What’s It To Me?
My profile

Who we are, and why What's It To Me exists →

How this works

The rules below are not aspirations. They are built into the code, which is public.

What this site never does

The test we hold ourselves to: if you can tell from this site which way we would vote, we have failed.

Every candidate, the same page

Same sections, same order, same space, listed in ballot-paper order (alphabetical by surname). Where a candidate has published nothing on a topic, the slot says so and points to where to look, for every candidate alike. A party's established colour appears only where it is directly tied to that party's own material (a candidate's photo border, the party name, their column in a comparison), at identical weight for every party; every other colour on the site is neutral, and parties without an established colour stay grey.

Two kinds of statement

Computed: a tax and benefit figure for a household in your bands, calculated with PolicyEngine UK, an open-source model, from a party's published pledges. You can see the inputs, the model version and the date.

Documented: a pledge that applies to a household like yours, shown as the passage from the party's or candidate's own published material, with a link. We do not estimate how much it would affect you; we show you what was said and let you weigh it.

Candidate's own statement, and party position

Each candidate's page carries two layers, labelled. Candidate's own statement: what this person has published about this election. Party position: what the party they stand for has published, because in a parliamentary election the consequences of a win flow largely through the party's programme. For party positions we use the party's current published policy where it exists, dated; where nothing newer exists we use the most recent general-election manifesto and say so; and for a governing party, enacted policy is added as a separate dated source. Independents have no party layer.

Anything that would be a guess is left out. For documented claims, a pledge is shown to a household only when a fact about that household plainly matches it (for example, a pledge on rent controls is shown to renters); we never estimate how large the effect would be.

How the calculated figures are produced

Households are described in bands, so every possible household is one of a fixed set of cells. For each cell we compute a representative household once, offline, with PolicyEngine UK, and store the result. The same postcode and bands always give the same figures, and the entire table is part of the published snapshot. The assumptions (band midpoints, representative ages and rents, which benefits are claimed) are listed under every calculation and in the script that produces it.

Why these ten topics

The topics are not chosen by us. A topic earns a slot if it is in the top ten of the Ipsos Issues Index, the longest-running unprompted survey of what the public says matters most, or if it is the main subject of at least one candidate's published statement on the ballot. That rule produced: money and cost of living; housing; healthcare and social care; education; environment and energy; immigration and borders; crime, policing and justice; defence, foreign affairs and the EU. A ninth, equality and rights, is added on a different footing: the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010 (age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, race, religion, and others) give it standing independent of any party, and parties publish positions on it. Immigration has been the public's most-mentioned concern throughout 2026; leaving it out would have quietly favoured some candidates over others. A tenth, transport and roads, was added in September 2026 at our founder's request: buses, trains, roads, parking and cycling are decided at every level from the parish to Parliament, candidates and parties publish positions on them, and they touch almost every household. Positions that were already filed under another topic stay there; transport positions are added alongside, quoted in full like every other.

Some topics, such as money and housing, can be related to a household. Others, such as immigration or defence, mostly cannot, and we do not pretend otherwise: those rows show what candidates and parties have published, with sources, and nothing more.

The household questions

Seven questions are asked of every household, in bands, after the postcode. A few more are optional: whether anyone is disabled or has a long-term condition, is an unpaid carer, is on a visa or seeking asylum, receives a means-tested benefit, drives, or has served in the armed forces. They exist only because published positions refer to them. Leave any blank and nothing is assumed either way: a position that depends on it is listed as applying to other households, never hidden and never presumed. Since 29 September 2026 there are also optional questions about you: ethnic group, religion, sex, whether your gender matches the sex you were registered at birth, and sexual orientation (the Census categories). They were added at our founder's request so that the site can be more personal, and they work differently from everything else: the answers stay in your browser, never go into a page address, are never sent to us and are never used in a calculation. If you answer, Your politics shows first the parties' own words that name the group you chose (or a wider group that plainly includes it, such as ethnic minorities or LGBT+ people), then those on the same subject that don't, and Equality and rights moves to the top. You can also describe someone else, just for that page and without saving anything, to see which positions name them. The matching is on the words used, so it can't tell whether a position would help or harm anyone. The rule is the same for every answer and every party, and the site never says whether a policy is good or bad for anyone.

Going deeper

Every topic page ends with a short list of independent sources: official statistics, parliamentary research, fact-checkers and non-partisan research institutes. None is affiliated with a party. Where a source campaigns for a position, its label says so.

Sources, not referees

We do not vet politicians' claims or decide who is right. We publish what they and their parties have put in writing, quoted exactly, with the source, its date and a link, and we show the same slots for everyone. Summaries are drafted with AI assistance and are checked against their quotation by the people who run this site; if one misstates its source, it is withdrawn and the withdrawal is logged.

The ledger

Every claim lives in an append-only ledger: nothing can be edited or deleted, only superseded by a new entry that says who changed it and why. Before each polling day a dated, hashed copy of the whole ledger is published, so anyone can check later exactly what was shown. The ledger is public.

Data sources

Is this up to date?

Election data is refreshed every morning from Democracy Club. The data status page shows exactly when each kind of information was last refreshed, and flags any election that has been missed — so you can check rather than take our word for it.

Who runs this

What's It To Me is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit project. It answers one question: what would this election mean for you? Every candidate gets the same page, in ballot-paper order, and every statement links to where it was published. It takes no advertising and sells no data. It was started by Romily Johnson (Founder and Product Lead), with Barny Trevelyan-Johnson (Technical Lead), and is self-funded for now. Both have political views of their own; neither works for or is paid by any party or campaign, and the site is built so that their views stay out of it. How, and our declaration of interests · Why What's It To Me exists, in Romily's words. Contact us at hello@whatsittome.org.

Complaints and corrections

If you believe a claim is wrong, unfair or misattributed, tell us. Every complaint is logged publicly with its outcome, whether or not we change anything. Email hello@whatsittome.org with the page, the claim and what you think is wrong.

Code

Open source under AGPL-3.0: github.com/highlyvisual/whatsittome. Anyone can run the same ballot and household and get the same result.

Run a website? Put a free “Your next election” box on it.

What this site can't tell you

Every source has limits, and some matter a great deal when deciding how to vote: