, or Adolfo Suárez in Spain.
- 3 of the 5 figures on the results page come from the world-famous pool recognized across countries—such as Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi—whenever the active scope has at least three eligible matches (if a custom scope ever has fewer than three matches in total, the matcher falls back to the full database).
When several figures sit within two or three match points of one another, a small deterministic tie-breaker of up to three points—seeded by your 24-character ?r= result code—decides which of the near-tied figures fill the list, so similar profiles do not all see the same five faces; the first figure is always the one closest to you, and the percentages shown are the real ones. It also guarantees that your own link always displays the same figures when shared. On the results page, you can switch at any time between your own pool (your country or region plus the world-famous figures) and every figure on the site.
Why a high match is not an endorsement
Seeing an 82% match with a historical thinker or a modern head of state means the overall shape of your twelve bars resembles their estimated positions on the topics the quiz asks about. It does not mean you endorse their biography or every policy they pursued in power. Two people can share similar scores on decentralization, secularism, and a mixed economy while belonging to completely different eras and political traditions.
You can read the full scoring rules on the methodology page or browse the political figures; full profiles explain each placement axis by axis. Keep in mind that the quiz is a tool for self-reflection and political discussion, not a validated psychometric instrument.