How Christopher Back voted compared to someone who agrees that the federal government should introduce legislation to end illegal logging and prevent the importation of timber that has been illegally harvested.

Most important divisions relevant to this policy

These are the most important divisions related to the policy “for ending illegal logging” which Christopher Back could have attended. They are weighted much more strongly than other divisions when calculating the position of Christopher Back on this policy.

Division Christopher Back Supporters vote

19th Nov 2012, 8:42 PM – Senate Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2012 - Third Reading - Pass the bill

No Yes

Other divisions relevant to this policy

These are less important divisions which are related to the policy “for ending illegal logging” which Christopher Back could have attended.

Division Christopher Back Supporters vote

15th Aug 2012, 3:56 PM – Senate Motions - Forestry - Westpac and logging on the Solomon Islands

No Yes

How "voted consistently against" is worked out

They Vote For You gives each vote a score based on whether the MP voted in agreement with the policy or not. These scores are then averaged with a weighting across all votes that the MP could have voted on relevant to the policy. The overall average score is then converted to a simple english language phrase based on the range of values it's within.

When an MP votes in agreement with a policy the vote is scored as 100%. When they vote against the policy it is scored as 0% and when they are absent it is scored half way between the two at 50%. The half way point effectively says "we don't know whether they are for or against this policy".

The overall agreement score for the policy is worked out by a weighted average of the scores for each vote. The weighting has been chosen so that the most important votes have a weighting 5 times that of the less important votes. Also, absent votes on less important votes are weighted 5 times less again to not penalise MPs for not attending the less important votes. Pressure of other work means MPs or Senators are not always available to vote – it does not always mean they've abstained.

Type of vote Agreement score (s) Weight (w) No of votes (n)
Most important votes MP voted with policy 100% 25 0
MP voted against policy 0% 25 1
MP absent 50% 25 0
Less important votes MP voted with policy 100% 5 0
MP voted against policy 0% 5 1
MP absent 50% 1 0

The final agreement score is a weighted average (weighted arithmetic mean) of the scores of the individual votes.

Average agreement score = sum(n×w×s) / sum(n×w) = 0.0 / 30 = 0%.

And then this average agreement score