Polity ranks the Voting Issues of an election based on the number of candidates who support or reject a particular issue.
Our assumption is that aspiring politicians bring forth a policy platform that they believe to be representative of the will of voters. Therefore, the more an issue shows up in an election, the higher Polity considers it demonstrative of the democratic will of a particular voter base.
Polity aims to standardize the Candidate’s platforms in a way that voters can compare policy side-by-side. To that end, we use a grading key/rubric to extract keywords, conditions, phrases or promises from a Candidate’s published platform and provide it for voters in a way that they can scrutinize, compare and contrast.
Only a Candidate’s published platform is considered for analysis. News releases, social media conversation or other utterings made in passing (but never solidified) are not included. Likewise, policy items that are pure philosophy but do not call for a specific action may not be included.
