Your Clumps

Close to a decade ago I started sharing my ‘clumps’ method of sorting upper house preferences. Friends on Facebook found it useful but, since then everyone has become so much more political than they were. So, this time all I will do is a ‘how to do a how to’. These are the basic steps I take to get my clumps together.

1. The Australian or state electoral commissions list currently registered political parties and with those names you can do some research of your own of party websites. Checking these primary sources can inform you of what they stand for.

2. You will also want to check independent secondary sources. Wikipedia is usually pretty good at providing information on parties - often they will have a whole page dedicated to one political party. If there is a side-bar of quick facts then look for links on ‘ideology’. This provides a useful way of clumping parties and tends to be more accurate than party names.*

3. You might also want to consider criteria other than ideology for sorting preferences. Some considerations include how a party serves your demographic interests, how dogmatic or pragmatic it is, and the conduct of its candidates.

4. However there are other motives in yourself of which to be wary. A party might fall further below your expectations of it compared with another party but still be better than that other party. A leader might project a persona that grates with you more than a rival leader but still be better at the job. An advertising campaign may look dumb to you but obscure a worthwhile policy platform. Ask yourself whether these are the best ways to make judgements.

5. Another way to do this is to identify your most trusted political party and then simply follow the preferences they recommend (noting however that they also factor tactics into these). And if you do that you might want to take the next step of volunteering for that party. Even seemingly slick campaigns tend to be short-staffed and very much in need of helpers.

* Supplementary to Step 2

Many will know how to compare different ideological stances. However, if you want to get a better sense of how much you agree with them, try this online test I found. All such tests are flawed but I think this one works better than most and can even be fun. The percentages it gives you could form the basis of a ranking of political parties (with parameters like “75% or above is good while 50% or below is bad”).

In the following lists I try to align most of the terms found in the Vetriutan Test with similar or overlapping terms found in the Wikipedia side-bars of parties.

Paleoconservative - Social Conservative, Agrarian, Nationalist, Conservative

Neoconservative - Fiscal Conservative, Nationalist,
Liberal Conservative

Market Liberal - Classical Liberal, Economic Liberal, Libertarian

Social Liberal - Civil Libertarian, Secular Liberal, Progressive

Social Democrat - Progressive, Green Politics, Protectionist

Christian Democrat - Protectionist, Centrist, Regionalist,
Social Conservative

Note that a person of any theological position can still get the ‘Christian Democrat’ result. It is a nominally religious form of moderate conservatism popular in continental Europe and Latin America. Angela Merkel was a far better example of that politics than our own Fred Nile (whose old party of the same tag better fit what is here called ‘Paleoconservative’).

Some of you might have also taken the ABC Vote Compass (for Federal elections). In this hastily drawn sketch I try to superimpose the Vetriutan Test terms over it.