Friday lunchtime at work I was sent this email:
Intrigued, I followed the link to the website and did the test myself, which came back Lib Dem with a bit of Labour thrown in. The Tories, UKIP and the BNP were at the bottom. Pretty accurate. I then repeated the test with the knowledge I have of the policies of the other parties, again impressively accurate whoever I pretended to agree with, from the Greens to the BNP. It’s a very well researched questionnaire.
What made me write this post was the response I got when I shared the link on Facebook. Here’s a snippet of some of the comments:
It went on. Some of my friends shared the quiz and got similar results with their friends, Lib Dem came back a lot – far more than the 10% we’re currently polling and even higher than the 23% we managed in 2010. In some ways I’m not surprised, whenever politics comes up in conversation it’s obvious there’s a large group of tolerant, naturally liberal minded, pragmatic people living in the UK who simply don’t vote for us.
This post isn’t about the reasons why we don’t attract the support we should, I’ll leave that to the comments section – but it’s clear there’s a large section of the electorate who would vote Liberal Democrat if they actually knew our policies and what we stood for. But if you do get a moment and are active on social media, post the quiz online and see what response you get from your cyber-friends. The perceived impartiality of this test makes it truly powerful, more convincing than a 1000 leaflets from Lib Dem HQ.
It doesn’t always work in our favour though, my wife got 89% Labour, 85% Green with the Liberal Democrats a distant 3rd place. I hope she doesn’t leave the party over it.
* Gareth Wilson is a Videogame Director turned Liberal Democrat activist who blogs here
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28 Comments
Might help if you could be trusted to act on those policies…
Some of the party positions used by this quiz are plain wrong. They may be coalition polices or the policies of individual minister but they are not policies passed by Conference
They scored me as being 99% LIbDem. On this basis I will soon be putting my name forward to become leader.
“It’s a very well researched questionnaire.” I don’t think so … do you really believe that Lib Dem and Labour policies overlap so much that you can score about 90% on each? Some of the sources given for policies are very dubious …
Hmm, apparently I quite favour the SNP. Pity I don’t live in Scotland.
I don’t know how accurate the survey is, but such surveys have generated similar results for as long as the Lib Dems have been in existence.
My (mostly Labour-supporting) friends have always been surprised to find that ideologically, they should be voting Lib Dem.
But they still vote Labour.
Why? Well, because they don’t think we can win – either at a constituency or national level. Which brings us back to the old problem of the voting system being stacked against us…
100% tory
96% ukip
72% lib-dem
54% labour
37% bnp
12% scot-nat
3% plaid
2% green
looking at the breakdown the things that seemed to tilt the playing field were:
Defence – increase = yes (very strongly)
popular with tories, ukip, and BNP
EU – leave = yes (but maintain trade ties)
popular with the obvious – but chosen because there wasn’t a decent no caveated choice (it isn’t about money or immigration)
So I should vote green to let a Tory in , no way my LibDem MP is OK so I will still vote for him.
Labour 95%
Plaid Cymru 82%
Scotish Nationals 81%
Green 78%
Liberal Dem 77%
Britsh Nationals 73%
UKIP 64%
Tories 57%
Actually I was horrified that I scored so high with the Tories
According to the questionnaire Lib Dems think that the UK should abolish university tuition fees and that the NHS should not use privately run services. Shurely shome mishtake?
jedibeeftrix
Leave EU but maintain trade ties. Who do you think you (and the quiz) are kidding?
Why would the EU want to trade with us after we had just left? no. We’d be on our own.
That’s why I’m IN.
why would they not want to trade?
surely you are not confusing a market-economies of the EU with some soviet style planned system…
do you imagine some stalinist style diktat from on high commanding the SME’s of europe not to buy British widgets, or likewise the proletariat from purchasing anglo-saxon insurance products!
excuse my while i roflmao.
you might also take a moment to note that i specifically said i chose this only becuase there: “wasn’t a decent ‘no’ caveated choice (it isn’t about money or immigration)”
This quiz doesn’t help me much — I scored over 90% for five different parties, all within a couple of points of each other! And yes, Lib Dems were among the five.
It, and other such sites, have demonstrated their pointlessness over the last parliament.
I mean, tuition fees?
@Alasdair
Might help if you could be trusted to act on those policies…
1) It might help if the system actually gave us the MPs to put those policies through, rather than stealing two thirds of our votes and giving them to the other two parties;
2) It might help if you actually admitted that we *have* acted on large numbers of our policies, e.g. Pupil premium, Green Investment Bank, £10,000 personal allowance, increased capital gains tax, regional investment, infrastructure investment, apprenticeships….
