A left leaning map of all candidates running for city council at large.

Philadelphia Magazine's Citified blog posted an interesting story yesterday on a Palo Alto start up called Crowdpac, a number crunching algorithm based site that analyzes political candidates based on note only their voting records but on their donors and endorsements.

A perusal of the cite's Philadelphia Municipal Election page is a good resource for at least familiarizing yourself with all the candidates and races that will narrow on the May 20 primary and conclude in the November general election.

The Philadelphia municipal election is the cite's first crack at local politics. Candidates are scored on a scale that runs form a Liberal 10 on the left to a Conservative 10 on the right. The closer a candidate is to the middle, the more moderate or politically unaffiliated he or she is.

For each office -- say mayor or city council at large -- those scores are compared across the field for a bird's-eye vie of how the candidates compare on a conservative to liberal scale. A look at the the city council at large field shows how left-leaning the city's politics are. Several Democratic candidates have full 10L liberal scores, while two of four Republicans are actually left of center.

While the site is interesting for its scoring system and information on candidate endorsements and donations, it doesn't offer a great deal of information on political positions. It is, however, a good starting point and worth a look, particularly for anyone who still needs to orient himself with the numerous elections taking place in Philadelphia on May 20.