Presidential Election Candidate Worksheet

How are you going to decide who to vote for this year for President? Are you going to decide based on the issues? How about the professional background and experience of the candidates? What about their personal and family lives? Will those features affect your decision?

DecideBetter! has created a downloadable spreadhseet in Microsoft Excel format that was designed to help you make your decision for president. By using the spreadsheet, you can determine how important the issues are to your decision, how important experience is to your decision, and how important personal backgrounds are to your decision. You can determine, based on which issues or qualities you think are the most important, which candidate should be the one you vote for. Instructions are included on the bottom of the spreadsheet.

Click here to download the spreadsheet (Excel)

Do you need more information about where the candidates stand on the issues? Click here

Background on Decision-Making for Elections:

How do you make your decision? Based on the Issues? Based on the character and experience of the candidates?

You may be surprised, but even when most people think that they make their decisions based upon multiple issues that they agree with a particular candidate on, they are unwilling or unable to actually do the necessary research to clarify which candidate agrees with their positions on the issues. When they get to the voting booth, they tend to vote more on what they percieve the candidate's positions are rather than on what the candidate's positions actually are. And this isn't only true of uninformed voters or those who don't vote. This actually often applies to some of the most informed voters.

Do you really know what the differences between the candidates in the Democratic Primary or Republican Primary actually are? Or do you just think you know? Have you actually done the research yourself? Or are you relying on the media's views or perhaps the views of your friends or family?

Actually doing the research for oneself is time-consuming, but it is really the only way to truly determine which candidate you should case your vote for. If you don't do the research, you may just be speculating.