How the comparison works
The guide compares your stated priorities with documented positions. It is a reading aid, not a prediction and not an instruction.
Questions
Questions use concrete municipal trade-offs and name the responsible sphere of government. A shared policy core keeps comparisons meaningful within the same ballot. Service-experience questions help describe local concerns but do not affect party alignment scores.
Evidence and scoring
Editors encode a position only when a reviewed source supports it. Similarity is calculated question by question using a fixed five-point scale and the importance weights you choose. We report agreement separately from evidence coverage. Unknown positions are neither agreement nor disagreement.
A ranked percentage requires at least five comparable answers and 70% weighted evidence coverage. Below either threshold, the guide says “insufficient evidence” and shows the information that is available.
Coverage rules
The initial pilot is the City of Johannesburg. Election-specific boundaries, ballot eligibility, manifestos and candidate information must pass source and editorial review before publication. Failed validation or incomplete official data remains unpublished and appears as a coverage gap.
Promises and governing records
Promises, verified candidate answers and governing records remain separate. A party position is not presented as a candidate’s personal answer. Audit or service-delivery information is tied to its period and jurisdiction and is not automatically attributed to an individual councillor.
Corrections
Public claims are versioned and retain their citations. Corrections preserve history; withdrawn or invalidated evidence can remove a comparison from public results. A formal corrections contact will be published before reviewed election content goes live.