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1.6 million Brits use election advice website

More than 1.6 million people have used a new election advice website to help them decide how to vote.

University of Exeter graduate Matt Morley, 23, bought the domain name GE2017.com just seven minutes after the election was called.

He then created a quiz to help undecided voters choose between the political parties.

The quiz has broken the previous UK record of 1.1 million users.

“We’re delighted that GE2017.com has now become the largest voting advice site ever built in the UK,” said Matt.

“While this is exciting for us, voting itself is the most important thing – and we strongly urge everyone to pick something they care about, read up about it and go out there and get their voice heard.”

Speaking about buying the GE2017.com domain name, he added: “I snapped it up because the snap election meant people would be searching more than ever and ‘GE2017’ would be a major search term.”

Before diverting his attentions to the election, Matt – who studied history at Exeter and graduated in 2016 – was working on his start-up company Explaain, which creates interactive fact cards for news websites.

He said his team built on the work of previous voting advice sites by including “nuance” answers to provide greater accuracy.

They also included a special section where students can compare whether their vote matters more at home or at university.

Matt also thinks voter advice could easily be integrated into social media.

“Social media networks already know about your beliefs, ambitions, interests, like and dislikes, so it wouldn’t be a big jump for them to automatically create a voter advice application which was tailored to individuals,” he said.

Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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