Green and Lib Dem voters are cleverest, says research

[luke]

Green and Lib Dem voters are cleverest, says research
A paper published in the journal Intelligence makes fascinating reading

If the results of general elections are anything to go by, voting Green or Liberal Democrat must be a thankless task. But now the supporters of these parties can console themselves with the knowledge that, although they may not elect a prime minister, there's a good chance that they are cleverer than the people who do.

Academic research published in the journal Intelligence compares the way people voted in the 2001 election with their IQ at the age of 10 (using data from the 1970 British cohort study). The results are fascinating.

On a party-by-party basis, the average (childhood) IQ scores for 2001 voters were:

Green - 108.3

Liberal Democrat - 108.2

Conservative - 103.7

Labour – 103

Plaid Cymru - 102.5

Scottish National - 102.2

UK Independence - 101.1

British National - 98.4

Did not vote/None of the above - 99.7

The research was based on a survey involving 6,000 people, so it's obviously pretty authoritative.

Unfortunately, the full article is only available to subscribers. But you can read the abstract here, in which the authors say there is also a correlation between high childhood intelligence and an above-average interest in politics.

I suspect that may partly explain the figures, because people who are apathetic about politics may be unlikely to vote Green or Lib Dem in the first place. (Clever political activists can also vote Labour or Tory, but – because of the apathy vote – there may be proportionally fewer of them voting for the two main parties.) But this can't be the full explanation, and the authors don't seem to offer one either.

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isn't it funny that those who vote bnp have a lower iq than those who can't even work out who to vote for

[faceless]

haha, good point Luke.