The unique format of our survey means we are directly presenting policies from each party, rather than asking you questions and matching your responses to political parties. It’s also a limitation of our survey method because it means 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 have two criteria to meet:

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

That means for Scotland we show policies from the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, and the Scottish National Party. Alba is not included because they don’t meet criteria #2, Scottish Greens don’t meet criteria #1. 

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.

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.

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.

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:

1. Have at least one Member of Parliament
2. 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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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

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. 

To make a fully informed choice about any policy would require a significant amount of background information, feasibility checks and fact-checking. In response to user requests, we have started experimenting with ways we can start to provide this information for the users who want it, without detracting from the survey experience for those users who don’t. Our initial trial focuses on a few immigration topics, and referencing open research from the House of Commons Library. Policies where this further context is available can be identified by a blue icon. We hope to provide more of these before polling day if time allows, and if feedback is positive.