We believe you deserve to know exactly how we reach our conclusions. This page explains every step — where the data comes from, how candidate positions are assessed, how your quiz answers are scored, and the known limitations of our approach.
TrueView does not editorialize, invent, or infer positions. Every candidate stance is grounded in official public records. Our primary sources are governmental and nonpartisan — the same records available to any citizen. Here is exactly where we look:
The official database of the U.S. Congress. We use Congress.gov to review every bill a legislator has sponsored, co-sponsored, or voted on. A candidate's voting record is the most direct evidence of their actual policy positions — not their campaign promises. We look at vote patterns across issue categories, bill sponsorships, and amendments supported or opposed.
→ congress.govFor presidential and major candidates, we review official campaign websites and published policy platforms. We capture stated positions only — not speculation about future behavior. Campaign platforms are considered secondary to voting records where both are available.
Statements made on the House or Senate floor and official press releases from a legislator's office are considered authoritative. These are archived in the Congressional Record (via Congress.gov) and on official .gov websites.
→ Congressional RecordWe cross-reference our Congress.gov data with GovTrack.us and VoteSmart.org for voting record verification and issue categorization. These are established nonpartisan tools used by researchers and journalists.
→ govtrack.us · → votesmart.orgEvery vote, sponsorship, and stated position is mapped to one of 10 core issue categories. These categories were chosen to reflect the issues most commonly cited by American voters as important to their civic decisions. No category is weighted above another by default — that weighting is determined entirely by you in the quiz.
Each candidate receives a position score of –2 to +2 per category, derived from the weight of their legislative and public record. A score of +2 means strong, consistent support for a direction. A score of –2 means strong, consistent opposition. A score of 0 means limited record or mixed/moderate positions on that issue.
Once raw data is collected, we run it through a consistent assessment pipeline. The goal is to arrive at a clear, defensible position score for each candidate on each issue category — without introducing bias.
We pull all available votes from Congress.gov for each legislator and tag each vote to an issue category. Votes are weighted: a direct floor vote counts more than a procedural vote. Pattern consistency across multiple votes strengthens the position signal.
Bills a candidate introduces or formally co-sponsors are strong indicators of priority. We distinguish between sponsoring legislation (high signal) and co-sponsoring (moderate signal), and we review the actual text of major bills for issue alignment.
For positions not covered by votes (e.g. for non-legislators, or on issues with no direct votes), we use official stated positions from .gov sites and official campaign platforms. Unverified quotes or media paraphrasing are not used as primary sources.
More recent positions carry more weight than older ones. A vote from the past 2 years is weighted higher than one from 10 years ago. If a candidate has publicly reversed a position, we note both the original and current stance.
After the above steps, each candidate receives a position score per issue category on a –2 to +2 scale. Scores are reviewed for internal consistency before publication.
When you complete the TrueView quiz, your answers and priority rankings are combined with each candidate's position scores to produce a personalized alignment percentage. Here is the exact logic:
Each quiz question maps to an issue category. Your answer — Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree — is converted to a numerical value from +2 to –2. Questions are framed as policy positions, not leading statements.
After the quiz, you drag and rank which issues matter most to you. Your top-ranked issue receives the highest multiplier, your lowest-ranked receives the least. This means two people with identical answers can get different results based on what they care about — by design.
Each candidate's score on that issue (derived in Step 03 above) is multiplied against your answer. When your position and the candidate's position align, the product is positive. When they diverge, it reduces the overall score.
The raw sum is normalized against the theoretical maximum score (perfect alignment on all issues at maximum priority weight) to produce a 0–100% match figure. A score of 100% would mean you agree with the candidate on every issue you weighted as most important.
Transparency means acknowledging what we don't know and what our system cannot capture. No matching tool is perfect. Here are the genuine limitations of TrueView:
Records vary by role. Presidents and presidential candidates who have never served in Congress have no legislative voting record. For these candidates, we rely more heavily on official campaign platforms and executive orders, which are weaker signals than voting records.
Nuance is hard to score. A candidate may have a complex, nuanced position on an issue that doesn't reduce cleanly to a –2 to +2 scale. We do our best to represent the overall direction, but you should always review their full profile and source links.
Positions change. Politicians evolve. We update profiles when we identify a documented position change, but our data may lag behind the most recent developments. Always verify with primary sources before voting.
Quiz questions simplify complex issues. Reducing healthcare, immigration, or climate into a handful of questions inevitably involves simplification. The quiz is a starting point — not a substitute for reading candidate platforms in full.
We are a small team. We do our best to be accurate and current, but errors are possible. If you believe a candidate position is misrepresented, please contact us at hello@trueview.us with a source link.
Now that you know exactly how TrueView works, take the quiz with full confidence in what you're seeing — and what it means.