Voting Probability

Are you likely to vote (this is from England; translations to American in brackets):

First of all, rate on a scale of one to five your level of personal contact from political parties (C), your belief that the parties can deal with the issues (I), your parents' interest in politics (P), your perception of whether or not your vote will count (V), your sense of voting as a duty (D) and the closeness of the national contest (N). (Given these are local [midterm] elections, you should probably ignore the last one.)

Then judge on a scale of 1-3 how safe your own council [House or State House district] is (S), with 1 meaning that any party could gain overall control and 3 that the result is a foregone conclusion.

Lastly, put the figures into the equation (C+I+P+(VxD)+N)/S=X. X - geddit? - is your level of motivation to vote.

Over 15: Very likely to vote
10-14: Will vote if you can make time for it
5-9: Believe in the right to vote but are unsure whether it makes a difference
Under 5: Cannot see why you should bother

For the record, my results:

Category	out of	My score
C (contact with parties)	5	3
I (faith in parties' policy acumen)	5	2
P (parents' interest in politics)	5	4
V (vote will count?)	5	3
D (voting as a duty)	5	5
N (national contest close?)	5	4
S [House or State House district stability]	3	3
(C+I+P+(VxD)+N)/S=X		(3+2+4+(3x5)+4)/3 = 9.3

That's WAY too low for me. Unless I'm more deeply disaffected than I thought, I suspect that I'm less affected by the "perpetual local control" system of gerrymandering, and more motivated by the national race, than average.

Sorta Sequitur: I recently ran across ConWebWatch, which spends almost as much time and energy factchecking right wing spin as the Conservative Movement spends producing it. Their blog is worth a look, to get the latest.