The same scale, wired four different ways

Each country positioned by how strongly self-placed left–right correlates with economic-right values (horizontal) and with social conservatism (vertical). Dot size is sample N; color is world region.

Takeaway: the United States sits alone in the bundled upper-right corner; Sweden is far to the right but flat (economic only); Poland rides up the left edge (cultural only, economics near zero); most of the developing world clusters near the origin, where the scale means little.

One dot per country; within-country correlations weighted by survey weight, pooled across waves with fieldwork year ≥ 2005. Correlations require effective (Kish) N ≥ 300; per-country N ranges from 545 to 7,110 respondents. 95 countries shown. Source: World Values Survey & EVS, pooled.

What “right-wing” is made of, country by country

Weighted correlation of left–right self-placement with three value dimensions, for six archetypal publics. Bars right of the zero line mean the right is more conservative / market / religious on that dimension.

Social conservatism Economic right Religiosity

Takeaway: in the U.S. all three bars run long and positive (bundled); in Sweden only the economic bar does (economic-only); in Poland the social and religious bars are long while the economic bar is essentially zero (cultural-only); India, Russia and Brazil show short, low bars (weakly structured).

Economic-right index = mean of standardized income-incentive support and (reversed) government-responsibility; social-conservatism index = mean of standardized disapproval of homosexuality, abortion and divorce; religiosity = importance of God (1–10). Per-country N: United States 3,862, Sweden 3,589, Poland 3,439, Russia 3,513, Brazil 3,595, India 5,617. Source: WVS & EVS, weighted.

Richer democracies have a sharper economic left–right

Each country's economic-axis strength (correlation of self-placement with economic-right values) against its Human Development Index, with an ordinary-least-squares trend.

Takeaway: as human development rises, the economic meaning of left–right strengthens — the cloud tilts upward, with the Nordics and Anglophone democracies at the top-right and low-HDI countries flat along the bottom.

Across-country Pearson correlation of HDI with economic-axis strength is +0.36 (92 countries with HDI). The parallel correlation with the social axis is +0.49. Each country enters once, equally weighted. Source: WVS & EVS (correlations) and UNDP (HDI).