RICHMOND, Va. — Where do you think you stand on the issues compared to Senate candidates Tim Kaine and Corey Stewart? A new quiz was released this week by a non-partisan organization to help you see your candidate compatibility.
With one click of the mouse, you might learn something you didn’t know about the Democratic incumbent and Republican vying for the seat.
“They’re two diametrically opposed candidates but sometimes people don’t understand how they match up on specific issues,” Rich Borean from the Virginia Public Access Project said.
The Virginia Public Access Project or VPAP.org has been working since 1997 to break down complex government issues so they’re not so complicated for Virginians.
“Our real main goal is to provide government data and information to the citizens in easily understood ways,” Borean added.
One way of doing that is this compatibility quiz.
“We’ve created #MyVaCandidate as a way to help educate voters about the stances that they hold and compare them to the stances that the candidates hold,” he said.
This is the second year VPAP has put together a quiz like this. Last year, it was for the governor’s race.
“So far 2,000 people have taken it. Last year we had 60,000 people so it’s really popular and it’s really fun,” Borean said.
All you have to do is go through and answer 16 questions on six ranging topics, including energy/climate change, social issues, immigration, healthcare, as well as taxes, trades and tariffs.
Each answer corresponds with a different candidate. VPAP collected the different answers from the candidates by going through debate transcripts and looking through campaign websites. The candidates included in this quiz received at least 15 percent of the vote in pre-election polls, which is the same standard used on presidential debates.
Borean says sometimes Kaine and Stewart have the same viewpoint on certain issues.
Overall, Borean says the quiz is a simple and fun way for people to open their eyes to what views align with the people running for office.
“Something that we’ll see pretty often is that someone will say ‘Wow I didn’t agree with such and such candidate on these issues as much as I did.’ People tend to get their news from a variety of different sources and it’s pretty consistent, but this offers them a unique way of expanding their understanding of how a candidate feels and how it may or may not match up with them,” he said.
Take the #MyVaCandidate Quiz here.
Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 6. A reminder, you have to be registered to vote in Virginia by Oct. 15 to cast your ballot. Click here for how you can make sure you’re registered.
