About Liberty Research

Liberty Research was established in January 2007 as an on-line polling resource for the Liberal Democrats financed by the Campaigns Department. The project was initiated by Andy Mayer from the party’s Shadow Communications Agency with the support of Mark Pack (Innovations), Helen Jardine-Brown (Design), and Amadeus Stevenson (Web)

Liberty Research is three things:

• A brand designed for internal party research (for example membership surveys or policy research)
• A tool to enable campaigners to create fun or mini-polls to enhance their websites
• A tool to enable campaigners to create full-sized surveys primarily for campaigning (for example on-line residents surveys or community consultations)

A fourth element to Liberty Research is an independent not-for-profit company Voter Research Limited which conducts research using the Liberty Research tool with the support of volunteer market research professionals within the party.

Campaign polls are designed both to gather data and promote the party. Like canvassing, they are not representative. Opinion polls on the other hand are designed to remove bias to provide representative insights into various aspects of voter intelligence. A good example of the second type would be a review of election results with a representative sample of switch voters or investigation into postal vote results.

Any research you do with this website is unlikely to be up to the statistical standards of a fully representative opinion poll. Campaign surveys or opinion polls are only as good as the database you send them to and the questions you ask. In addition most professional on-line polling firms use sophisticated weighting formulas to remove the bias introduced by only surveying the on-line population.

Your results can be used for publicity purposes, but bear in mind any survey conducted by a Liberal Democrat body will not be treated with the same seriousness as a professional poll.