How it works
Last updated 12 October 2026
How is your area voting? Have your say.
Most of what we hear about how Victoria will vote comes from published opinion polls. Vote Map is a different, unscientific take: you tell us directly, and we map it by district.
What Vote Map is
An independent, anonymous straw poll showing how different areas of Victoria say they’re voting. It is not a prediction, a scientific poll or official results, and is not connected to the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC).
Who runs it and why
Vote Map is an independent project by htbj technologies. It is not run, funded or endorsed by any political party, candidate, union, lobby group, government body or the Victorian Electoral Commission. No political organisation has access to the data, and we accept no payment or advertising from them. The idea is simple: give Victorians a way to see how different areas say they're voting.
htbj technologies is based in Malvern, Victoria. No paid political advertising is accepted.
Why it’s not scientific
Participants choose to take part. Participation is uneven across areas, and results are not weighted to represent the population. Treat the results as a conversation starter, not a forecast.
How your vote is placed
Share your location once to find your electorate, search a suburb or address, or choose your district from the list. Location coordinates are discarded after the lookup, not saved with your vote. Address searches go to OpenStreetMap Nominatim; a scrambled search key and district matches may be cached for 24 hours, without coordinates or a link to your vote.
How we keep it fair — without accounts
- Cloudflare Turnstile checks for bots, usually in the background; it may ask you to complete a challenge.
- One vote per anonymous browser ID. You can change it, not add more under the same ID; the ID stays in your browser until you clear its data.
- Rate limits per network slow down bulk voting and searches.
- Unusual-activity detection flags spikes and holds suspicious votes for administrator review; not every vote in a spike is held.
- Australia-only voting, enforced when the network supplies a known country; unavailable or unknown country information cannot be checked.
No anonymous poll can be made completely tamper-proof; these measures make large-scale manipulation hard and visible.
Why some districts are grey
Party results show once a district has 20 counted responses; statewide party results show from 100. These thresholds protect privacy and avoid misleading tiny samples. Tied districts or districts without a decided leader may also remain grey.
Results update every 2 minutes. The map checks once a minute, so cached results can take a little longer to appear. Only counted votes meeting the trust threshold contribute; held votes wait for review.
What we store and for how long
Electorate, party choice, time of consent, a random anonymous ID, and scrambled network/device signals. Never your name, contact details or location. Individual votes are deleted by the daily retention job 90 days after polling day; aggregate results remain.
When voting closes
Voting closes at 6pm on Saturday 28 November 2026, Australia/Melbourne time, when real polls close. New votes and changes stop at that deadline. Final aggregate results freeze automatically, and deleting an individual vote afterwards does not change them.
Questions
Contact Contact email — .