Until we can get through glib, superficial but widely held ideas about the Lib Dems like yours that aren’t actually borne out in reality, we’re not going to revive our opinion poll ratings.
Well I’m 88% a Tory and 77% a Lib Dem – Guess that makes me a true believer in the coalition.
I got 86% Tory, and 83% to both Lib Dems and UKIP…. something seems wrong with this picture.
Let’s for a minute assume (!) that the survey has accurately represented the current policy positions of the parties involved (and I think there is going to be some confusion here – naturally – between ‘this is a policy the government in which party X is involved is carrying out / a prominent MP in party X is advocating’ and this policy is or will be in the manifesto for party X’).
That being so, there seems for all individuals to be a gap between what voters like to imagine their party will or might do in government, and what that party states right now they will do. What’s in that gap is what fascinates me…
I think we could call this fruitful area of new research ‘imagined politics’; eg do you vote for your party because of what’s in the current manifesto or because of what might result in future if your chosen party is relatively successful now?
I personally vote LD because I want to see the UK move towards federal, regional government on the European model; I’m not very bothered about the voting system exactly, but I want to see it change in some way; I don”t want the country to continue to move towards more authoritarian modes of government, but I probably would in some ways register as a social conservative; and I want models of capitalism that allow for a greater role for charities and cooperatives, and don’t simply oppose ‘private’ and ‘public’ sectors in a big simplistic manichaean face-off.
You won’t find all of that in the LD manifesto, I’m guessing, but that’s why I generally vote for that party. I’m sure you could spin many similar models for the other parties; people who vote SNP because they want devo-max, people who vote Tory because they want to bring back hanging, etc, etc…
Basing anything on party manifestoes isprobably the only way you could build a survey like this, but it misses out on a large chunk of what’s actually going on in people’s heads!
@Peter Watson
‘According to the questionnaire Lib Dems think that the UK should abolish university tuition fees and that the NHS should not use privately run services. ‘
I think that shows a major weakness in the questionnaire, as these, among others, about which the UK does not have a single policy. The questions refer to England, Scotland and Northern Ireland (definitely) and Wales, to some extent, have different systems, policies and practices.
The other weakness is assuming that it is often only policies t hat separate parties. Even where these coincide, parties represent different philosophies of society and government, and that is a further reason why they are different parties and can develop differently, but still co-operate on a temporary or ad-hoc basis.
It may help the floating voter to decide how to vote, but he/she needs also to consider the local situation to use the vote to best effect.
This was quite surprising for me. As a previous regular LibDem voter and former councillor, who is disillusioned by the coalition, perhaps no surprise that 97% Green and 96% Labour came out highest. However both SNP and Plaid came out higher than LibDems on 83%.
What does concern me, if this survey is providing the right information is that the LDs are pro-fracking and nuclear power, largely in favour of zero hour contracts and support banning strikes on the London Underground. Such stances are a long way from the Liberal part I joined as a student in the late 70s.
I got 90% Labour, 84% Green, 79% Lib Dem, and 68% Tory. But some of the questions seemed a bit dubious. Would anyone seriously consider voting LD because they wanted to abolish uni tuition fees, since 2010?
Entertaining if inaccurate. 98% LibDem… phew! So far so good.
92% Labour?… hmmm, at a pinch, with a following wind and if hell freezes over. 83% Green… not really, unless making my own yogurt counts for half the points. 82% SNP… ROFLMFAO.
The biggest surprise was getting 80% on Conservative, as I’d sooner vote Tory than Labour.
@Jedibeeftrix – only 100% Tory? Things are looking up then 🙂
@Stephen Hesketh — jbt was rounding down.
96% Scottish Nationalist, but I’d never set foot in Scotland until the Glasgow Conference last year. And yet again a survey says I’m a strong Green supporter, also 96%. If only they’d ask an obvious question like “what is your favourite type of vehicle?” and all the genuine Green supporters say “bicycle” and I say “motorbike” then I’d score very badly as far as the Green Party is concerned. Then in third place Plaid Cymru on 93% (must be all the childhood holidays in Llandudno) equal with Labour and then Lib Dem on 84%.
@David-1 – genuinely amusing comment 🙂
I also took the test but found it couldn’t distinguish between my egalitarian/redistributive values and my anti-Labourite beliefs. Plaid Cymru (no connection) and (genuine) Green-supporting traits also indicated. Good fun though.
agreed with David, i liked both comments. 😀
as noted, it seemed to place a great deal of weight on the defence and brexit Q’s.