An Ever-So-Slightly-Cynical Thought on Manifestos
April 21, 2010
I really like the Vote for Policies website. I wasn’t too surprised that when I took the survey I came out with a pretty good fit against the Green manifesto and the Conservative manifesto as well a better fit with the Lib Dems.
Evidently #iagreewithnick, but not all the time.
Chatting with a friend over the weekend, I mentioned the site, and she replied that she couldn’t be bothered: “They never do what they say anyway”. It’s a fair point, and it got me thinking about how you could add a healthy level of cynicism to a policy-based voting model, without giving up on it entirely. In my model, I assume that a political party, once elected, will implement about 30% of the manifesto items I like, and 100% of the manifesto items I dislike. Unless something either wonderful or dreadful happens, I don’t have time to code it up though. Any takers?
