MPR utility

==Background==
* http://minnesota.publicradio.org/projects/ongoing/select_a_candidate/
==Tool to Select a Candidate==
By answering a series of questions about major issues, you can quickly learn which candidates are most closely aligned with your views. You'll be able to learn more about each candidate, hear his/her positions on many issues, and find out how your results compare with those of others who take the survey.
* Start the Quiz for: Minnesota Governor | U.S. Senate - Minnesota | U.S. House - Minnesota 6th District
===Q: Does Select A Candidate tell me who to vote for?===
A: Absolutely not. Its main purpose is to introduce you to the candidates who are running and their positions on the issues. Ideally, after you take the Select A Candidate quiz, you'll take advantage of the link to the candidate's page on our Campaign 2006 site and explore his or her positions more closely and then decide who you favor.
===Q: How did you come up with these questions?===
A: The questions mirror the campaign. There might be issues we are interested in that haven't come up in the campaign so far, and those aren't listed here. Should they come up -- and we have a mechanism for your interests to be part of the campaign -- they will be added to Select A Candidate. The choices from each question mirror positions that candidates have stated. If no answer is close to your position, do not answer the question, for there is no candidate with that position.
===Q: How does the scoring work?===
A: Each candidate gets 1 point for each question that matches your answer. If you indicate that an issue is very important to you, the candidate gets 3 points. If you indicate that the issue is of no importance to you, the candidate gets 0 points. In this way, the "match" is weighted to reflect those issues on which you decide elections.
==Insights==
MPR, Minnesota Public Radio has a project underway which allows people to visit their website and work their way through a set of issues considered relevant to particular
election contests. For each issue the position of each candidate is briefly
stated, without being specifically identified as to which candidate it belongs to,
and the participant makes a "blind" choice of the statement which most
agrees with his/her own opinion, . The participant also indicates the degree of
importance he/she places on each issue. Mathematical magic is performed on
the answers, and the participant gets a percentage measure of the extent to
which each candidate's views are congenial. That's pretty interesting.
What's really interesting is that they accumulate the mathematical magic to
come up with a measure of the extent to which the accumulated group of
participants to date agrees with each candidate's positions on the set of issues.
In the Independence Party we try to take our excitement where we can get it,
so even though MPR says "there is no scientific value to the cumulative
results and MPR does not at all claim they are representative of the electorate",
we are very happy to see numbers like the following ....
===US Senator:===
* Klobuchar 49, Robert Fitzgerald 46, Kennedy 5
===Governor:===
* Peter Hutchinson 57, Hatch 26, Pawlenty 17
Not sure what it means, but we will find out in two months.
Dave Hutcheson, North St Paul
==Links==
* Minnesota