Vote Compass Australia 2025

If you ever needed evidence that Labor has abandoned its traditional position of being the party of the Union Movement:
Also wow, absolutely fuck Labor for this one:
These are positions as self-reported by the parties.
Here's my result:
Not sure why it puts me more economically conservative than the Greens but more socially left. I answered a stronger position than the Greens every time my position was different from theirs on an economic issue, including saying "much more" to wealthier people's taxes and "much less" funding for private schools and private healthcare.
I also found myself more moderate than the Greens on some social issues, like I said "somewhat agree" on "Political parties should commit to running at least as many women candidates as they do men", where the Greens say "strongly agree". My take is that anywhere from a 40–60% balance is reasonable, but that also it's important to take into account other factors like racial background, sexuality, and occupation. It's also important to consider where they're running. It doesn't matter if two thirds of your candidates are women, if the men are in all of the safest seats. Labor, at the last election, if they had taken that strategy, would have had 101 women candidates and 50 men, but would have ended up with 50 men in Parliament and only 27 women...
- Not sure why it puts me more economically conservative than the Greens but more socially left.
  I think you're mixing up the axes! You are economically to the 'Left' (on the left-right axis) of the Greens, but slightly less socially progressive (up-down axis).
  
  You're reading it as an upside down version of the normal Political Compass, which would make sense (though not sure why you'd flip it rather than just using the Political Compass as it is).
  But if you read the axes as they're actually labelled by the ABC, the x-axis is labelled "social" and the y-axis is "economic".
- A nice little thing to play with.

It's fascinating how some of these questions are phrased.
Should Australia spend more or less on its military?
I have no idea what Australia spends on its military. I don't know whether it's too much or insufficient. I wouldn't feel qualified to answer this question, so I abstained.
But abstaining from this question appears to have affected my compass result. It appears to read it the same as "about the same". Which isn't what I said or meant. There are a few I abstained from and I think that by doing so, it has put me a lot closer to center than is probably accurate.
I used to think of myself as fairly central. Only "central" has seemed to move over the past 20 years and while I don't think I've changed all that much, I'm considered more left these days than I used to be.
- But abstaining from this question appears to have affected my compass result. It appears to read it the same as “about the same”. Which isn’t what I said or meant. There are a few I abstained from and I think that by doing so, it has put me a lot closer to center than is probably accurate.
  Yeah I noticed that once or twice too. I would have thought saying "I don't know" should have made it disregard that question, but it doesn't seem to.
  I don't know if that's because they're explicitly treating it like "about the same", or if it's just that the way it works is you start in the centre and each answer adds or subtracts a certain value from your score, which has the side effect of it being the same as "about the same". A better system IMO would be a sort of weighted average of your non-idk answers, if that's what they're doing.
- Yeah, not a great question. I answered somewhat more, assuming we had a roughly right spend before Trump 2.0 started unfolding.
  And I'm pro nuclear fusion, but assumed they meant fission given that's what's on the table.

Cheers for the reminder! My friends and family all use Vote Compass each year and it's interesting how people drift over time.
- Ooh, so looks like you actually have to make a choice between Greens and Labor, being pretty evenly split between the two.
  
  Yeah, unfortunately they both have pretty much zero chance in my historically blue electorate. However, there's still hope since the decent independent who came a close second last time is running again and the incumbent has retired. It's refreshing to actually see corflutes and have meaningful discussions.
  Whats happening in your area?

Oh boy a High Score ;-p
Greens aren't gonna win in my electorate anyway, so Oh Well. I always put progressive independents above the Greens anyway, but was already going to give the Greens the highest vote out of all the major parties. This looks like a useful tool for undecided voters at least.