next
So what?
- Two separate, meaningful factors
- Both can be described as "left/right", but they are quite different
- First is much more important and has little to do with economics
or Iraq, and a lot to do with immigration, law-and-order, etc. etc.
- First axis separates Labour from the Tories
- Second separates New Labour from Old (roughly)
- No particular clusters: distribution is unimodal on both axes
- ... but that's what we expect from this method anyway
- Parties can't compete much on values (to the extent that they express
their supporters' values)
- ... they're already fighting over the same space
- Fringe parties are not so much on the fringes as mixed up in the whole
lump
- What determines the fraction of people at a given value of x who vote Labour and which Lib Dem?
- Comparing supporters of two parties on any given part of the plot doesn't
reveal organised differences between them in terms of these
questions
- ... there may be other, demographic differences — I haven't had time
to look at these yet