More than 650 candidates are contesting this election, which is an average of more than 15 candidates per constituency. To help voters navigate this crowded field, the WhichCandidate voting aid tool is now available on The Irish Times, below. The tool allows voters to compare candidates in their constituency and find out who they agree with most on a range of policy questions.
Many readers will be familiar with WhichCandidate, which has become a feature of elections in Ireland since it was first established in 2014.
The WhichCandidate team, based in the University of Limerick and with the help of student volunteers, has invited all the political parties and as many candidates as we could contact to answer a set of questions on issues such as taxes and spending, housing, transport, environment, immigration and many more. Voters can answer the same set of questions and see which candidates they agree or disagree with in their constituency. For a more nuanced understanding of where the candidates stand, voters can read the additional comments that the candidates (or their party) provided to us in relation to each question.
The questions were carefully selected to cover the most relevant election issues. This was done in consultation with our advisory board, drawn from a range of Irish universities and civil society organisations. There is a limit on the number of questions we can include, which means that not everyone’s key issue will be featured, but we believe that the questions provide a balanced overview that reveals the main policy differences between the parties and candidates. Issues on which all candidates agree (for example, everyone agrees that hospital capacity needs to be increased and that childcare costs are too high) are not included, as they are of little help in discriminating between the candidates.
The design of WhichCandidate is tailored specifically to the Irish electoral system, where voters must rank candidates on the ballot paper in order of preference. Users are presented with a personalised list of candidates in their constituency, ordered by the level of agreement between the individual and the candidates.
We encourage users to take this ranking into consideration, along with other relevant information, when deciding on the ordering of their preferences when they go to vote. Other factors, such as evaluations of the candidates’ and parties’ track records, are also very relevant to the voting decision. We are therefore careful not to present the results on WhichCandidate as a voting recommendation, but rather as one part of a multifaceted decision.
WhichCandidate users are also given the opportunity to complete a mock ballot paper. Every preference on a ballot paper is potentially important, and we believe people should have the opportunity see what their completed ballot paper will look like before going to the polling station. People who fill out a mock ballot paper on WhichCandidate can then use this as a reference when completing the real thing on election day if they so choose.
Voting aid tools such as WhichCandidate have proven to be a valuable source of information to many voters, particularly younger voters and first-time voters. The number of people using our site has grown steadily with each election, and now numbers in the hundreds of thousands. There is also evidence that it influences how many people vote. During the recent European Parliament elections, we asked a sample of WhichCandidate users about their voting intention before and after using the site, and found that over one third of respondents changed their minds about their first preference vote after using the site. This is a good reason for any candidates who have not yet participated to sign up on WhichCandidate and share their views.
Rory Costello is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration in the University of Limerick. More information is available on the WhichCandidate site.
