I didn't read Krugman's article about his chart and its reasoning, but I always found the Nolan Chart to help me understand political leanings and preferences:

I didn't read Krugman's article about his chart and its reasoning, but I always found the Nolan Chart to help me understand political leanings and preferences: http://imgur.com/mPbmgVk http://imgur.com/mPbmgVk Using that chart it is a little easier to understand why there might be few Libertarians for the same reason there are few Statists; the terms both represent the pure ideals of those concepts and most people aren't totally studied in those areas to be able to fully dive in to either. Instead people have grasped some concepts and grafted them into what their political worldview already is.