In the middle of a short electoral campaign its popular for people to rerach out for something a bit neutral, a seemingly unbias quick survey to dip ones toes in the water & see where you personally fall on the political spectrum.
I get that. But apart from extreme general, to the point of blurry general direction, is it a helpful tool, does it help people think, rethink?
I think it's probably, despite the best efforts of some people with sound University degrees, it might be closer to those social media surveys like "Highly intelligent people see the number 8 in under 8 seconds"
The other thing is, the criteria to set it all up is run by a company. Its a product. You can look up who the people are behind Vox Pop Labs. Its all based at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. I'm unble to find if its a privately company, a company where the "Our Team" people are shareholders, the only shareholders or just paid employees.
Does it matter? Probably not but its good to know who is what & why.
It appears to be 10 peoples & 5 advisors. I don't know or know of any of them.
https://voxpoplabs.com/about/
Their bios read as very well educated & qualified people. So on face value, all is ok but that is no guarantee although it is easy to dismiss them or be critical of them if we were to read too much into what Vote Compass is, what it actually does do & what it really should be used to do.
That is a little vague & in the Australian context not mentioned at all. Apparently its a great thing, it holds some authority, made by political scientists but no real setting out what it really does well & what it should be used for.
They do set out their methodology & although I don't think its thoroughly flawed, deliberately skewed or intellectually corrupted I think it's not as deep and telling as many think it is.
If its just a bit of fun, yup, go for it but I do think the landscape theor survey is going to drop you on is not really a good representation of the way things are.
I do agree Labor & Liberal do deserve to be close together. They have some big differences & on the social access they probably aren't all that far apart because I think both are overly concerned with the optics, what's trending & fear some of the effect of Virtue Signallers...althought I think that is declining. ( I hope so)
On the Economic, its hard to put them anywhere near each other. One of the big arguments is who delivers surpluses & who delivers deficits. Sadly some deficits are caused by mismanagement, by spending on vital areas to protect the vulnerable, some by economic forces outside anyone's control so the sliding scale of "Economic" is fraught with danger.
Its a set of questions with broad as a barn door with a set of answer options on topics which are far too deep & wide.
Its the supposed political landscape that is an issue.
Labor is in the dead centre between Progressive & Conservative. That is a stand out oddity.
Remember the Australian Labor Party is a Socialist Party.
I think it might be a lot closer in ideology & dogma to the Greens but what they say they believe & what they actually do is often different. That goes for all parties. I do recall a Liberal leader citing a broken political promise as being "not a core promise" comment.
Vox Pop Labs methodology is, well perhaps not easy to say its flawed but its does have some curious aspects.
The ABC site has a Methodology tab, click it & you will end up on a pop up with this...
Based on your responses to a brief questionnaire, Vote Compass generates an analysis of how your views compare to the positions of the parties in a given election.
This analysis is restricted to the specific issues included in the Vote Compass questionnaire and may not necessarily reflect your perceived political affiliation or intended vote choice.
The analysis generated by Vote Compass contains several different outputs, including a Cartesian plane and a bar graph. Each output measures something different and reflects a practical reality in which people think about politics in multiple ways. Some think in terms of ideology and others in terms of public policy issues. Vote Compass visualizes your results in each of these terms, leaving you free to decide which are most suitable for your purposes.
Party positions in Vote Compass are determined by way of a two-part process. A research team of political scientists analyzes the available data on party positions vis-à-vis the issues reflected in the questionnaire. Based on this analysis, a determination is made as to how each party would respond to each proposition. The research team then initiates a direct dialogue with each of the parties represented in Vote Compass as an additional check as to the accuracy of its calibrations. All parties are provided with an opportunity to review and, if necessary, challenge the calibrations before Vote Compass is launched.
For a full account of the Vote Compass methodology visit https://voxpoplabs.com/votecompass/methodology.pdf.
Interesting parts for me...
1) Party positions in Vote Compass are determined by way of a two-part process. A research team of political scientists analyzes the available data on party positions vis-à-vis the issues reflected in the questionnaire.
Well I expect there's an algorithem at play, set by the "research team of a political scientists..." and that team has set the the parameters. Think that's probably a more accurate way of setting it. How they set the parameters from Canada might be useful too but again, we risk reading far too much into this. Its result is not a bankable thing. Its just a thing. Don't make the thing do things it can't.
2) The research team then initiates a direct dialogue with each of the parties represented in Vote Compass as an additional check as to the accuracy of its calibrations.
As they should, but I hope they did it in review as well & that we could all see what the parties each said in their "direct dialogue"
3) All parties are provided with an opportunity to review and, if necessary, challenge the calibrations before Vote Compass is launched.
Well I would love to see this feedback as well because its not so much where I fell on the landscape provided, its whether or not the landscape, that is where the Parties sit is the real issue.
Confining it to two seperate aspects of Social & Economic isn't entirely kosher.
Would you rate a party that loudly & proudly supports Black Lives Matter as being high on the "Social" axis? I wouldn't, in fact quite the opposite. Its a devilishly anti-social organisation where the leaders of it are self confessed Marxist Organisers who have made millions out of it, bought mansions whilst black neighbourhoods were looted, businesses that employed people where stripped, burnt to the ground & some of those neighbourhoods will be years rebuilding if they can. People were killed, injured, made unemployed, police stations attacked, made police free & gangs had a massive growth spurt.
If as a party you rank BLM as a great thing, the people that supported "defund the police" and you rank that as a socially progressive thing then that party lurks somewhere between pro anarchy & a vile for of Marxism.
If you are a socialist party I think you can & should be found lower on the Social scale. THAT is not good for the economy nor social aspects of society. It also seems to suggest economic advancement as being seperate from social advancement in some parties. I think some use the social aspect as a virtue & guilt hammer to hit people with. But a good economy means more jobs. The greatest form of welfare is employment or running a business. Some have been slotted into high social aspect when its tax more to make more stuff free as their key policy driver. If a party was to tax people off the chart they'd rank lower economic aspect but be enormously socially minded...and strangely not irresponsible.
I expect the ALP & the Liberals are closer than we would/should expect but I think the sad part it is, they're positioned where they are based on what they've said, reviewed by them. Either they have both changed their stripes immensely or they are decidedly not what they say they are & will do (if they form Government) much less than they're promising.
It does strike me as odd the Greens are set as a stand alone party but the Nationals are not.
Greens have 10 federal members of Parliament at present.
The Nats have 19 federal members of Parliament at present.
The "LNP" only exist in Queensland. It is odd that the Greens are set as one of the 3 major parties...and they're the 4th AND the actual 3rd is made part of the 2nd because they're in coalition government...and there are Nationals running against Liberals in quite a few seats,
End thoughts & "thunking"...
In very broad & general terms if might pop you out somewhere on the spectrum & land you broadly in the region you are...its just that the Parties are all over the shop & I would view a party as being less than frank & accurate if they fed any feed back in at all.
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