I do think Vote for Policies is a wonderful service, however, as a lover of statistics and data, I find it almost criminal that they don’t collect demographic and voting history/intention data about the respondents.

There are two reasons I really really really wish they did this:

1. It would be fascinating to know which policies appealed most to which demographic groups (do Green Party policies appeal more to students than pensioners?), and current or previous voters of which parties (do UKIP voters actually like UKIP policies?).
2. It would show how representative the results are of the population as a whole, and would allow them to make similar calculations to those that polling companies make, in order to weight the results to try to give a more representative picture.

I find it slightly infuriating whenever people make claims like “If People Voted for Policies, the Green Party Would Win”. As much as I’d love it to be true (and ignoring the fact that it’s sadly untrue due to our electoral system being almost deliberately designed so as to prevent emergent parties), we simply can’t make that claim as we have no idea as to how representative the data is. I’d make a guess at ‘not hugely representative at all’.

I’d guess that the group of respondents is made up of many more young, educated, and middle class people than the electorate as a whole is. Exactly the groups (especially in the intersection) who are more likely to vote Green and Labour (and would probably like Lib Dem policies too, but wouldn’t trust them for an instance since the pledge). The site will be bouncing around social networks, and the connections within these networks are probably biggest and strongest and most active amongst students (as being at university means you’re probably part of a bigger and more active network, socially, than most other people), and so the results will be heavily biased towards them.

I’d also guess that a lot of respondents aren’t even old enough to vote, and that the percentage of people from one of the groups of most active voters (the 60+) will be tiny.

I’d make a final guess that because the Greens do well in the results, the site gets shared heavily by followers of the Green party, which will in turn draw in more like minded people who broadly agree with Green party policy.

Of course, I am just guessing, because they don’t collect such data, so it’s impossible to know.

I’m also not saying that if the respondents were more representative of the electorate as a whole then the Green Party wouldn’t do as well in the national results, I’m just saying we simply don’t know.

It would be so easy for them to ask, at the start or end of the test, questions such as:

1. Who did you vote for at the last election
2. Are you a member of any of the following political parties
3. Who do you currently plan to vote for at the next election
4. How likely are you to vote at the next election
5. Age
6. Gender
7. Race/Ethnicity
8. Nationality at birth
9. Household income
10. Level of education

This would make the data so much more rich and useful that I just don’t understand why they don’t collect it.

I Encourage everyone to take the survey, to find out which party’s policies best align with your own politics, but just please don’t make sweeping statements about the national results.