General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Hillary was liberal, Hillary IS Liberal [View all]Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)Five Thirty Eight is good at number crunching, but too often they fail to recognize that not everything can be determined through math. There is no mathematical formula for determining how liberal a person is.
You can not calculate it by votes because there is no real objective way to determine which votes are liberal and how much each of those votes should weigh. A vote for the war in Iraq should carry a far greater weight than a vote on a small spending bill. We also need to look at a lawmakers reasons for voting for or against a bill to determine whether their vote was liberal, using a one size fits all math formula can not determine why a lawmaker voted why they did.
Five Thirty Eight is good at crunching poll numbers, they are absolutely terrible at measuring political ideology.