Harry Geels: The nonsense of voting advice applications
This column was originally written in Dutch. This is an English translation.
By Harry Geels
There seem to be more and more undecided voters. They are filling in voting advice applications en masse, looking for guidance. But political convictions cannot be captured in propositions, only in a better understanding of our deeper convictions. There is a better approach.
It's election time again, so the servers of Stemwijzer and Kieskompas are working overtime. Millions of Dutch citizens are clicking through thirty statements, hoping for a magical match with a political party. There are variations in the method of calculation: some indicators look at the election programmes, others at the actual voting behaviour in the House of Commons. People often do not recognise themselves in the voting advice. It cannot be ruled out that there is a bias in the results.
The questions are often trivial (“The government should allocate more money to culture”), symptomatic (“There should be a general ban on fireworks”), or quite complicated (“The minimum wage should be increased further next year”). The statements often change with each election. And what is considered “progressive” today will be outdated tomorrow. The voting advice tool treats politics like a shopping list: just tick what you like. But politics is not a supermarket, it is a world view.
Two centuries-old tensions
If you want to know where you really stand, you should not start with individuals or policy details, but with the big political ideas behind them. Not: what do I think of the student loan system? But: do I believe that the state should regulate everything, or as little as possible? And: do I feel primarily a citizen of my country, or a citizen of the world? Reading the history books carefully, we arrive at two centuries-old political tensions that say much more than thirty propositions ever could:
- Communism ↔ Libertarianism – the extent to which the state intervenes in the lives of citizens.
- Nationalism ↔ Supranationalism – the question of where power and identity should lie: within borders or beyond them.
Figure 1: The two classic political tensions
Determine your place in the coordinate system and you will see more clearly which parties suit you or, conversely, do not suit you at all. If you consider your own culture and limited government to be important, you will end up in the upper right quadrant of the “conservatives”. If you feel like a liberal global citizen, you will be in the lower right quadrant, among the “liberal cosmopolitans”. If you want a regulating (redistributive) government and are nationalistic, you will be in the quadrant of the “collectivists”. At the bottom left, we find the “progressives”.
Figure 2: The Dutch political landscape
Why the axis approach works better
Of course, determining the position in the axis system is not the end of the story. There are often several parties around the chosen point. A choice would then have to be made. There is also a disadvantage to this method: political parties do not always act in accordance with their underlying political ideology. However, the axis determination proposed here works well. When I asked ten “floaters” to determine their position in Figure 1, I was able to identify the parties between which someone is undecided with remarkable precision.
There are roughly six reasons why an axis approach works better. Firstly, this approach is clear. It places the political movement within two main themes, without us getting lost in thirty or more separate themes. Secondly, there is historical depth here. These axes form the core of the political battle of ideas since the Enlightenment. Thirdly, it makes choosing a party a little easier. We first make a selection before we start studying long party programmes.
Fourthly, this approach forces us to reflect more deeply. We have to think about broader political principles, not about party leaders or populist positions. Fifthly, it frees us from the damaging and polarising left-right frame. There are not two camps, but four broad ideological directions that together form the real political landscape. Finally, self-knowledge is stimulated. Those who know their own position are less guided by populism and more by consistency.
In conclusion
We do not need to look for the perfect match in a party, but for coherence in our beliefs. Those who know where they stand on the major axes of power (public or private) and identity (local or international) no longer need to be led by the issues of the day. Political maturity does not begin with a proposition, but with self-knowledge. Perhaps we should not ask “who do I vote for?”, but “where do I stand?”. The answer to that question is often more enlightening... and more honest.
This article contains the personal opinion of Harry Geels