Voters can take a survey to discover which candidates in their constituency they agree with on a range of issues, or they can browse candidates' profile pages to find out more about them.
We provide balanced information on the key election issues.
Browse profiles of all election candidates in your constituency.
Discover which candidates share your views on the issues you care about.
See how your views compare with other voters in your constituency
Get your main campaign message across to voters on your free personal profile page.
We will be organising local events and working with local media to promote the website and attract a large volume of traffic from voters.
You will be recommended as a vote match for voters who share your views.
WhichCandidate is a free service where all candidates are treated equally.
WhichCandidate is a ‘voting advice application’ that allows voters to compare their own policy views with those of the candidates standing for election.
It aims to inform voters about the policy positions of candidates and to help voters to make a more informed voting decision.
A set of relevant policy issues are selected by the research team in advance of the election. Election candidates are contacted to complete a questionnaire on these issues. Each participating candidate is given a public profile on the website, incorporating their answers to the questionnaire.
Voters who visit the website are asked the same set of questions, and their answers are compared with the answers of the candidates. A customised results page is then presented to each user, containing a ranking of candidates ordered by how closely their answers match.
Rankings of candidates are based on the ‘percentage match’ with the user. This is the percentage of issues on which the candidate has the same position as the user, out of all the issues on which the user expressed an opinion.
For example: a user expresses an opinion on 10 issues, and on 5 of those issues the user’s position is the same as Candidate X. In this case, the percentage match between the user and Candidate X is 50%.
You first select the issues that are important to you, and you are then presented with questions related to those issues. You will only be matched with candidates on those issues. In addition, if there are any specific questions that you are not interested in, you can simply select 'no opinion' and they will be excluded from calculation.
We endeavoured to contact all declared candidates. Some candidates have declined to share their policy views with us and are not featured on the website. If you would like to see more candidates from your area on the website, please urge them to contact us and complete the survey.
If you are a candidate and were not contacted by us, please let us know.
whichcandidate.co.uk is not associated with any political party or election candidate. All of the information on the website is overseen by researchers at the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University. It is supported by funding from Swansea University’s Research Grant Enabler (SURGE) scheme.
Any queries or feedback on whichcandidate.co.uk can be sent to Dr Matthew Wall, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the Department of Political and Cultural Studies, Swansea University m.t.wall@swansea.ac.uk
WhichCandidate is a Voter Advice Application (VAA) website, based in the Department of Politics and Public Administration in the University of Limerick. For the UK general election on June 8th, we are partnering with a team in Swansea University’s Department of Political and Cultural Studies led by Dr Matthew Wall (Senior Lecturer in Politics) and Mr James Andrews (PhD student in Politics). A group of undergraduate students at Swansea University also contributed to the project as part of their ‘Researching Politics’ module.
Several Swansea University students are working on this project as part of the University's 'Week of Work' scheme. They are: Mikołaj Dubiel, Jessica Hayden, Umar Abdullahi Galle, Carmen Cara Lorente, and Becky Elms.
The project’s goal is to provide detailed, accurate and politically neutral information the Welsh electorate about the policy positions of candidates in their constituencies. We work hard to maintain strict political neutrality in setting questions, gathering data and representing matches. If you would like to see some of the research underlying VAA technologies, their development and their effects on users, please click here .
The WhichCandidate project for the UK general election is funded through Swansea University’s Research Grant Enabler (SURGE).
UK Project Leader m.t.wall@swansea.ac.uk
A Senior Lecturer in Politics at Swansea University. Matt has previously specialised in Voting Advice Application research while at the Free University, Amsterdam.
Director rory.costello@ul.ie
Rory is a lecturer in politics at the University of Limerick. He previously worked on a number of other ‘voting advice’ tools, such as the EUVOX project for the 2014 European Parliament elections.
UK Project Team jr.andrews90@gmail.com
James is a PhD student at Swansea University. His research specialises in the development of Voting Advice Applications and their integration into broader voter engagement and education projects.
Software Development john@whichcandidate.co.uk
John is an engineer and software developer. If something is broken it's probably his fault.
It is extremely important to us that the questions we ask candidates and voters are balanced and impartial, and that they cover the most important issues. Our Board consists of a distinguished panel of political experts.
We welcome your commments, questions and feedback!