What I find most amusing is that, while the whole point of the Political Compass is to prove that you really need two dimensions to explain politics, there is a very high correlation between the two axes they use. In particular, based on the 21 posted scores (granted a somewhat biased sample), there is a .83 correlation between the left/right and libertarian/authoritarian axes. In fact, a single combined factor explains over 90% of the variance in the scores.

If you look at their graph of world leaders and restrict it to politicians in democratic countries it appears that the same fact holds. In fact, the second dimension really only comes into play with such democratic luminaries as Saddam, Stalin, Mugabe, Arafat, and the pope.

I should note that I actually believe that two or more dimensions are required to explain things, but their test is clearly not well suited to describing politics in modern democracies.

--John