Voter Values Survey

The Voter Values Profile

The HeyVoter! Values Profile turns the attention to voters themselves: what matters to them, not which political tribe they fit into. Each person builds an individual profile across seven dimensions - a values radar and a set of views on governance - and any two profiles can be compared to show where values match.

The aim is a foundation for civic discussion: knowing what we have in common before debating what we don't.

CARE TIME FAIRNESS REACH MARKET PUBLIC LIBERTY SECURITY TRADITION PROGRESS

One respondent's profile. The radar shows how far each value reaches from the person at the center; each bar shows the balance they strike between two values.

Voter Values Survey

What matters to you?

Build your Voter Profile across the seven dimensions and see where your values match with the people around you. About 4 minutes. Anonymous. We never ask your name or address.

Start the survey →

Values before ideology

We believe we have more in common than what divides us. We want to help people understand each other, so we ask what matters to you.

Nearly six in ten Americans have stopped talking about politics with someone because of something they said (Pew Research Center). The conversation most of us avoid is the one this project is built to reopen, by starting from where values match rather than where positions collide.

Most political research starts from ideology. It asks how people would vote on issues, then sorts them into groups: tribes, quadrants, blocs. That lens is good at mapping distance and division. By construction, it cannot show where people agree, because agreement across a dividing line is exactly what a partition throws away.

The Values Profile starts one step earlier, with the voter. It asks what people believe: how society should treat vulnerability, whose lives we weigh when we decide, what counts as fair, who should steer. Each respondent describes their own values, in their own words, and receives an individual profile rather than a group label.

Because every profile is drawn on the same seven dimensions, any two can be compared directly: where values match, where they differ, and by how much. That comparison is the unit of interest. Not the camp, the common ground.

Seven dimensions, two families

A profile is drawn on seven dimensions: four about who counts, three about how power should work. Each is measured across a named range, and every position on every range is a legitimate answer. The profile records where a person stands, not how far they are from a right answer.

The Values Radar

Who counts

Four dimensions of who counts. Each is measured from the particular to the expansive, starting from the person at the center.

Care

What we owe one another when life gets hard, and how much each of us carries alone.

Self-relianceCollective care
Time

How much the future should count against the needs of the present.

PresentFuture
Fairness

What people are owed: whether it should track what they put in or what they need.

ProportionalEgalitarian
Reach

The reach of obligation: how wide the circle a person feels responsible for runs.

LocalUniversal

The Governance Balance

How power works

Three dimensions of how power should work, each a genuine tradeoff between two poles. The midpoint is a principled balance, not a refusal to choose.

Economy

Who should steer economic life: private markets, public direction, or a deliberate mix.

MarketPublic
Order

The trade between freedom and safety: how much liberty is worth giving up for security.

LibertySecurity
Continuity

Whether inherited ways are wisdom to keep or structures to remake.

TraditionProgress

Together, the dimensions and the radar are a different breakdown of political identity: built to show where our values match, instead of how far apart we sit.

Reading a Voter Profile

Two panels, read two ways. The radar shows reach: how far each value extends from you at the center. The governance bars show balance: where you land between two values that pull against each other (Market and Public, Liberty and Security, Tradition and Progress). One person is a portrait; two people are a measure of common ground; a population is a map of where values concentrate.

One person

The values radar starts from the person at the center. The shape traces how far each of Care, Time, Fairness, and Reach extends for them: the range of what matters. The three governance bars each show a balance struck between two values, marked by the poles rather than a score. A one-line portrait completes the profile.

Two people, compared

Two profiles overlaid. Different parties, if you asked them; close on Care and Time, apart on Fairness. The overlap is measured, not asserted.

Published with the data

A community

Where a whole population concentrates on each dimension, and which dimensions genuinely divide. Published as findings when the data supports them.

How it works