Which countries are most politically similar to the United States?

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Hot take: France

Out of curiosity, why France?

Their political spectrum actually seems significantly different from the US, with their right wing being less freedom focused and more nationalism focused, with their multiparty system as opposed to the two party system in the US, with the centre having a stronger presence (Macron would be a moderate Democrat in the US but is a centrist in France) and the left being much further left economically and having a history of favouring openly socialist policies.

One other difference about economic policy is that the centre in France (as in, Macron types) is the most economically right wing - both the left and the right tend to be more economically left-leaning than the centre.

Trump's realignment of the parties has arguably culminated into an ideological tripolar realignment; I assume the US is further along in this process than the other Anglosphere liberal democracies. (Canada actually has 3 major parties but I'm not knowledgeable enough about Canadian party politics to assess how well the parties represent a distinct 'left', 'center', and 'right').

Maybe; I would argue that America's party system is slowly or rapidly becoming more like the current French tripolar system, but keeping on to the 2 party labels of D and R.

Currently France has a well defined Left, Center, and Right.

America has a very small Left (Squad/Progressives), fairly large Center (dominated by Democrats and a few Republicans like Murkowski, Meijer, Cheney, and Collins), and a robust, but alienating Right.

Our primary system has become very clearly a system defined by these three poles with Democrats fighting between Leftists and Centrists, and Republicans fighting between Centrists and Rightists (more like Establishment vs Trumpists). Primaries were not this ideological even 10 years ago (2008 or 2012 for both parties lacked this ideological divide).

It will be interesting to see how the Republican party handles power - I think the divide between the Center and Right will become more prominent when they take power again especially because it looks like the Right has been co-opted by the Trump celebrity machine.

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Strong disagree with France.

Even on mainland Europe, it's actually not even the best candidate.

What do you think would be the best Continental European candidate then?

Trump's realignment of the parties has arguably culminated into an ideological tripolar realignment; I assume the US is further along in this process than the other Anglosphere liberal democracies. (Canada actually has 3 major parties but I'm not knowledgeable enough about Canadian party politics to assess how well the parties represent a distinct 'left', 'center', and 'right').

Maybe; I would argue that America's party system is slowly or rapidly becoming more like the current French tripolar system, but keeping on to the 2 party labels of D and R.

Currently France has a well defined Left, Center, and Right.

America has a very small Left (Squad/Progressives), fairly large Center (dominated by Democrats and a few Republicans like Murkowski, Meijer, Cheney, and Collins), and a robust, but alienating Right.

Our primary system has become very clearly a system defined by these three poles with Democrats fighting between Leftists and Centrists, and Republicans fighting between Centrists and Rightists (more like Establishment vs Trumpists). Primaries were not this ideological even 10 years ago (2008 or 2012 for both parties lacked this ideological divide).

It will be interesting to see how the Republican party handles power - I think the divide between the Center and Right will become more prominent when they take power again especially because it looks like the Right has been co-opted by the Trump celebrity machine.

Its a generalisation admittedly, but Tories are mainly right, Liberals centre and NDP left. This is pretty common knowledge and doesn't really require any specialist expertise.

I understand that, but how big are the ideological differences between the Liberals and the NDP really? My lay impression is that the Liberals are considerably closer to the NDP than to the Tories.

Cody/Aurelius and ottermax's arguments against Canada make more sense when you consider that Canada has a parliamentary system and the impact Quebec regionalism has had on the Canada's political coalitions and electoral calculus.

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https://i0.wp.com/objectivelists.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/belgium-similarity-3-01.jpg?resize=1140%2C570&ssl=1

This is how the website describes different countries and I find it quite interesting:

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I think you CAN argue that USA is the most Latin American Anglo country, but it’s still very much an Anglo country yeah. A Mexicanized Canada is kind of perfect description actually, because it feels like this buffer mixed zone in some elements yeah.

Same thing happens within European countries, their closest comparisons are amongst two of themselves, exception being only Spain and Portugal due to their cultural similarities towards LatAm former colonies. And Switzerland and Russia, which are compared to Canada on so e level that I don’t understand.

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Even for places that are between different regions, the comparison they make feels apt, being a mix of those two regions:

Turkey: Azerbaijan, if it was more like Italy

And just for the sake of curiosity…

Israel: Tunisia, if it was more like Germany
Australia: New Zealand, if it was more like South Africa
South Africa: Botswana, if it was more like The Netherlands
Angola: Mozambique, if it was more like Congo
Nigeria: Ghana, if it was more like Niger
Japan: Taiwan, if it was more like the UK
South Korea: Japan, if it was more like North Korea
China: Taiwan, if it was more like North Korea
Taiwan: China, if it was more like Japan
India: Nepal, if it was more like Sri Lanka
Iran: Iraq, if it was more like Tajikistan
Morocco: Algeria, if was more like Turkey

The last section makes intuitive sense to me. Each country is more similar to the first one than the second one.

Israel: Arabic speaking Middle Eastern country that is WEIRD and superficially Westernized
Australia: Commonwealth Southern Hemisphere Euro settler state with South Africa’s climate and topography
Nigeria: coastal, relatively non-fragile West African state that’s also very big and internally diverse
Japan: coastal, Confucianist East Asian country that’s also an island nation
South Korea: coastal, Confucianist, non-Chinese East Asian country that shares a common culture and language with Best Korea
China: demographically and culturally Chinese society under authoritarian, nominally Communist rule
Taiwan: demographically and culturally Chinese society that is maritime, highly developed, and a former Japanese colony
India: continental, majority Hindu, partly Indo-Aryan speaking country that also scores highly on certain human development metrics, also has a Dravidian speaking minority, and is clearly within the tropics?
Iran: coastal, subtropical, oil-rich desert country that speaks an Indo-European language and is relatively mountainous
Morocco: Arabized Muslim North African country that’s further away from the Arabic heartland and more subject to European (post)colonial influence