Rows in Surrey Constituencies over Misleading Campaigning

Published on: 14 Nov, 2019
Updated on: 16 Nov, 2019

Monica Harding at launch of her campaign in Esher and Walton. Photo Nadia Valjalo.

By Rebecca Curley

local democracy reporter

Candidates caught up in a row about misleading residents with polls and statistics say they are changing their figures.

The Surrey constituencies of Woking and Esher and Walton were among those named this week as areas where Liberal Democrats used national projection data in election material or social media posts from a website called Flavible.

A company spokesman said some of their projections had been misinterpreted and mislabelled “for political advantage”.

But Liberal Democrat candidates for the Surrey seats defended their use of data and said they acted accordingly.

Woking candidate Will Forster said he only used Flavible projection figures on one leaflet and he labelled it correctly as guided.

He said he now mainly uses figures from the European elections for his materials and that he is clear and transparent.

Mr Forster added: “The Liberal Democrats and I regularly use the last election, the Europeans in May which showed us winning Woking by a long way, and we want to use that in our literature to show Liberal Democrats are working hard.”

Monica Harding, who is standing in Esher and Walton, said she was alerted to the misleading data and apologised for using it in a post she published on Twitter.

She said: “The tweet in question was made in June, quite early on in the campaign.
“Since August we have been very careful that every polling we put out since then we are very clear of what exactly that is.”

No Green Party candidate is standing in Guildford, Esher and Walton, and South West Surrey, under the national Unite to Remain agreement.

The agreement, between the Lib Dems, Greens and Plaid Cymru, is an effort to ensure as many Remain- supporting MPs as possible are elected on December 12.

Responses to Rows in Surrey Constituencies over Misleading Campaigning

Jim Allen Reply

November 14, 2019 at 2:44 pm

Anyone who relies on statistics in political campaign literature should consider Mark Twain’s famous quote: “There are lies, dammed lies and statistics.”