Absolutely no harm to you OP, and the people behind this website/project are probably entirely well-intentioned, but anonymous people purporting to help save our democracy are not something anyone can really just trust right now, given the givens [link goes to “dark gothic maga” video about the fascist techbros fucking with us].
If you or anyone scrolling are curious about this too, I checked their About page.
It contains a lot of We/Our talk and repeated claims of unbiased logic. So is this a corporate or culty We? You’d assume We’s the programming team. So who are the programmers? Or are we included like, We the Canadian people made this resource together… through our polls (go us)? No answer for any of these off the bat, and the contact us page is worse (press@smartvoting.ca).
So how does Our prediction model work? Any controls?
Our model starts with publicly available polling data and riding-level projections from 338Canada, a widely respected election forecasting resource. However, rather than simply relying on these raw numbers, we apply a proprietary weighting system to fairly balance the available data based on our (yet to be publicly disclosed) methodology. This allows us to correct for potential polling inaccuracies and take into account factors such as regional trends, voter turnout patterns, and the impact of local candidates.
Once we have a weighted dataset, we apply advanced political modeling to assess the most effective choice in each riding. This process includes logic-based decision-making algorithms that simulate different electoral scenarios and their potential outcomes. Every decision we make is based purely on statistical likelihoods and electoral impact, not on personal opinions, party loyalty, or candidate preferences. There is no bias in our decision-making—only data.
[… ]
Strategic voting can sometimes be frustrating, especially when emotions and long-standing political loyalties are involved. However, as we have stated in our mission, we do not do this because we want to—we do this because we have to.
First, condescending much? Secondly, I still don’t know who We is. Where can I read Our mission? Am I Us or nah? Any staffers involved? Is this a labour of love from a concerned citizen? And if so, where can I send my supportive butter tarts?
But We named something called Polaris Media & Entertainment as Founder of the project. It wasn’t linked on the voting site, so I searched and found 3 people identified with it. Between them, looks like they have 2 podcasts/youtube shows they’ve been running for 6 months: Loonie Legislature, and The Tuesday Effect.
Since I’m unconvinced that constant polling and directing people to predictions websites increase anything beyond visits to polling and predictions websites (and voter apathy), I figured I’d take one for the team to get a sense for these folk and found a video with all of them together. It’s 2 hours long. Viewing notes to follow.
Absolutely no harm to you OP, and the people behind this website/project are probably entirely well-intentioned, but anonymous people purporting to help save our democracy are not something anyone can really just trust right now, given the givens [link goes to “dark gothic maga” video about the fascist techbros fucking with us].
If you or anyone scrolling are curious about this too, I checked their About page.
It contains a lot of We/Our talk and repeated claims of unbiased logic. So is this a corporate or culty We? You’d assume We’s the programming team. So who are the programmers? Or are we included like, We the Canadian people made this resource together… through our polls (go us)? No answer for any of these off the bat, and the contact us page is worse (press@smartvoting.ca).
So how does Our prediction model work? Any controls?
First, condescending much? Secondly, I still don’t know who We is. Where can I read Our mission? Am I Us or nah? Any staffers involved? Is this a labour of love from a concerned citizen? And if so, where can I send my supportive butter tarts?
But We named something called Polaris Media & Entertainment as Founder of the project. It wasn’t linked on the voting site, so I searched and found 3 people identified with it. Between them, looks like they have 2 podcasts/youtube shows they’ve been running for 6 months: Loonie Legislature, and The Tuesday Effect.
Since I’m unconvinced that constant polling and directing people to predictions websites increase anything beyond visits to polling and predictions websites (and voter apathy), I figured I’d take one for the team to get a sense for these folk and found a video with all of them together. It’s 2 hours long. Viewing notes to follow.
tl;dr - new election, who dis