2025 Year in Review: Strengthening Democracy and Public Voice

As 2025 draws to a close, we're reflecting on a year that saw Vox Pop Labs engage millions of people across the world in democratic participation and meaningful public dialogue. From federal elections in Canada and Australia to groundbreaking research on trust in news media and the future of primary care, our team worked to amplify citizen voices where they matter most.

Vote Compass: Two Federal Elections, Millions of Voters

This year marked a historic milestone for Vote Compass, with simultaneous deployments during federal elections in both Canada and Australia.

Canada's Fifth Consecutive Federal Election Partnership with the CBC

In partnership with CBC/Radio-Canada, we launched the fifth consecutive federal edition of Vote Compass for Canada's April 2025 election. The response was remarkable—more than 100,000 Canadians completed Vote Compass within the first 24 hours, with participation exceeding 1.6M users during the election campaign. The tool helped Canadians navigate an election shaped by unprecedented issues, with Canada-U.S. relations emerging as the top concern for 29% of respondents—a dramatic shift from 2021, when the environment led at 24%.

Australia's Fourth Federal Edition with the ABC

Simultaneously, we partnered with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to deploy the fourth Australian federal edition of Vote Compass. Within the first week, more than half a million Australians used the application to explore how their views aligned with party platforms ahead of the May 3rd election.

Together, these deployments extended Vote Compass's reach across 65+ elections in 11 countries—continuing our mission to provide voters with accessible, unbiased information to help them make informed choices.

The Signal: Forecasting Elections with the Toronto Star

We renewed our partnership with the Toronto Star to bring The Signal—our election forecasting tool—to the 2025 Canadian federal election. The Signal is built on a Bayesian statistical model that draws on hundreds of opinion polls to predict vote and seat shares for each political party, identifying and correcting for bias in individual polls. Updated daily throughout the campaign, The Signal provided Canadians with a reliable forecast of election outcomes, continuing a track record that dates back to our original 2015 deployment, where it demonstrated the best overall performance of any poll aggregator in Canada.

Youth Vote Compass: Engaging the Next Generation

In partnership with CIVIX, we launched a refreshed Youth Vote Compass as part of Student Vote Canada 2025. This comprehensive, interactive tool was designed specifically for young people to explore their political views and discover where they stand on the political spectrum relative to voters of the major parties. The youth edition features age-appropriate context and explanations, supporting hundreds of thousands of students in secondary school in engaging meaningfully with democracy - sometimes for the first time.

OurCare 2025: the Canadian Public Speaks Out on Primary Care

In partnership with researchers at the University of Toronto and St. Michael’s Unity Health Toronto, we conducted one of the largest national surveys on primary care in Canadian history. The OurCare 2025 study captured the voices of 16,876 people, comprising demographically representative samples of the adult population in all 13 provinces and territories, as well as a demographically representative sample of the adult Canadian population overall.

Data collection ran from April through November 2025, with participants recruited through multiple channels including our proprietary online panel, the OurCare website, external panels, and in-person interviewing in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to ensure territorial voices were represented.

This builds on years of citizen engagement that produced the OurCare Standard—a framework articulating what every person in Canada should expect from primary care: team-based care, timely access, connected community services, digital health records, culturally safe care, and accountability to communities.

The News Effectiveness Research Program: Understanding Trust in Media

In collaboration with Cossette Media and the Google News Initiative, we completed a two-phase research program examining trust in news environments and its effects on audiences.

Phase I: Unlocking the "Trust Premium"

The first phase, fielded in 2024 with 8,807 respondents across Canada (including both English-speaking Canada and a dedicated Francophone study focused on Quebec), demonstrated a clear and measurable "Trust Premium." Key findings included:

  • Brands advertising in trusted news environments see a 25% lift in brand ratings
  • News publishers rank 35% above baseline in trustworthiness compared to other information environments
  • Local news outlets see an additional 16% gain in perceived trustworthiness—particularly pronounced in Quebec
  • Hard news produces the same positive brand ratings as soft news, challenging long-held assumptions in advertising
  • Publisher trust overpowers ideological slant—even politically charged content doesn't negatively impact brand perception when it appears in trusted contexts

Phase II: The Determinants of Trust in Information

Building on these findings, the second phase of research in 2025 explored what drives trust in news information among the Canadian public. This study uncovered a hierarchy of trustworthiness across sources and contexts, finding that experts and journalists consistently ranked highest in perceived credibility, while traditional newspapers were deemed the most credible context. Notably, providing extended information (in the form of a synopsis of a published, peer-reviewed scientific study) boosted credibility perceptions most for sources initially seen as less trustworthy—suggesting transparency and depth can serve as powerful tools for building trust in emerging or unconventional channels.

Looking Ahead

As we enter 2026, Vox Pop Labs remains committed to our founding mission: applying computational social science to help individuals and communities navigate important issues and decisions. Whether through electoral tools that promote democratic participation, research that shapes public policy, or studies that demonstrate the value of trustworthy information, we continue to bring together human and machine intelligence in service of the public interest.

Thank you to our partners, collaborators, and the millions of people who engage with our tools each year. Your participation makes our work possible—and meaningful.