Clever kids 'opt for Greens or Lib Dems'
Kids' intelligence 'influences political allegiance'
Bright children are more likely to vote for the Green party or the Liberal Democrats, research suggests.
A study funded by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) claims that youngsters' general intelligence is associated with a person's political allegiance as much as it is with social class.
The researchers from the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology and the MRC maintain that childhood intelligence is also linked to voting preferences in adulthood.
Professor Ian Deary, who works for the university's Department of Psychology and led the research, said voting in the UK had previously been studied with respect to education and social class.
"The association between measured intelligence in childhood - before any secondary education - and how people participate in the democratic process is something that needs exploring [further]," he explains.
According to the team, voting behaviour of more than 6,000 adults was analysed using the 1970 British Cohort Study.
It included cognitive tests at the ages of five and ten, followed by questions about voting habits at 34 years old.
The research, published in the journal Intelligence, concluded that average IQ scores for voters in the 2001 general election suggest those who opted for the Green Party were brightest, with a score of 108.3, followed by Liberal Democrats (108.2), Conservatives (103.7), and Labour (103).
In this election the Lib Dems won 52 seats, compared to Labour's 413 and the Tories' 166.
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