Introduction to Issue Position Research
Reason for Issue Position Research
The Issue Position process starts with the Political Courage Test - a questionnaire that Vote Smart sends to candidates asking them to give their issue positions on about a dozen major political questions. When a candidate fills out the test, their answers populate three different Vote Smart tools:
1. The candidate's "Positions" page on the website: https://votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/22421
3. Vote Easy - Our candidate matching tool: https://voteeasy.votesmart.org/
However, only ~25% of Congressional candidates take the PCT (based off of recent years). Voters are still interested in where their candidates stand on the issues, so we go ahead and research how candidates would answer these questions. When candidates fail to take the PCT, these researched determinations act as a substitute on the three tools mentioned above. This research is our answer to candidates failing to provide citizens with their stances on the key issues. We use their public record to divine where they stand on the issue. Therefore, it is especially important that the research is comprehensive and evidence based.
End Goal of Issue Position Research:
To construct strong and defensible determinations of politicians' positions on the questions posed by the Political Courage test.
How It's Done:
Issue position researchers carefully comb through congressional candidates' public records, collecting evidence that relates to Political Courage Test Questions. Once the evidence is collected, it is used to make informed determinations on how the candidates would answer the PCT questions. We back up our researched determinations by clearly documenting and listing the evidence used to come to those conclusions.
When a candidate fails to take the Political Courage Test, issue position determinations act as a substitute for candidate given answers in the three resources listed above.
IP Research Timeline:
- As soon as a National PCT is approved for a year, Issue Position research can be started on incumbents. Incumbents generally can be expected to run for re-election, making early incumbent IP research a good way to get ahead of the game.
- As soon as candidates are added to an election, Issue Position research can be started on the entire candidate list. This requires communication with the Elections Monitoring sub-department, because Elections Monitoring add candidates lists into admin.
- Issue Position research should be completed, reviewed, and imported into the database for all congressional candidates before the PCT deadline/release. That way, when PCT answers are released, the Issue Position data will also be available.
