2Decide.com Election '08 Chart of Where the Candidates Stand

data via www.2decide.com/table.htm
I reorganized the candidates to be grouped by Democrats and Republicans with the highest rated candidates ordered from left to right (approximately)

*EDIT*
Since this has been featured in a couple of places, I just wanted to bump this additional note from the comments to explain a little bit more about this infographic.

To clarify again, I remixed all of the data from http://2decide.com/table.htm -- they're the ones who did the research into the issues from the candidate's websites, and they did the original layout of all of this data.

However, they ordered the candidates in alphabetical order and not even by political party. And it spanned across multiple pages, and so it was very difficult to get a gestalt overview of the core differences between the two parties on the issues.

So I took a screenshot of all of the data at http://2decide.com/table.htm, and then first split it between the Democrats and Republicans, and then ordered it by the candidates with the highest polling numbers from left to right using info from www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/democr... & www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/republ... The ordering is approximate since it was really difficult to get a precise ordering after the top 3-4 in each party.

I then overlaid a transparent blue and red over the candidates to prove my suspicion correct in that there are a lot of issues where there is a near black and white split between parties. If I would have placed Kucinich further to the right, then you'd probably see an even more homogenized field since he's more on the progressive fringe. And it's pretty noticable that libertarian-minded Ron Paul really lives up to his "Dr. No" moniker.

There are no independents listed, and only people who have officially declared their intentions of running and have a campaign site -- as far as I understand how 2decide.com aggregated the info.