Fact-Check – 2019 General Election Results

Fact-Check

Political leaflets and social media posts are not subject to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) requirements that adverts are legal, decent, honest and truthful.

But you can check out the Facts here.

If you get any leaflets with statements or allegations you doubt, send them over and I will gladly Fact-Check them for you.

FACT-CHECK SUMMARY

Claim 1: The results of the 2019 General Election in Surrey Heath looked like this:

Fact-Check 1: The real results looked like this:

WHAT WE ARE FACT CHECKING

This is fact-checking a leaflet delivered at the beginning of September 2022.

It includes a graph described as ‘the result across Surrey Heath at the last General Election in 2019 (see above).

The Facts

The graph is an obvious misrepresentation. It aims to mislead electors that the gap between the Lib Dem vote and the winning vote was smaller than it really was, and to mislead Labour and Green voters that if they switched to the Lib Dems then that would enough to win.

Darrel Huff wrote ‘How to Lie with Statistics‘ after as he was fed up with politicians, advertisers and journalists using statistics to sensationalise, inflate, confuse, oversimplify and – on occasion – downright lie.

Below you can see the true graph; if you hover over it or touch on a phone/tablet you can see the fake one and how its been distorted:

It might pass the ‘decency’ test if it said “not to scale” next to it, but as presented it is blatantly misleading.

 

 

 

Stuart Black, September 2022.