Vote Compass: The most important issues to voters

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The economy is by far the most important election issue for Australian voters, according to preliminary results from the ABC's policy comparison tool, Vote Compass.

Asylum seekers is a clear but distant second, ahead of issues such as health, climate change and education.

Since its launch on Sunday, Vote Compass has captured more than 500,000 responses. The Vote Compass data team has provided an initial snapshot of how respondents rated the issues that matter most to them.

The data is based on the initial 250,000 respondents. It has been weighted to reflect the Australian population using demographic variables from the most recent Australian Census.

Use our interactive chart to see what different groups of voters rated as the most important issues, and read ABC election analyst Antony Green's explanation of the data.

Respondents were asked: "Which issue is most important to you personally in this election campaign?"

Vote Compass: The most important issues to voters View chart Full Screen

At a glance: findings of note

Coalition supporters rate the economy as being twice as important as Labor supporters tend to.

Greens supporters rate climate change about twice as important as any other party grouping.

The older a respondent is, the more important they think the economy is.

Respondents without a university education rate the economy as a slightly more important issue than those who have a university education.

Men consider the economy to be a bigger issue than women do. On the other hand, women rate asylum seekers as a bigger issue than men do.

Women also rate health and education higher than men do, while men rate broadband higher than women do.

The richer a respondent is, the more important they think the economy is, whereas when it comes to health the exact opposite is the case.

The more interested a respondent is in politics, the higher they rate the economy.

FAQ

What is this?

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called the federal election for September 7, the ABC immediately launched Vote Compass.

Since then, we have received more than 500,000 responses, as people used the tool to see how their views compare to the parties' policies.

Between now and election day, the ABC will reveal weighted data gathered using the application.

This is the first report, looking at how people rated the importance of various issues.

Findings are based on the results of the initial 250,000 respondents to Vote Compass between August 4 and 6. Respondents were asked: "Which issue is most important to you personally in this election campaign?" Data have been weighted by gender, age, education, enrolment as a student, religion, marital status and state using the latest population estimates to be a true representation of opinion at the time of the field, resulting in an effective sample size of 53,644 respondents.

Vote Compass is not a random sample. Why are the results being represented as though it is a poll?

Vote Compass is not a poll. It is primarily and fundamentally an educational tool intended to promote electoral literacy and stimulate public engagement in the policy aspect of election campaigns.

That said, respondents' views as expressed through Vote Compass can add a meaningful dimension to our understanding of public attitudes and an innovative new medium for self-expression. Ensuring that the public has a decipherable voice in the affairs of government is a critical function of a robust democracy.

Online surveys are inherently prone to selection bias but statisticians have long been able to correct for this (given the availability of certain variables) by drawing on population estimates such as Census micro-data.

We apply sophisticated weighting techniques to the data to control for the selection effects of the sample, thus enabling us to make statistical inferences about the Australian population with a high degree of confidence.

The Vote Compass data sample was weighted on the basis of: gender; age; education; students; religion; marital status.

How can you stop people from trying to game the system?

There are multiple safeguards in place to ensure the authenticity of each record in the dataset.

Vote Compass does not make its protocols in this regard public so as not to aid those that might attempt to exploit the system, but among standard safeguards such as IP address logging and cookie tracking, it also uses time codes and a series of other measures to prevent users from gaming the system.

Topics: federal-elections, federal-government, federal-parliament, australia