Almost a hundred thousand people have explored the main parties’ policy platforms on Policy since it launched three weeks on the Spinoff. And now it has an amazing new feature, blinkers, which challenges users to select the policies they prefer without a party logo beside them. 

The response to Policy has been overwhelming, both in terms of the online traffic and the plaudits. Asher Emanuel, Ollie Neas and Racheal Reeves have poured thousands of hours into creating this unprecedented policy comparison tool, and deserve every bit of praise.

They’ve wanted from the outset to introduce blinkers – a function that allows users to turn off the party affiliations, and browse the rival policy positions. And as of today it’s there. Essentially, it means you can scroll through the policies, click the ones that you think the best, without seeing the party stripes beside them. Or, to put it another way, it can help extinguish any latent partisan bias.

If you haven’t had a look at Policy yet, now is the perfect time to do so. If you had, try it again with blinkers on and see if the results differ from first time round. Maybe at the outset jot down how many policies you think you’ll select from each party and see how closely it matches your results. You know, like a game. Play it, share it, sing it from the policy hilltops.

A quick word to our sponsors: Policy wouldn’t be here without the very generous support of lead sponsor Chapman Tripp, the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, Grant Thornton, Muffin Break, iwantmyname and InternetNZ.