European voting

[undyingking]

You probably know by now that I'm a sucker for this sort of toy. It's a quiz that matches your opinions with those of the parties standing in the European elections, but the fun apect is that it will tell you not just about your own country but also about parties in other countries. So I can see for example that my own closest opinion matches are the German Greens, the French Socialists and Plaid Cymru. Not much use to me here, unfortunately.

It's also interesting to see that the pro- / anti-EU spectrum bears, on a Europe-wide scale, very little relationship to the left- / right-wing spread. There are socialist parties, conservative parties and green parties, ranging from fiercely pro-EU to vehemently anti-. Social-democratic parties are generally pro-EU, as are liberal parties of left and right, and self-defining anti-EU parties are generally right-wing, but that's about it.

And, either amusingly or depressingly depending on your point of view, it analyses the Labour policy platform as currently being well to the right of the Tories. There you go.

Comments

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

Fascinating.
I am bang on top of the Communist Party of Luxembourg (who seem to be pretty soft at the edges for a Communist party), and mid-way between the Irish and Cypriot Green parties.

In terms of British parties, I am in the same quartile (leftist, pro-European) as the Lib-Dems, but closest in terms of absolute proximity to the Tories (and the denizens of Hell will be scrabbling for their thermal underwear before I vote Tory), followed closely by the greens.

Meh. Where does that leave me? Bloody unrepresented as far as I can see (and which is what I had worked out before). Right now, I expect I will vote Lib Dem... possibly Green if there is a green candidate in my area. Not because I exactly agree with them, but because they are not the current incarnation of the Labour party (which by rights should be my natural political home, but clearly isn't), and because I'd choke to death on my own bile before I ever voted Tory.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Proximity on that graph doesn't mean much, of course, because the two axes are not on the same scale. For most people I'd imagine the left/right axis carries a lot more weight than the Euro axis and so before measuring you should massively squash the graph (which would leave you much closer to the LibDems than the Tories).

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

Indeed, fair point.

I'd also own up to being a bit of an anomally in political terms: in straight politics, I would characterise myself as a lot further towards the left than I usually end up in these sorts of graphs, but the fact that religion does affect some of my views (in ways that I consider to be apolitical, but which are seen as socially conservative), usually drags my result back towards the right.

That said, I thought that this one was pretty well constructed, in so far as I can tell. Impossible to judge fully without seeing and testing the algorithms they are using, but it seems well thought-out.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

(in ways that I consider to be apolitical, but which are seen as socially conservative)

Mm, I sometimes get that too. An innocent-sounding "Do you believe X?" seems to often be read as "Do you want to forcibly inflict your belief of X on everyone else?".