This Shit Matters

How this works

The rules below are not aspirations. They are built into the code, which is public.

What this site never does

Every candidate, the same page

Same sections, same order, same space, listed in ballot-paper order (alphabetical by surname). Where a candidate has published nothing on a topic, the slot says "No published position found", for every candidate alike. A party's colour appears only on that party's own panel, never anywhere else.

Two kinds of statement

Computed: a tax and benefit figure for a household in your bands, calculated with PolicyEngine UK, an open-source model, from a party's published pledges. You can see the inputs, the model version and the date.

Documented: a pledge that applies to a household like yours, shown as the passage from the party's or candidate's own published material, with a link. We do not estimate how much it would affect you; we show you what was said and let you weigh it.

Candidate's own statement, and party position

Each candidate's page carries two layers, labelled. Candidate's own statement: what this person has published about this election. Party position: what the party they stand for has published, because in a parliamentary election the consequences of a win flow largely through the party's programme. For party positions we use the party's current published policy where it exists, dated; where nothing newer exists we use the most recent general-election manifesto and say so; and for a governing party, enacted policy is added as a separate dated source. Independents have no party layer.

Anything that would be a guess is left out. For documented claims, a pledge is shown to a household only when a fact about that household plainly matches it (for example, a pledge on rent controls is shown to renters); we never estimate how large the effect would be.

How the calculated figures are produced

Households are described in bands, so every possible household is one of a fixed set of cells. For each cell we compute a representative household once, offline, with PolicyEngine UK, and store the result. The same postcode and bands always give the same figures, and the entire table is part of the published snapshot. The assumptions (band midpoints, representative ages and rents, which benefits are claimed) are listed under every calculation and in the script that produces it.

Why these nine topics

The topics are not chosen by us. A topic earns a slot if it is in the top ten of the Ipsos Issues Index, the longest-running unprompted survey of what the public says matters most, or if it is the main subject of at least one candidate's published statement on the ballot. That rule produced: money and cost of living; housing; healthcare and social care; education; environment and energy; immigration and borders; crime, policing and justice; defence, foreign affairs and the EU. A ninth, equality and rights, is added on a different footing: the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010 (age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, race, religion, and others) give it standing independent of any party, and parties publish positions on it. Immigration has been the public's most-mentioned concern throughout 2026; leaving it out would have quietly favoured some candidates over others.

Some topics, such as money and housing, can be related to a household. Others, such as immigration or defence, mostly cannot, and we do not pretend otherwise: those rows show what candidates and parties have published, with sources, and nothing more.

The household questions

Eight questions are asked of every household, in bands. A few more are optional: whether anyone is disabled or has a long-term condition, is an unpaid carer, is on a visa or seeking asylum, receives a means-tested benefit, drives, or has served in the armed forces. They exist only because published positions refer to them. Leave any blank and nothing is assumed either way: a position that depends on it is listed as applying to other households, never hidden and never presumed. We never ask about sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or ethnicity: positions on equality are shown to everyone rather than targeted.

Going deeper

Every topic page ends with a short list of independent sources: official statistics, parliamentary research, fact-checkers and non-partisan research institutes. None is affiliated with a party. Where a source campaigns for a position, its label says so.

Sources, not referees

We do not vet politicians' claims or decide who is right. We publish what they and their parties have put in writing, quoted exactly, with the source, its date and a link, and we show the same slots for everyone. Summaries are drafted with AI assistance and are checked against their quotation by the people who run this site; if one misstates its source, it is withdrawn and the withdrawal is logged.

The ledger

Every claim lives in an append-only ledger: nothing can be edited or deleted, only superseded by a new entry that says who changed it and why. Before each polling day a dated, hashed copy of the whole ledger is published, so anyone can check later exactly what was shown. The ledger is public.

Data sources

Who runs this

This Shit Matters is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit project. The name is a statement about voting, not about any party. It takes no advertising and sells no data. [Names, entity and contact address to be confirmed before public launch.]

Complaints and corrections

If you believe a claim is wrong, unfair or misattributed, tell us. Every complaint is logged publicly with its outcome, whether or not we change anything. [Complaints address to be confirmed.]

Code

Open source under AGPL-3.0: github.com/highlyvisual/voter-app. Anyone can run the same ballot and household and get the same result.