2024 General Election survey - Vote for Policies

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Quick Start

Who should I vote for in the 2024 General Election?

Get clear on who’s promising what for the issues that matter to you

How does Vote for Policies work?

voters know what they're voting for

Quick start: Top 3 issues

Includes Economy, Health, Immigration

6 mins

or select your own issues

You're nearly there!
See whose policies you prefer

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Which issues matter to you?

Each issue takes 1-3 minutes to complete

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Select all 16

Crime

Police, prevention, prisons, hate crimes

Democracy

The voting system, ethics and devolution

Economy

Revenue, debt, public vs private, trade

Education

Schools, teachers, funding, post-16

Energy

Household, renewables, fossil fuels

Environment

Emissions, aviation, farming and water

Equalities & Rights

Human rights, race, LGBTQ+ and disability

Foreign Policy & Defence

Foreign aid, defence, Israel & Palestine

Health & Social Care

Health and social, mental health and funding

Housing

New and social housing, renting, and homelessness

Immigration

Border controls, rights, asylum and refugees

Jobs & Work

Wages, rights, training, apprenticeships

Pensions

Pension value and benefits

Tax

Income and other personal taxes

Transport

Rail, roads, buses, walking, cycling

Welfare

Allowances and benefits

Start Survey

Take the private renters policy comparison survey

How does Vote for Policies work?

We’re a non-partisan, volunteer-run not-for-profit on a mission to create a fair, inclusive democracy that works for everyone. Our unique policy comparison survey helps you compare promises from the main parties' manifestos, so you know what you’re voting for, not just who.

Better protections from eviction

The long-awaited Renters (Reform) Bill is finally in Parliament. Generation Rent are now campaigning to ensure that the Bill works to truly improve the lives of private renters.

Find out more

Step 1

Select your issues

What matters to you? Choose as many or as few as you like

Step 2

Pick your favourite...

For each issue, we show you the policies but not which parties they are from! Pick your favourite.

Step 3

Get your results

Find out who you really align with and on which issues. And what you can do next.

FAQs

How does the survey work?

We take policies from the election manifestos from each of the main political parties, across a range of topics. For each topic (such as the environment, economy, education, housing, and so on) we display the policies from one party at a time, in a random order, and without the party’s name being visible. As a user you simply choose which policies they prefer, for as many topics as you selected. Your results show you which party’s policies you selected for each topic. There is no algorithm or matching – it’s based purely on your preference of the policies presented to you.

How do you decide which parties to include?

Because we are directly presenting policies from each party (rather than matching their policies to your responses) we are limited in the number of parties we can include while keeping the survey manageable. Equally, we also want to ensure the policies you compare are from parties you can actually vote for in your constituency. For this reason, we only include parties that:

Have at least one Member of Parliament
Are fielding candidates in at least 70% of constituencies across the UK (or in a specific nation, if a nationalist party)

That means for England we show policies from the Conservatives, the Green Party of England & Wales, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and Reform UK. For Wales also add policies from Plaid Cymru. For Scotland we show policies from the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, and the Scottish National Party.
To see the full list of candidates from every party, including independents, who are standing for election in your constituency, head to your results page or your constituency page.

How do you decide what policies to include?

The Vote for Policies survey can only skim the surface of what’s covered in the manifestos. We focus on general issues (such as Education, Health, Jobs, and so on) and within each issue we want to cover the headline topics – things that most people would expect to see policies for, or that are particularly current. Then once all the manifestos are out we revisit the topics, and consider the number of parties saying something about that particular topic, and whether they are saying anything different to each other. These factors can influence what we include because we want to provide a comparison that is useful and meaningful for our users.

We send our policy summaries to the political parties for verification in advance of publishing, and discuss any proposed changes. To date (22 June, 2024) only two out of the seven parties have not responded.

What about 'devolved' issues in Scotland and Wales?

Our general election survey compares policies across sixteen issues from parties standing for election in the UK parliament – or ‘Westminster’. However, some of the sixteen issues are ‘devolved’ – meaning that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own powers to legislate on those issues independently from the UK parliament. That means certain policies we’re comparing affect people in England, but not in Scotland or Wales where their national parliaments will decide (and for which they will be elected separately).

Unfortunately, that also means where we include nationalist parties like the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales, those parties will have fewer (or no) policies for the devolved issues. They will have nothing to say because the issue isn’t decided in Westminster. It represents a shortcoming in our survey for users in Scotland and Wales, because it makes for a sub-optimal comparison. It’s even more pronounced for Northern Ireland parties, which is largely why we don’t cover them.

Key devolved issues relevant to our survey include agriculture, economic development, education and training, environment, health and social care, local government, housing, transport, and justice and policing (in Scotland & Northern Ireland only, not Wales) and some social welfare (also Scotland and Northern Ireland only).

For more information, try this government factsheet .

Why is Northern Ireland not included?

Regrettably we haven’t been able to include Northern Ireland in the countries we support. This is because the main parties are so focussed on local / country-specific issues, many of the categories we are using just don’t reflect the manifestos. Sinn Féin don’t publish a ‘Westminster’ manifesto and for those parties that do the difference in categories is quite significant, so our survey won’t reflect their manifestos accurately. Knowing that the survey won’t provide much value to voters in Northern Ireland – and with such limited capacity as a volunteer-led organisation – we instead focus our efforts on the other three nations of the UK.

Are you politically neutral?

Vote for Policies is a completely independent organisation, without any political affiliation. We send our policy summaries to the political parties for verification in advance of publishing, and discuss any changes that are proposed.
We are volunteer-run and any income we receive comes from donations. In the past we have received small grants from philanthropic organisations. If you find our service useful, please consider donating.

What happens to my data?

We do not sell any data, and only collect data necessary to provide our service. Please read our privacy policy for more details.

Where can I find out more?

For more information head to our about page or read our strategy. If you want to support our work to create a fairer, healthier society where democracy is accessible to all, please consider a monthly donation to help fund more services, and ensure we’re here at the next election too.