(And as Chris points out, he was not involved – his company hosts the site, and he helped with a bit of optimisation advice.)

More importantly, though – I know that one of you CTers is a red (Liverpool not Marx). Congrats on a truly fine tie. Really lovely stuff.

I did not write this test—it was done by some people at ThoughtPlay. I did spend a couple of minutes doing some optimisations on the server setup, and I did make some comments about the questions, but I didn’t have any influence on how the test works. I’d be grateful if you could correct this in the post at the top….

The site was created by an advertising agency, Thoughtplay Ltd, so I feel pretty safe in saying that it’s not a dispassionate exercise in curiosity. They’re not technically lying when they call it a ‘comparative tool’, but what they mean is that it lets you compare your opinions with those of the Lib Dem manifesto. So I stand by my original diagnosis of ‘sleazy marketing trick’.

It’s unclear from this acknowledgement what role Chris Lightfoot played in the design of the test. Lightfoot evidently does hold some strong political views on certain issues, as this indicates, for example. He also pins down one corner on his own test.

Is this suggestive of a conscious or unconscious agenda in the choice and weighting of questions at “Who Sould You Vote For?” I’m honestly not sure. Your kilometrage may vary.

Lib Dem +30
Green +22
UKIP +10
Labour -3
Tory -17

Isn’t a test of this sort inherently biased against the party in government? If one thought that Labour was, broadly speaking, governing well (presumably a common opinion in Britain), that wouldn’t register too clearly with this sort of question. This may be responsible for some of the difference between users’ expectations and the site’s suggestions.

They do seem to state quite strongly that they aren’t shilling for any party, and I don’t see any glaring loopholes or weasel-words in what they wrote. Which doesn’t mean they’re honest, but it does mean that if they’re actually working for the Lib Dems then the latter are taking something of a risk of severe embarrassment if found out.

(Best candidate loophole I can find: they say that they haven’t “received payment” from any political party or politically motivated organization; that would strictly speaking be compatible with having been promised payment but not paid yet.)

Labour 12
Conservative 33
Liberal Dem -33
UKIP 32
Green -6

I have found that the test can be fairly sensitive to small changes.

In the USA I’m pretty well left-of-center.

They specificially did not cover any of the nation-specific parties (DUP, UUP, SF, SDLP, SNP, SSP, PC) – if they did, they would had to double or triple the number of questions.

I guess I’m thankful as an American – I follow UK elections in a casual way but I can’t say I’ve ever given much thought to, say, Welsh sovereignty. I have no idea what the Northern Ireland parties have to say about anything other than, well, Northern Ireland’s position vis-a-vis the UK. I’ve only gotten the idea that Plaid and SNP are vaguely left-wing in addition to being pro-devolution.

Labour 3
Conservative -18
Liberal Democrat 40
UK Independence Party 1
Green -1

As other commentators noted, a large fraction of the questions concerned Lib Dem policy positions.