SimonSmith

Recently, SimonSmith...

• commented on EU Profiler: voting advice application for the 2009 EP elections over 2 years ago.

  That will be fascinating data! But it will be data about more informed voters - simply because they will have used the profiler tool. Will you have comparable data about control groups? You would presumably expect the 'average voter' to be more strongly oriented to national parties than someone who has used the tool.

• commented on EU Profiler: voting advice application for the 2009 EP elections over 2 years ago.

  Sounds interesting - not least because, if it links national and European political parties' positions in a legible way, it could help a European political public sphere to seem more real in the minds of voters.

• commented on Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? over 2 years ago.

  The numbers seem quite small to me, when you consider the population of London. Daily polls in newspapers can get well over 10,000 votes. Is that a sign of a relative lack of interest, or a sign that the process demanded a certain amount of time/trouble? (which could be a good thing, if only to ensure that most votes are authentic votes).

• tagged Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? with the tag parks over 3 years ago.

• commented on Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? over 3 years ago.

  This calls to my mind some research about collective action in Brighton and Torbay which found that protest campaigns involved greater numbers of less committed individuals in the case of parks than in the case of air and beach quality issues in the same cities (PENNINGTON, M. & RYDIN, Y. (2000) Researching social capital in local environmental policy contexts, Policy & Politics, 28, pp.233-49). So on the plus side parks are probably a good choice of issue if ...