Disclaimer

Your Vote 2016 (an iteration of the international E-democracy project Election Compass/Kieskompas) is intended to provide users with accessible information about the parties' positions on various issues, and to enable users to compare parties' positions with their own. Your Vote does not advise users on how to vote. It does not address every issue that differentiates parties in this election campaign. Its purpose is to generate interest in the election campaign, and to promote discussion about the 2016 Australian federal election, and about politics in general.

A team of researchers from University of Sydney and Fairfax Media, in cooperation with the team from Kieskompas, has determined the parties' positions. An Academic Review Panel comprised of political scientists from University of Sydney has overseen the research process. Every effort has been made to ensure accurate calibrations of parties' positions on the various issues represented in the Your Vote interactive according to data available to the public. Parties' positions were determined by scientific analyses of available electoral platforms. In some cases, it is possible that the placement of a party on the political landscape does not represent its current (or future) position on a specific issue. Coding was based on the party positions as they were known at the time Your Vote was built. Thus, it is possible that a party has changed its position on a specific issue, or published a new and more detailed platform, after the launch of the 2016 Your Vote site. Due to the aforementioned reasons, there may be minor discrepancies on some issues between the parties' positions as represented by Your Vote, and the positions as currently presented by the parties in the election campaign.

In Your Vote, all fields are optional. Personal information is always treated anonymously and confidentially. In case you decide to share your email with us, this will only be used to contact you for academic purposes and under no circumstances be transferred to third parties.

FAQs

What is Your Vote?

Your Vote 2016 is a free online application which provides users with the opportunity to compare their own political opinions to those of the major parties running for election. The idea behind such tools is to allow citizens to see how close or distant their views are from each of the parties in the Australian political landscape. Based on the user's answers to a series of statements on salient issues, Your Vote calculates the user's position in the political landscape and relative to the position of the major parties competing in this election.

After responding to 30 statements, Your Vote then matches the citizen's policy preferences with the official policy preferences stated by parties in their own documentation and/or as reported by reputable news media. In doing so, Your Vote engages citizens and orientates their vote choice by presenting them with a range of policy issues and the parties' positions on those issues.

How does it work?

The mechanism is simple: prior to an election, a list of 30 statements, related to strongly relevant policy issues are developed by a team of academics and experts, based on a close examination of the parties' platforms and political discourse.

The positions of parties on these statements are then coded in accordance with their official stances on the issues, as expressed by their published policies, campaign documents and media appearances.

Users of the tool then fill in the same questionnaire and express their personal political preferences. After recording these responses, Your Vote calculates the user's positions and measure them against the positions of the parties on the statements. Users can then see where they stand on the basis of the degree of congruence between them and the parties.

Does Your Vote tell me how to vote in the upcoming election?

NO. Your Vote does not tell users which party to vote for. It simply tells you where you stand in the political landscape and shows which parties are close to your political orientation and which are more distant from your own opinions. Obviously, Your Vote does not include every issue that differentiates parties in this election campaign; rather it is based on a careful selection of 30 salient issue-based statements. The purpose of Your Vote is to generate public interest in an upcoming election, and to provide objective information on where the parties stand on important issues - based on their websites and other official policy documents. Each voter is given several options on how to compare his or her personal opinions with the parties and can then decide for themselves which one best represents his or her views.

Who created Your Vote?

Your Vote is the product of a partnership between Fairfax Media and the independent academic project Kieskompas (translation: Election Compass). It is not affiliated with any political party, movement or candidate. This project was developed by a team of political scientists from the University of Sydney (working in collaboration with Fairfax Media) and the VU University Amsterdam. Election Compass projects have been developed in over 40 countries across the globe. In each country, experts on national elections, political parties and party competition are asked to join the team. The Australian team consists of experts on Australian politics and voting behaviour. Kieskompas founder and director, André Krouwel (VU University Amsterdam) acted as consultant and quality control monitor to the 2016 Your Vote project in order to warrant an international standard of such applications.

Is Your Vote affiliated with any party?

NO. Your Vote is an independent, non-profit and strictly non-partisan endeavour of academics and journalists, interested in informing voters. Your Vote seeks to provide the Australian electorate with an objective and transparent overview of the political landscape. It uses recognised scientific methods to place candidates on the political landscape, based on their policy platforms, their official websites, and their statements to the media. All the information collected by the Fairfax-University of Sydney-Kieskompas team is available to the public. With a simple mouse-click each user can identify the data that justify the calibration of the party on the issues.

Who decided on the survey statements used in Your Vote?.

The selection of statements is based on a scientific methodology known as (hand coded) Content Analysis. Based on the assumption that the issues that are frequently addressed by parties are the ones more important to voters, the academic-Fairfax Media research team responsible for the project has selected the 30 statements included in Your Vote in order to reflect salient issues in the election campaign and surrounding public debate. It is important to stress that the parties have had no influence whatsoever over the selection of topics, nor on the phrasing of the statements. Analyses of relevant literature, public opinion surveys and previous iterations of Your Vote (known as Election Compass internationally) were used to finalise the wording of the statements and to attribute them to the overall issue-dimensions (the ‘ economic; left-right and ‘ moral' progressive conservative dimension) and the themes.

Who decided on the positions of the parties on each statement?

An academic team working in collaboration with Fairfax Media researchers was in charge of coding the positions of each party. During each step of this calibration process, every effort was taken to ensure that the highest standards of scientific rigor and academic integrity were met. In order to avoid bias, each party was calibrated on the issues by multiple coders. Each of the coders individually analysed the information made available to the public by parties in order to assess their positions on the various issue statements. After establishing the parties' positions according to their platforms, websites, and other sources, the team compared the coding of all scholars and carefully studied issues where no immediate consensus existed. The team then went over all the evidence again and discussed this placement in detail. All the text sections that are used to justify the coding are directly accessible through clicking on any of the parties in the Your Vote application. If you think there is an error, please send us your comment to scoopsmh@gmail.com or info@kieskompas.nl.

Why are some of the parties not represented in the Compass? Why can't I see all of the parties in my results?

Your Vote does not include all parties competing in this election, but only parties that have a reasonable chance of passing the electoral threshold according to public opinion surveys. In addition, Your Vote takes into account the public statements of the major political parties included in the process of assessing their positions, but if two parties fall exactly at the same position on a given issue, it is possible that the two of them will not appear clearly enough on the graph. In that case, the logos of the two parties will actually be on top of one another and the display will not be optimal. If you select 'Party position per statement', you can easily check the exact positions of all the parties per statement.