Emotion Or Policy - I Will Vote Greens (Party) And Paul Eagle, Labour (Electorate)

As I write this I see no reason not to change my vote from what I thought I was going to do a year ago -  Greens (Party) And Paul Eagle, Labour (Electorate).

I'll be honest, before Jacinda Ardern became leader I was umming and ahhhing about Labour but am now comfortable with my decision.

Oh, and any non-Kiwi's who are wondering why I get to vote twice, we have MMP here - it's MUCH fairer than FPP, check it out (video).

BUT, is this just an emotional / feeling-based decision on my part?
Yes, of course it is ... but hey, let's go find out using The SpinOff's most excellent "Policy" sub-site:

http://policy.thespinoff.co.nz/

As they they explain, all the main parties available policies have been chopped up, summarised and placed together so you can compare and contrast each in 10 areas - economy, education, environment, health, housing, incomes, justice, migration, te ao Māori, and transport. Each section is split into subsections (that's the floating left/right arrow you'll see ... took me a few minutes to figure that out).

And not only can you compare and contrast but also chose to tap/click on each and add as a favourite / agree list and then go see who falls out at the end for you.

I did this (it takes a bit of time and be aware that some parties have the same policies, I decided to tick ALL I liked as it was the policy and not the party I was choosing*). I'm also gonna go through it again to double check because it does take quite some time and I'm sure I've missed some, ticked others I shouldn't have and don't understand a lot (I rarely clicked to read the detail).

Anyway, this is me for now:

Any surprised for me, not really - bit of a relief actually as I didn't look at the party names at all as I was choosing (although some are bloody obvious which party it comes from!?!). I think I'm a bit surprised just how Green I am and how low Labour is. Perhaps the Labour vote was tainted by them not having a lot of SMART policies, so I couldn't actually see what they were going to do - when I re-visit it and read the details perhaps that will change ... perhaps.

Also, good to keep an eye on the site anyway as new policies are released often and The SpinOff team say, "You can expect a delay of no more than a day between new policy announcements and their publication on Policy."

It was heartening to see that I ticked policies from every party, many policies were shared across parties and that the mad (according to me) policies all belonged to two parties and I don't have to worry about those.

What this exercise doesn't allow for is a weighting - some policies were, "I agree but, meh" whilst a handful were, "DO THIS! I don't care if you don't do the rest, do this!".

I highly recommend you taking a little time (do it on a Friday afternoon at work when you're over it all) - http://policy.thespinoff.co.nz/ - of course I'm not saying you have to share anything :)

* I think a secondary way would have been to remove the party names (and underlying descriptions) and jumble them all up - that would've been fascinating. Oh, oh ... **

** a third way could have had the anonymised / jumbled up policies and you have to drag them into a party bucket - see if you can find the party by the policy.  Ooooh ... ***

*** perhaps a "here's all the policies you liked, rank them in order of importance and/or give weighting" and then some fancy working out of who to vote for ... could do that on a Sheet actually as they list all the policies you ticked. Mind you ... ****

**** it's probably all emotional anyway.

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