Methodology

Questionnaire design

The smartvote Australia questionnaire for the ACT 2020 election includes 32 questions on a wide range of policy issues. It has been drafted by a team at the Australian National University composed of members of the Australian Election Study (which has been running a representative sample survey after all federal elections since 1987), as well as other academic and research staff of the School of Politics and International Relations and the Australian Studies Institute (for more information, see about us).

Australian Election Study

Matching

In order to match the answers and therefore political positions of users with candidates, smartvote Australia applies an algorithm based on Euclidean distance. Below you will find a detailed description of the matching-algorithm.

Positional matching methodology (PDF)

smartspider and smartmap

In order to calculate the positions of candidates and users on the six axes of the smartspider and within the two-dimensional political space of the smartmap, smartvote Australia applies a common and simple calculation method. Below you will find a detailed description of this method as well as the complete assignment of questions to the axes of the smartspider and the smartmap.