Is Vote Compass Real

This may seem an odd question, however, it does indeed deserve to be asked.

For a number of years now, the ABC has been providing this online 'service' to help voters determine which party is most aligned with their own views.

Here is a link to the launching page: https://votecompass.abc.net.au/

The idea of the tool is to map views 2 dimensionally against two measures:

1. Social Issues mapped between Conservative and Progressive.
2. Economic Issues mapped between left and right.

There are indeed thirty questions covering a range of issues, including questions about republic, migration, leader trustworthiness, wages, climate change, education, health, and defence.

Of course, one must ask if these are the right questions, and if have they been asked in a way that tends to prompt the 'correct' answer.

There is a weighting tool supplied as you review your results to allow you to identify issues of greater concern.

Now the site says "Vote Compass is a tool developed by political scientists to help you explore how your views align with the major parties." The unwritten inference is that we would want someone (a party) who represents our views to represent us in the National Parliament, and generally, I would not dispute that.

However:

There is, of course, a broad canvass of issues over which these things play out, and I think Vote Compass recognises that, however, it clearly does not cover everything, nor could hope to do so.

A number of people I know have done the survey, who share a range of views, and interestingly they have all come out seemingly aligned more closely to the ALP, though numbers of them have never voted Labor, ever (at least so they contend). Of course, we don't know exactly how the major parties were put on the map, though the LNP are placed fairly right and conservative, and the Greens extreme left and very progressive, and the ALP is left as the party just to the right of centre. I think the reason for the Labor positioning is that the Greens have now gone so far to the left that they have dragged the centre to the left otherwise the Greens would be 'off the map' left!

I don't doubt for a moment that there are Liberals who are right-wing conservatives, however, that does not make it a right-wing conservative party. I asked out local Liberal candidate to place herself on a scale between A and T (where A = Abbott and T = Turnbull), and like any true politician, she failed to answer directly and spoke of the party of the broad church.

I also don't doubt that there are centrist members of the ALP, however, I am not convinced that that is broadly where the party sits. There are members of the ALP who sit right of many people in the LNP, and members of the LNP who sit left of many people in the ALP. As such I don't think this measure is as helpful as it might immediately seem.

There is indeed a risk here that this tool has been manipulated to help people feel that they should vote for the ALP. That may well be in line with the ABC view of things as we have come to expect it, however, it is not the role of the ABC to attempt to influence the outcome of elections. I would add that it should not be the goal of any instrument of the 'Free Press' to try to implement change, and when they do, they destroy their real value in a Free Liberal Democracy.