See how your views align with Australian parties using Vote Compass. Use the Vote Compass website and make an informed choice in the 2025 Federal Election.
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”.
For what it’s worth, any political compass is a highly flawed way of modeling politics so I wouldn’t think about it too much. If they don’t give a concrete definition of “left” or “right” or units of measurement then it can’t possibly be more than vibes and feelings. Policies don’t ‘average out’ in reality, and often there are both ‘left’ and ‘right’ disagreements with a policy, especially given specific phrasing in a quiz where questions are sometimes loaded.
As a test (these aren’t my actual politics!) I managed, first time, to get this alignment when only agreeing with Labor on 5/30 (16%) of policies, being at least two positions away from them on 12 policies (e.g. ‘agree’ when they were ‘disagree’, or ‘much [x]’ when ALP was neutral), without having unreasonable or contradictory politics. In fact, my quiz answers agreed with Greens as much, based on their own metric.
THE ONE TRUE LEFT-CENTRIST
And, for what it’s worth, my actual honest result was this, putting me slightly economically and socially “right” of Greens, despite a regular political analysis putting me firmly on the economic left of them - they just didn’t ask questions outside the Overton window.
THE WORKERS MUST ASK PEACEFULLY FOR PERMISSION TO OPERATE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION
they just didn’t ask questions outside the Overton window.
Sure, but that’s a feature, not a bug, in this case. The ABC isn’t trying to create the One Political Compass To Place You For All Time. They’re trying to show you where you stand relative to the parties on the issues being discussed this election campaign. It may also be worth doing their optional step of weighting the questions by importance, to make it a little more useful.
The ABC isn’t trying to create the One Political Compass To Place You For All Time. They’re trying to show you where you stand relative to the parties on the issues being discussed this election campaign.
That’s true, and it does an alright job of that. And since the tool doesn’t really take independents and minor parties into consideration, who might have such policies, there’s no point in asking them anyway. My post is more a critique of trying to visualise the results in the style of a political compass.
I can see how it can be confusing. There probably are better ways to label this.
But basically, the lines are not axes. They are quadrant “dividers”. So the line labelled “Economic” divides the Left and the Right half. So your position is further left economically than the Greens.
The labels in the middle of the sides are confusing, but if you focus on the labels with the arrows at the corners you’ll see the x-axis is economic, and the y-axis is social:
‘Left’ points left
‘Right’ points right
‘Progressive’ points up
‘Conservative’ points down
(though not sure why you’d flip it rather than just using the Political Compass as it is).
Yeah, I guess ‘Progressive’ and ‘Conservative’ aren’t exactly ‘Libertarian’ and ‘Authoritarian’ on the usual compass.
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…
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”.
For what it’s worth, any political compass is a highly flawed way of modeling politics so I wouldn’t think about it too much. If they don’t give a concrete definition of “left” or “right” or units of measurement then it can’t possibly be more than vibes and feelings. Policies don’t ‘average out’ in reality, and often there are both ‘left’ and ‘right’ disagreements with a policy, especially given specific phrasing in a quiz where questions are sometimes loaded.
As a test (these aren’t my actual politics!) I managed, first time, to get this alignment when only agreeing with Labor on 5/30 (16%) of policies, being at least two positions away from them on 12 policies (e.g. ‘agree’ when they were ‘disagree’, or ‘much [x]’ when ALP was neutral), without having unreasonable or contradictory politics. In fact, my quiz answers agreed with Greens as much, based on their own metric.
THE ONE TRUE LEFT-CENTRIST
And, for what it’s worth, my actual honest result was this, putting me slightly economically and socially “right” of Greens, despite a regular political analysis putting me firmly on the economic left of them - they just didn’t ask questions outside the Overton window.
THE WORKERS MUST ASK PEACEFULLY FOR PERMISSION TO OPERATE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION
(@GreenMartian@lemmy.dbzer0.com, @zero_gravitas@aussie.zone)
Sure, but that’s a feature, not a bug, in this case. The ABC isn’t trying to create the One Political Compass To Place You For All Time. They’re trying to show you where you stand relative to the parties on the issues being discussed this election campaign. It may also be worth doing their optional step of weighting the questions by importance, to make it a little more useful.
That’s true, and it does an alright job of that. And since the tool doesn’t really take independents and minor parties into consideration, who might have such policies, there’s no point in asking them anyway. My post is more a critique of trying to visualise the results in the style of a political compass.
I can see how it can be confusing. There probably are better ways to label this.
But basically, the lines are not axes. They are quadrant “dividers”. So the line labelled “Economic” divides the Left and the Right half. So your position is further left economically than the Greens.
The labels in the middle of the sides are confusing, but if you focus on the labels with the arrows at the corners you’ll see the x-axis is economic, and the y-axis is social:
‘Left’ points left
‘Right’ points right
‘Progressive’ points up
‘Conservative’ points down
Yeah, I guess ‘Progressive’ and ‘Conservative’ aren’t exactly ‘Libertarian’ and ‘Authoritarian’ on the usual compass.
A nice little thing to play with.