Methodology · Issue 04

How this works.

Trust in an election compass comes from being inspectable, not from claiming it’s neutral. Here’s the whole pipeline.

Positions are AI-read from each party's 2026 manifesto, with a verbatim quote and page reference for every position.
01

Where the questions come from

Questions are drawn from each party’s published 2026 manifesto, scoped to topics where parties actually disagree. The wording is LLM-assisted, with the goal of plain language, neutral framing, and no double negatives. The full question pool is browsable in the compass.

02

Where the party positions come from

Every position is read directly from the party’s published 2026 manifesto:

AI-read from the manifesto

Each position is extracted from the party’s 2026 manifesto by an LLM and rated on a 5-point scale. When the manifesto doesn’t address a question directly, the position is marked as inferred from the party’s broader public platform.

Verbatim quote + page reference

Every entry carries a verbatim Swedish quote from the manifesto and a section reference, so the source can be checked directly on the site.

Three confidence levels

Each position is tagged high / medium / low confidence based on how directly the manifesto addresses the question. Low-confidence positions are downweighted in matching.

A compass that asks for your trust should be able to show why it deserves it. Every step of the math, every quoted line of every manifesto.
Editorial principle
03

How matches are calculated

For each party, the match is the weighted similarity between your answers and the party’s positions. The weight wᵢ on each question is the product of three signals:

wᵢ = salienceᵢ · discriminationᵢ · confidenceᵢ
match(party) = Σᵢ wᵢ · (1 − |userᵢ − partyᵢ| / 4) / Σᵢ wᵢ
fig. M-01 — the match equation, weighted similarity between answer and party position
Your salience
1× by default, 2× when you mark a question as important to you.
Question informativeness
σ of the parties’ positions on the question, divided by the mean σ across the question pool. Questions where every party agrees count for almost nothing; questions that actually separate the parties count for more. Floored at 0.25×.
Manifesto clarity
High 1.0 / medium 0.7 / low 0.4 — parties with vague manifestos can’t ride high on confident matches.

The confidence band shrinks the more you answer (roughly 1/√n) and widens for parties whose positions were harder to read clearly.

04

How the dashboard aggregates polls

A daily run pulls numbers from publicly available pollsters (Novus, Demoskop, Verian/Sifo, Ipsos, SKOP, Sentio) via attribution-respecting sources. The 30-day average is sample-weighted (√n). Pollster house effects are shown rather than averaged away. Every number links back to its source poll.

05

Sources

Election results
Valmyndigheten (val.se). Open data, historical results down to precinct level.
Demographics
SCB pxweb API. Statistics Sweden’s official data API.
Riksdag votes
Riksdagens öppna data (data.riksdagen.se).
Polls
Aggregated daily from Wikipedia’s continuously updated polling page (CC BY-SA), with attribution.
Manifesto coding
Manifesto Project (MARPOR) and Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) used as cross-references.
06

Photo credits

Leader portraits come from Wikimedia Commons. Each image is shown under the license listed; click a name to open the original file.

Photo credits Photographer License
Amanda Lind Vogler CC BY-SA 4.0
Carl Bildt Joakim Berndes CC BY-SA 4.0
Daniel Helldén Pawel Flato CC0
Daniel Sonesson Fredrik Grufman CC BY-SA 4.0
Ebba Busch Stina Virkamäki, valtioneuvoston kanslia CC BY 2.0
Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist DonLovis CC0
Fredrik Reinfeldt Joakim Berndes CC BY-SA 2.0
Gustav Kasselstrand Frankie Fouganthin CC BY-SA 4.0
Göran Persson Frankie Fouganthin CC BY 4.0
Ingvar Carlsson Frankie Fouganthin CC BY-SA 3.0
Jimmie Åkesson Tommy Winterskiöld Vestlie CC BY 2.0
Magdalena Andersson Fanni Uusitalo / Prime Minister’s Office Finland CC BY 2.0
Nooshi Dadgostar Jessica Segerberg CC0
Simona Mohamsson Lowe Lilliehorn CC BY 4.0
Stefan Löfven Robvissers1966 CC BY-SA 4.0
Ulf Kristersson Lowe Lilliehorn CC BY 4.0
07
Responsibility

What this is — and what it isn’t

This is an independent civic project, not an official source. Please read this before you act on anything you see here.

How positions are read
Every party’s positions are AI-interpreted from its published 2026 manifesto, with a verbatim Swedish quote and a page reference. The quote is the authoritative source — the summary may contain interpretation errors. When it matters for your vote, read the quote.
Provided as is
Everything on this site is provided as is, without warranty of accuracy, completeness, or currentness. You use the compass at your own discretion. We accept no liability for decisions made on the basis of what is shown here.
Not affiliated with
polara is not affiliated with any political party, the Riksdag, Valmyndigheten, or any government body. This is an independent civic project, not connected to any party’s campaign organisation.

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Edition 01 · Riksdag 2026
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About Polara

Polara is a personal side project by Jonas Svensson — an attempt to see whether you can build a Swedish voting compass without party colour, agenda, or political funding.

The site draws on what the parties say themselves: election manifestos, party programmes, and websites. Every position links back to its source, and uncertainty is shown rather than hidden.

Open method. No accounts. No tracking. Here to help you think, not to push.

© 2026 · An independent civic project Set in Newsreader & Inter