We’re less than a week away from the 2022 Federal Election. On May 21, 2022, you have to line up to honour your rights and actually vote for various parties’ policies over the others. You’ll be presented with metres of paper, a cardboard booth and a pencil, and you’re genuinely supposed to know what to do. I mean? Exactly. If you’re feeling a bit confused by it all, a nifty lil’ tool called ABC Vote Compass can help.
So what is it? ABC Vote Compass asks 30 policy-related questions to show users how their personal views align with those of the major political parties across a range of key policy issues. It’s developed by political scientists.
ABC Vote Compass had already registered over one million responses. I just did it and it asked me questions like whether or not cannabis should be legalised for recreational use AND how much federal government funding there should be for universities among other debate-worthy points.
You can answer on a scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” or from “much less” to “much more”. It also asks how much your trust certain leaders and how likely you are to support each party, regardless of who you might vote for in the election. These are answered on a scale of 1-10 from “not likely at all” to “very likely”. All this being said, “Don’t know” is always an option to respond with throughout the quiz.
It took me around 10-20 minutes but everyone will be different. The end result shows you:
- How you fit within the political landscape
- How much you agree with each party (which you can modify based off the issues you care about the most)
- How you rate the leaders
At this point, you can choose to compare based on the issues that matter to you the most. This list includes things like gender equality, taxation, environment, employment and more. You can also email the results to yourself to refer back to later and it gives you the option to share publicly on social media if you’re so icnlined.
It’s like the least fun game you’ll ever play, and the prize is a graph that may confuse you more than what you originally thought about your political leanings in the first place. But enjoy.
Take ABC’s Vote Compass quiz over here.
