How the compass works

The questions

16 statements cover eight topics: housing growth, housing delivery, shops and neighbourhoods, streets, public safety, drug policy, taxes and renter services. Only housing growth and delivery move the chart. These are policy choices, not verbatim ballot questions.

Your answers

Strongly disagree = −2, disagree = −1, neither = 0, agree = +1 and strongly agree = +2. Undecided, prefer not to answer and skips are excluded. Missing evidence never means neutrality. Old questionnaire responses are not reused for changed wording.

Evidence and inference

Published positions are editorial mappings from linked sources, not questionnaire replies. Direct candidate and party replies are published separately in the questionnaire results. Optional editorial estimates explain the additional inference and uncertainty. Estimates are off by default. Candidate statements remain candidate evidence and do not automatically become party answers. Historical or withdrawn-candidate proposals require confirmation of current party adoption. Every row shows its source, date and reasoning; no human review is claimed unless explicitly recorded.

COPE candidate reply average

From October 4, COPE is shown using the personal Council candidate replies of Devyani Singh and Solomon Yi-Kieran. This is an average of two candidates, not an official party response or a claim about every COPE candidate. Both must give a numeric answer for that question to count; missing, declined or undecided answers leave a gap and are not replaced by platform estimates. Each candidate receives equal weight.

Each question shows one of the five answer choices. When the two candidates differ only in strength (for example, one agrees and one strongly agrees), we show the less strong choice. The housing chart first converts each person’s answer to support (+1), neutral (0) or opposition (−1), then averages their directions for each statement before combining the three questions on each axis. Agreement percentages average the reader’s directional agreement with each candidate separately. Opposing answers can cancel to zero on the chart without creating a claim that either person selected neutral. Both exact choices and full comments are available. A future official party reply will take precedence.

Your housing point

Each housing axis averages its three answers, accounting for question direction, and multiplies by 50. All three substantive answers are required on each axis. The vertical axis measures support for municipal and non-market housing measures; disagreement does not establish a preference for private markets. A centre point can reflect mixed answers. Each axis has statements pointing both ways, two one way and one the other, so agreeing with everything moves you only a third of the way toward either edge rather than all the way. The questionnaire is not a validated political-science scale, and the chart is not overall left/right ideology.

Broad directions

The default overview groups parties by broad housing-policy direction using linked published proposals. These are provisional editorial interpretations, not direct replies or numerical coordinates. Parties within a region are alphabetical, not ranked by strength. Candidate attribution and withdrawn-candidate qualifications remain visible. We require evidence for both directions before placing a party; gaps never imply neutrality or opposition. The horizontal labels More restrictive and More permissive refer to housing permissions. NIMBY-ish and YIMBY-ish are playful shorthand beneath them, not party identities or an overall political left–right scale. The broad vertical axis describes greater emphasis on public, co-op and non-profit delivery versus private-market delivery. Both approaches can involve public support and partnerships. Your horizontal direction uses the signs of your three housing-growth answers; your vertical direction comes from a separate delivery-preference choice, saved in this tab. A balanced preference appears on the axis. Disagreement with public-housing measures is never converted into a private-market preference. The question-evidence chart retains its original support axis and six-question calculation. Sharing a region does not establish a match percentage. Broad placements never change questionnaire evidence or agreement scores. Switch to Where you stand for exact-question ranges.

Party dots and agreement

Party comparisons collapse both sides to support, neutral or oppose because published evidence rarely establishes intensity. The comparison chart uses those directions on all three questions per axis and may differ from your full five-point result. With incomplete party evidence, a dashed range shows every coordinate possible if missing answers could be oppose, neutral or support. For each axis we sum the known directions, add or subtract the number of missing answers, divide by three and multiply by 100. These are bounds, not confidence intervals. No midpoint is drawn. A precise party dot requires all six sourced answers; a party with no usable axis evidence receives no mark. Your point requires all six substantive answers. Party ranges can be explored before you answer. Being inside a range does not establish agreement. Same-direction answers score 100%, neutral versus support or opposition scores 50%, and opposite directions score 0%.

We average shared answers within each topic, then give covered topics equal weight. A headline percentage requires six shared questions across at least four topics. Below that, use the individual answers and coverage counts. A topic percentage requires two shared answers. Changing the estimate toggle recomputes comparisons. Different parties can have different coverage; these percentages are not a ranking or a probability of voting for a party.

Privacy

Answers stay in this tab's session storage. Clear & start again removes the active answers. You can opt in while taking the questionnaire. If you do, numeric answers are added to anonymous question totals automatically after you finish all 16 questions. The choice is off by default. Skips and undecided answers are excluded. The site stores counts by question, not your full response or email. Totals are published after 30 contributions, with at least 20 numeric answers required for each question breakdown, and describe self-selected site visitors. Newsletter signup is separate, and answers are never sent to the newsletter service or analytics. An optional browser assistant can read your answers when you use it. Browser restoration may restore tab data.

Corrections

Send the question, source and proposed correction to hello@sidestreetvancouver.ca. We preserve source qualifications and distinguish missing answers from explicit refusals. Candidate questionnaires were sent in September 2026; read the direct replies received and the dated correction notes.