UK General Election 2015 resources

For those who are unsure how their personal politics lies, here is an excellent survey site which allows you to find out exactly which party is floating your boat.

originally posted by: stumason
For those who are unsure how their personal politics lies, here is an excellent survey site which allows you to find out exactly which party is floating your boat.

A Survey conducted by and for the benefit of whom. What you trying to pull here Stu. I'm onto you.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

Er, yeah... Whatever...

Anyway, it's purely for your own benefit. Not sure who to vote for, then take the survey (which can granulate the answers into quite specific responses) and you can find which of the many parties out there tickles your fancy.

Some more resources, this time in the form of Parliamentary seat forecast models

> Election forecast model 1
> Election forecast model 2
> Election forecast model 3

Miscellaneous

> Review of key seats

Electoral Reform
The thing that strikes me is that the SNP – with a small portion of the total UK votes, and none in England – may be the “king maker”. I am beginning to think we need electoral reform if this happens, as the Nationalists don't give a toss about anyone else but the Scots!

> Electoral Reform Society

originally posted by: paraphi
Some more resources, this time in the form of Parliamentary seat forecast models

> Election forecast model 1
> Election forecast model 2
> Election forecast model 3

Miscellaneous

> Review of key seats

Electoral Reform
The thing that strikes me is that the SNP – with a small portion of the total UK votes, and none in England – may be the “king maker”. I am beginning to think we need electoral reform if this happens, as the Nationalists don't give a toss about anyone else but the Scots!

> Electoral Reform Society

Hehe...it's Marvelous...Please dont go Scots, we love you, but when it looks like the love Bombs have backfired it's back to GTF we dont want you. you seriously couldn't make it up..Talk about true colours shinning through..

You reap what you so.

originally posted by: paraphi
Electoral Reform
The thing that strikes me is that the SNP – with a small portion of the total UK votes, and none in England – may be the “king maker”. I am beginning to think we need electoral reform if this happens, as the Nationalists don't give a toss about anyone else but the Scots!

Indeed we do, but how do we do that without getting rid of the constituency link (if we go down a PR route)?

Also, with regards to the SNP (or any Scottish party) being "Kingmaker", that proves that there is an imbalance in Westminster. Scotland has a total population of 5.3 Million compared to the West Midlands at 5.3 Million as well. But they have 59 seats compared to the West Midlands 29! How is that fair?

Either consistencies need to be the same size (population wise) or the voting system needs to change. Oddly enough, they tried both in the last Parliament. The public rejected AV as a voting method and the Liberals blocked Tory plans to have the electoral boundaries changed to make them all the same size.

originally posted by: stumason
Scotland has a total population of 5.3 Million compared to the West Midlands at 5.3 Million as well. But they have 59 seats compared to the West Midlands 29! How is that fair?

It is not fair. Just like the Barnett formula, where England is disadvantaged. In the case of the General Election, the vote of an Englishman and Irishman has less "value" than that of a Scots or Welsh.

I am not a fan of proportional representation per se, but believe the Devolved Administrations should submit an equal number of MPs based on their population, otherwise you get an imbalance. On the current population, this gives...

Nation/administration : Current seats : Based on population : Difference
England : 533 : 546 : 13 too few
Scotland : 59 : 54 : 5 too many
Wales : 40 : 31 : 9 too many
Northern Ireland : 18 : 19 : 1 too few

> ONS Population estimate
> Barnett formula
> Guardian article on the Barnett formula

originally posted by: Soloprotocol

originally posted by: stumason
For those who are unsure how their personal politics lies, here is an excellent survey site which allows you to find out exactly which party is floating your boat.

A Survey conducted by and for the benefit of whom. What you trying to pull here Stu. I'm onto you.

This is the key question and problem with easy to do surveys. Every single one of them is written by an organisation that have a particular bias, same with polls, each institution phrases questions in a manner to produce the preferred result. They cost a lot of money to do and nothing comes free in politics.

I haven't checked these yet, but i people are interested I can do sleuthing and expose who commissioned the various questionaries so people can offset their results with the background of who wrote it and make up their own mind as to why.

Note: I'm a massive lefty but not a supporter of any paticular party, but my own bias is towards SNP/Greens as if we're going to get completely and utterly screwed over by government, I'd rather have one that at least pretends to be nice.

originally posted by: bastion
This is the key question and problem with easy to do surveys. Every single one of them is written by an organisation that have a particular bias, same with polls, each institution phrases questions in a manner to produce the preferred result. They cost a lot of money to do and nothing comes free in politics.

Sometimes, going to the "About" tab is helpful to work out the motivations and leanings of websites. In this case, it's nothing dark and sinister. Just someone trying to create a useful (and unscientific) resource and drum up some donations.

Who and what is the website isideWith.com?

a reply to: paraphi

Don't get me wrong I'm not an 'everything is a conspiracy' type, I'm just personally very wary of anything that gives you the impression of having an informed vote for less than an hours work. At some point, somewhere, info has to be dumbed down which in my view is the whole reason we're in this political mess.

