John O'Farrell is not alone in discovering he is a closet Liberal Democrat voter. Over a quarter of the other 249,999 people who filled out the questionnaire on whoshouldyouvotefor.com found they are not as Labour or Tory-inclined as they might like to think.
The figures for the first 10 days of activity on the new site show that only 11% of respondents are aligned with Labour, 16% with the Tories, while 36% are natural Lib Dem supporters. The rest are told that their political views makes them obvious Green (20%) or Ukip (17%) voters.
The results jarred with the majority of respondents' expectations. Site users had thought they would be told to vote Labour (25%), Conservative (26%), Lib Dem (29%), Ukip (4%), or Green (3%), respectively. The rest had no clue what they were, which is probably why they sought help from the website in the first place.
But this is not political science at its finest. The design of the questionnaire means that people are categorised according to the strength of feeling they express over a given issue. Example: If you "disagree" with the Iraq war, but don't "strongly disagree", you may still be a Labour supporter. If you strongly disagree, then you probably can't be. (Robin Cook take note)
Site co-owner Paul Lenz flatly denies any suggestion of questionnaire bias in the Lib Dems' and Greens' favour. Far from being motivated by party political leanings, he explains that the site was initially set up as a publicity stunt to promote an unrelated marketing business. Now, it has a life of its own.
Lenz says the site provides a tool to compare policies and stimulate political debate, nothing more. The plan may backfire, however. One tentative young voter filled in the questionnaire three times, placing a different level of emphasis over his position on Europe, Iraq, and tuition fees. He received three different results: Lib Dem, Green, Ukip. Confused, our young man confides he may now not vote at all.
