Three reasons why (a few) people still vote Lib Dem

(It’s not satire – it’s the Lib Dems!)

Liberal Democrats and their supporters – the few that remain anyway – fascinate me.

After all, why would a supposedly moderate, liberal, centrist party support a clearly authoritarian Tory administration with the most right-wing policies since Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s?

Well, I’ve been reading up a bit on political and social psychology and I’ve discovered three possible scientific theories which may help to explain this mystery.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias is a tendency for people to favour information that confirms their decisions, beliefs or hypotheses avoiding information which disproves them. Confirmation Bias leads to a selective collection of facts and evidence – favouring those which support a decision, belief or point of view but completely ignoring any evidence which refutes it, no matter how strong or convincing it may be.

Cognitive Dissonance

In modern psychology, Cognitive Dissonance is the strong need to avoid the discomfort…