PoliticianViews
Political Candidate and Stance Data
What is PoliticianViews?
PoliticianViews is an independent reference site for political candidates and officeholders in the current U.S. election dataset. It organizes available policy-position data into concise profiles so voters can compare candidates and then review the supporting detail that is available.
How It Works
PoliticianViews uses an AI-assisted, multi-source pipeline to estimate policy stances. Newer stance records are preferred when available, with legacy records used to fill topic gaps:
1. Public statements: Available public online statements and social-media text may be analyzed for policy signals.
2. Voting records: Congressional roll-call data may contribute to profiles for members of Congress when a vote can be mapped to a supported topic.
3. Time-aware scoring: Where dated evidence exists, newer evidence can be weighted more heavily while older evidence remains part of the record.
4. Stance presentation: Numerical scores are displayed as FOR, MIXED, AGAINST, or UNKNOWN. UNKNOWN means the site does not have a usable directional signal.
Topics Covered
The current topic directory covers: 2nd Amendment, Abortion, American Intervention, Environmental Regulation, ICE, Immigration, Iran War, Israel, Trump, Universal Healthcare, and Voter ID.
Data Sources
- Official congressional voting records (U.S. House and Senate roll call votes)
- Public online statements and social-media text where collected
- Public candidate, race, and election-result data
- Google Civic Information API for address-to-district lookups
Evidence and Limitations
Stance summaries and scores are machine-assisted estimates, not statements by a candidate or a substitute for an official voting record. Source coverage varies: some records include direct links or quotations, while older records may have incomplete provenance. Candidate status, images, automated topic mappings, and summaries can also be wrong or become outdated. PoliticianViews does not treat an “active” profile as an official determination of ballot qualification. Verify consequential information with election authorities, official roll-call records, and the candidate’s own materials.
Key Features
- Search by address to find tracked races and active candidates for the returned district
- Search by politician name with fuzzy matching
- Detailed politician profiles with per-topic stance breakdowns
- Topic-based browsing to compare politicians on a single issue
- Race-level views showing all candidates for a given district
- Comparative presentation that does not endorse candidates
Technology
PoliticianViews is built as a web and mobile application using React Native and Expo. The backend uses Supabase for data storage and queries. The repository also contains ingestion tools for election data, public content, voting records, and AI-assisted stance analysis.
URL Structure
- / - Home page with search
- /profile/[politician-slug] - Individual politician profile page
- /search?q=[query] - Search results page
- /races?address=[address] - Representatives for a given address
- /topic/[topic] - Politicians compared on a specific topic
Contact
PoliticianViews is an independent project focused on civic transparency. For questions or data inquiries, visit the main site at politicianviews.com.