While the about us does say that, their own admission says they set it up based on their own political views and the data is based on a US voter algorithm so would have huge margins of error involved due to completely separate party and voting systems. The dirt on these organisations lies deep within in their financiers records rather than advertised on the about pages. i.e Ipsos Mori polls are tied to Atlantic Bridge which is a Conservative Party and US Republican Party collaboration so always scores tories higher in polls.

As far as guestionaires go this is a very good one and they are a good resource for pointing people in the direction of which parties they should have a more detailed look at, but I personally see them as open to abuse and an accident waiting to happen. I feel more comfy with people doing their own research and making up their own minds instead of openning themselves up hook, line and sinker to a load of salespeople.

a reply to: bastion

I think that some parts of the mainstream party manifestos are very similar, proving that all parties are fairly centralist. I agree that to make models work, which predict your political affiliation a good deal of simplification and assumption has to be introduced. These assumptions and simplifications are in the head of the person developing the model and will have a degree of subjectivity within them.

However, with this in mind we can still run the model and see that happens. If people use them as the sole dictator of how they should vote, then that's fine with me, because they do introduce a measure of questioning in their approach.

a reply to: bastion

None of what you said has any relevance to the site I linked - it is clear you didn't even look at it, actually.

Firstly, it takes no personal details whatsoever, so it is of no use to anyone in a serious capacity.

Secondly, the granularity you can have in the response to the questions - which aren't written with any "bias" - gives you a wide range of responses.

The whole purpose of it is for you to see how your personal politics play into the policies of those seeking our vote. I was just letting people know so that if anyone is confused on who they should vote for, they can get a good idea of who is closest to their own political views.

The fact you and Solo pissed all over it, without so much as even looking at it, is expected to be honest. Isn't that what SNP types do?

originally posted by: stumason
a reply to: bastion



Firstly, it takes no personal details whatsoever, so it is of no use to anyone in a serious capacity.


The fact you and Solo pissed all over it, without so much as even looking at it, is expected to be honest. Isn't that what SNP types do?

Au contraire slackbladder...I looked at it and started to fill it in, in fact i got most of the way through it then started to have my doubts.
As for "it takes no personal details whatsoever"...seriously? As soon as you click on that link it's recorded somewhere, submit the survey and i'm pretty sure your IP Address is recorded and once you go down that route you can guarantee your privacy has been compromised.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

If you're that paranoid about things, one has to wonder what you're doing on the internet at all, Solo. Or, on the flip side, why you're not doing it from somewhere where your IP address won't give anything away, or perhaps using a proxy?

Bottom line is, faux concern over being monitored is not really selling it to me - just seems to me like you're having a bitch and whine simply because you can and it's in response to me

I was just trying to help people - there are a great many out there who don't know how the land lies with regards to policy and might actually be surprised who best fits their personal preferences.

Case in point - there is an apprentice here who was going to vote Green, but once he did the survey (and also actually read their bollocks manifesto) he realised he was actually a good fit for the Liberals and/or Labour.

Conversely, there is a dyed in the wool Labour voter here too who also took the survey - turns out he doesn't fit Labour's policies at all and is re-evaluating his life long support.

EDIT: This will make you chuckle though - despite my top score being 75% Tory fit, SNP actually came in second place at 61% for me matching UKIP....

a reply to: stumason
I only use my proxy when i'm looking up Hooters and Shooters..

a reply to: stumason

Eh? I checked the link and various interviews the owners have done with forbes and similar, that's how I got the info on what algorithm the site is using for its answers and that one owner knows little/nothing about politics and the other is heavilly into it but has no party affiliation and how it makes money.

Everyone in the wold including myself is biased. It's sadly impossible to write a question or statement without consciously or subconsciously putting a spin on it. For example asking 'do you like...' will provide a different level of response to 'do you hate...' and these responses are generally reduced to stats then twisted to their own predetermined answer. Because there is a limit to how many questions are set on the quiz, there's been a selection process at some point as to what questions they decided were significant enough to ask and which could be ignored - this is where inescapable bias takes place, there's no other option but to cherry pick what to include which produces a distorted answer.

I didn't mean to piss on the site or anything, like I said as far as questionnaires go this is a very good one and said its a very effective resource. I'm just personally against guestimations when it comes to something as serious as voting once every five years as I believe people need as much detail as possible to make the correct decision for them.

Just something new...

Loony's afraid of UKIP

... and to unapologetically bump my thread...

originally posted by: paraphi
Just something new...

Loony's afraid of UKIP

... and to unapologetically bump my thread...

oh the shame..

there have been some pretty handy links this year regarding voting choices, but I guess most people have come to their decision by now. I haven't really found the tv "debates have had much of a sway. Apart from providing some comedy tv moments. It's all as much as you would expect. I can't believe cameron chickened out though, didn't look good. I thought it was amusing watching Milliband get bossed by the ladies on the panel. I think the ladies have come out winners in every debate. Maybe I'm just tired of the same type of men using the same type of political jargon as each other over and over again. The women make a fresh change. I think it's fair to say it's going to be a coalition of sorts, just who gets into bed with each other. I think the ukip vote will be interesting. I'm interested to see how many seats they will get. Could go either way.