Methodology

The grading framework

Each grader represents a documented value system — a religious tradition, a historical figure, an organization, or a demographic interest with documented preferences. We score each candidate from 0 to 10 on how well their whole platform, as a package, aligns with that grader's documented values.

A 10 means nearly complete alignment with the grader's stated values; a 0 means total opposition. Most grades land between 2 and 8 because real candidates have genuine internal contradictions and partial alignments.

Sources

Each candidate's positions are pieced together from their public record — official campaign materials, questionnaire responses, debate transcripts, prior actions in office, and media coverage. Where a candidate has declined to engage with a particular source (a questionnaire, a debate), we note it and rely on the remaining record.

Each reasoning cell is capped at five sentences and footnoted to a numbered sources list for the race. For graders that don't formally endorse — think tanks, historical figures, religious traditions — the score is an inference from documented values and historical record, not a literal endorsement.

Limitations

Reading historical figures' values into present-day American politics is unavoidably interpretive. The Hebrew Prophets cannot literally weigh in on Medicare buy-in; Lincoln cannot rate modern tariff policy. What this site does is apply each grader's documented framework — what they said, wrote, prioritized, and built — to the decisions the office in question will require.

The aggregate score across all graders hides more than it reveals. The same candidate scores high with one cluster and low with another. The interesting reading is the cluster-by-cluster pattern, not the average.

This site is the work of an individual researcher, not an institutional newsroom. Errors are mine. Have a correction, a race, or a grader you think should be added? See the About page.