Exclusive: Investigation into campaigning materials for local polls in May challenges tactical voting claims
Election leaflets are providing “grotesque” information about how to vote tactically in the May elections, using national polling data, “dodgy” bar charts and doorstep surveys to support claims about parties’ chances of winning.
Leaflets distributed by local politicians across England are claiming that only their party can win, or that another party “can’t win here”, when there is no good evidence to show this is true, a Full Fact investigation for the Guardian has revealed.
Some of the campaigning material Full Fact looked at that contained a chart or graphic “failed to provide reliable evidence to back up a specific claim about how people are likely to vote locally, or were unsourced or misleading in some other way”, with examples from all the major parties.
Readers who responded to a Guardian callout shared images of leaflets they had received. Some said they had at first thought a leaflet from the Conservatives was from the Green party, because it was printed in green with only a small Conservative logo.
