If you haven’t been following the debates, or keeping up with all the news about the campaigns, it isn’t easy to figure out where the candidates stand on the issues.

That’s why VTDigger has created a new “Compare the Candidates” section for the statewide races. We have taken the candidates’ stances on a variety of issues — health care, energy, jobs, education, the environment — and boiled them down into short synopses that you can compare side by side.

This post, which features the gubernatorial candidates Republican Randy Brock and Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, is the first of five side-by-side comparisons we will be publishing over the coming week.

You’ll be able to find links to all five “Compare the Candidates” sections on our front page, just above the featured stories slider. (Please note we won’t be accepting comments on these posts.)

~Anne Galloway