Nearly four million visitors for Canada Vote Compass

The Canadian Vote Compass was been visited 3.8 million times during the Canadian election campaign. This makes it the most successful vote compass website in the history of Kieskompas.

A customized Vote Compass was developed by Kieskompas for the CBC, the national Canadian television broadcaster, in cooperation with four Canadian universities.

The analysis of the Canadian vote compass site in terms of party competition and public opinion played a major role in the reporting on the Canadian elections, which took place on Monday the 2nd of May.

Canadian voters were able to use the a specially customized vote compass tool for their country for the first time during this campaign, and have done so massively.

On the basis of 30 clearly formulated statements on key election issues, users were placed in the Canadian political landscape, and were able to review all party positions in detail afterwards.

It emerged that the Canadian political landscape was rather polarized. In terms of election outcomes, this polarization has arguably grown, because the two political parties with the most pronounced positions on the left and right: the Conservatives and the NDP, both increased their proportions of votes and seats.

The winner of the election, with a majority of seats in parliament, was the Conservative Party of Canada, which was positioned in the right-conservative quadrant of the Canadian political landscape. The Conservative party differed substantially from the four other major parties competing, who all fell into the left-progressive quadrant. The party that suffered the largest defeat, the Liberal Party, was moderately left of center. The Green Party won its first seat. The French Block Quebecois has a moderate left-progressive profile however it lost electoral ground. The New Democratic Party was the biggest winner in terms of improvement of vote and seat share, and it now leads the opposition. The New Democratic Party is the most progressive party in the Canadian political landscape.

A major academic research project has been set up involving the Vote Compass Canada and will bring out its first findings and results in the upcoming months.