At a glance comparison of parties?

PGL

Hi folks

I have no allegance to any political party and am nowhere near deciding who to vote for. However I don't want to lazily vote for who I like the look of - I think the best approach is to consider the party before you consider the candidates. However in my ignorance I find it very difficult to separate all of the parties as they are all telling us what we want to hear at the moment!

Is there anywhere I can go to to compare all the parties? i.e. is there some sort of at-a-glance table which for example lists all parties in the rows, while the columns in the table contain all of the important political issues such as public sector jobs cuts, imf re-negotiations, health, education, infrastructure etc - that way one could easily see how the parties compare.

Does something along these lines exist or am I barking up the wrong tree?

cheers!

Mr.Micro

PGL wrote: »

Hi folks

I have no allegance to any political party and am nowhere near deciding who to vote for. However I don't want to lazily vote for who I like the look of - I think the best approach is to consider the party before you consider the candidates. However in my ignorance I find it very difficult to separate all of the parties as they are all telling us what we want to hear at the moment!

Is there anywhere I can go to to compare all the parties? i.e. is there some sort of at-a-glance table which for example lists all parties in the rows, while the columns in the table contain all of the important political issues such as public sector jobs cuts, imf re-negotiations, health, education, infrastructure etc - that way one could easily see how the parties compare.

Does something along these lines exist or am I barking up the wrong tree?

cheers!

Well to be honest you can compare FF as it has been in power for 14 years and look at the state of the nation....ample evidence of who not to vote for IMO.

The others its up to you to have a read of their manifestos to see if their programme will suit your expectations.:)

Agamemnon

I think this might be what you're looking for:

http://www.rte.ie/news/election2011/party_comparison.html

antomack

There is also a website comparethepolicy that summarises the main items of each manifesto.

tommy21

You could try www.votomatic.ie - it asks you a series of questions and totes up your score to tell you your most compatible party - of course I don't know if it has been set up by an independent source or not!

PGL

thanks for all the suggestions folks - definately helps me get my head around it all!

However I'm not sure how accurate Votomatic and Compare the Policy are:

eg in the case of completing Metro North, Votomatic says that Labour somewhat disagree, while Compare the Policy says that Labour propose to complete Metro North.

Votomatic calculated that I am a hardcore FG supporter, however when I took the political test elsewhere on the boards website, it suggested that I am most in favour of the Greens. I suppose it all boils down to the questions being asked....

what do the rest of ye think?

NotorietyH

PGL wrote: »

thanks for all the suggestions folks - definately helps me get my head around it all!

However I'm not sure how accurate Votomatic and Compare the Policy are:

eg in the case of completing Metro North, Votomatic says that Labour somewhat disagree, while Compare the Policy says that Labour propose to complete Metro North.

Votomatic calculated that I am a hardcore FG supporter, however when I took the political test elsewhere on the boards website, it suggested that I am most in favour of the Greens. I suppose it all boils down to the questions being asked....

what do the rest of ye think?

I've found that with votematic and the other sites that they give each question equal importance, whereas with me there's certain issues I think are crucially important where I may be more right leaning being given equal importance to issues that I'd be more left-leaning, but less concerned about. So on one I test I was pretty much centre-left, when, for this election anyway, I'm probably more centre-right.

I think they're an okay guideline, as long as you realise they're giving every answer equal importance, say giving equal importance to question relating to the environment and the health system, whereas you could be very passionate about the health system, and the environment could be fairly far down your list of important issues.

I think the flaw in the one I did that plots your political opinion on a chart, was that there was no "no opinion," or " neither agree or disagree" option so you had to take a side.