General election 2024: What to watch out for with bar charts claiming who can win your seat

general-election-2024:-what-to-watch-out-for-with-bar-charts-claiming-who-can-win-your-seat
General election 2024: What to watch out for with bar charts claiming who can win your seat

Political leaflets are increasingly containing tactical messages, according to Professor Caitlin Milazzo from the University of Nottingham. About half of the leaflets seen this year by Milazzo’s Open Elections project contain tactical messages, compared to 25% in the 2019 general elections. Tactical messages are used by rival parties as part of their strategy to lure voters. For example, the Liberal Democrats may try to get Labour and Green supporters to vote for them in an effort to defeat the Conservatives, and vice versa.

However, political parties use different data sources to back up their claims, and bar charts can be confusing and misleading. Mixing and matching different pieces of data is a common tactic. The Liberal Democrats are particularly fond of tactical messaging, as more than 90% of their leaflets contain such messages, compared to fewer than one in ten Conservative leaflets. In Central Devon, for example, a bar chart on one leaflet showed vote shares for parties, but the Conservatives had no representation.

Many leaflets rely on data from the last UK general election, but this can be problematic. Firstly, the popularity of parties has changed since 2019, and secondly, many constituencies have had their boundaries redrawn. Local elections can be an unreliable guide because people vote differently in them than in general elections. Polling is another option, but these are snapshots of opinion, and much can change during an election campaign.

In conclusion, voters need to be wary of misleading bar charts that are often found in political leaflets. The information provided may have been strategically selected to suit different parties’ messages, and parties can use tactical messages to lure voters in their favour. Therefore, voters should verify the information on the leaflets rather than relying solely on the charts

Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More