The reason I haven’t been blogging much recently has finally launched. On Vote Match London you fill in your opinion on 25 statements and it matches your views against the candidates for London Mayor. It doesn’t tell you who to vote for – a quiz like this could never tell you that – but it is designed to give you food for thought and to encourage you to think of policy reasons for choosing how to vote rather than personality or party loyalty.
You can do it by going here (or clicking the big button that will be at the top of my blog for the next few weeks).
I’m gratified to see it has already had rave reviews and more than 4,000 people have used it so far.
I’ve written a comment on the Wall for the London launch event on Facebook.
It gave a very odd set of results for me, which is why I haven’t blogged about it – too embarrassing! But as you’ll see in my comment I think this is because of the way it handles the highly ambiguous Neither response.
When I did the quiz again and didn’t allow myself any Undecideds it came out right! There should be a Don’t Know/Don’t Care option, which is counted as neutral when doing the calculation. As I said, I don’t care about bendy buses because I’ve never been on one in London, so my answer shouldn’t affect my overall match.
It gave me Lindsey German first, and Alan Craig second …
which some people would say sums me up just nicely …..
It didn’t ask whether I wanted a buffoon or a control freak.
That’s because it doesn’t ask questions about personality. But if you don’t want to consider Johnson or Livingstone, you can simply deselect them.
James – what about my comments? The concept is great, but only if it is accurate. I only disagreed with Brian Paddick on one question, yet he came fourth in my list!! How can that be helpful?
As I said, the problem lies with the Neither responses – which could mean either ‘Don’t Care’ or ‘I support a different policy’.
Mary – the short answer is I’m waiting to hear back from our consultant before giving you a longer answer. I will however say that just because you don’t come out as Brian Paddick, that doesn’t necessarily make it inaccurate.
Fundamentally this is a tool for the ordinary voter, which is very much why it is short and sweet. The danger of adding extra options is that you complicate it for Jo Public, even if that keeps the party activists happy.