> I don't think they're right leaning positions in Europe, but I won't speak for the US.

But the article you provided is about US politics. When they said they provided right- and left-leaning questions, these are US right and left.

> I disagree, for the same reasons you outlined.

And as I've said, this is not an empirical approach. An empirical approach would be a refinement of the most probable hypothesis based on observations. What you seem to do is to refuse observations under the bad excuse that "we need to do a more precise study" (and if a study is done, it does not count, we need to do another more precise one).