UK Independence Party (UKIP)
South Sefton Branch

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I sometimes agree with more than one of the statements – why do I have to choose between them?

A: In real life, sometimes you agree with more than one party’s policy.  You simply have to choose the most important one.  Often, more than one party has very similar policies on an issue and your score reflects this.  For instance, if you choose the Liberal Democrat position on immigration, you will also ‘earn’ some points for the Green Party position.  Sometimes, a major public belief is not held by ANY of the parties.  For instance, if you choose ‘Yes’ to the death penalty question you will be disappointed by the fact that there isn’t a party that supports it.

Q: How have you made this quiz fair and unbiased?

A: I was not responsible for writing the questions, although I have made a couple of changes to the questions to make the quiz easier to understand and more accessible.  The person who wrote the questions has never been a member of any political party and each party’s policy has been researched through manifestos, policy documents, press releases and speeches made by leading members.  Some of the statements are almost direct quotes from these documents.  There is an element of judgement involved when considering parties’ political philosophies, but this is natural because sometimes even government ministers can’t all agree on an issue!  This makes it difficult for voters to know exactly what they’re voting for.  It’s impossible to come up with a completely scientific way of determining which party you should support – this quiz is intended to be a guide only. 

Q: I didn’t get the result that I expected to get from the quiz.  Why is this?  Is the quiz wrong?

A: Parties’ policies have changed considerably over the last 10 years, and most people don’t know what each party actually stands for now.  This can lead to some surprising results because a lot of policies aren’t well publicised.  If you are left-wing, you would probably get a high score for the Greens’ economic policies even if you aren’t particularly bothered about environmental issues.  Likewise, if you agree with UKIP on everything except the European Union, you will come out with a high UKIP score even though UKIP rarely get media publicity for other issues.

Also, people often vote on the basis of personalities or vote tactically for whichever party they think is most likely to defeat the incumbent.  Of course, the trade-off there is that they are then voting for what they don’t actually want.  That’s the nature of the First-Past-The-Post system in UK politics.

Finally, the quiz doesn’t know which political issue is most important to you, and it is impossible to cover every issue in 20 questions!