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Spinning Here
Like many voters, I occasionally receive leaflets from political parties.
This article looks at claims made in a recent Liberal Democrat leaflet.
“WINNING”
In one panel, I can spot multiple problems.
The bar chart is disproportionate and mislabelled
The graphic designer impresses that 82 is roughly one third of 1,334.
Additionally, whilst it is labelled ‘Local election result, May 2019’, the graph is plainly showing the net change in councillors.
Clear winners?
The leaflet asserts:
The Liberal Democrats were the clear winners across the UK in both the local and European elections this year.
As can be seen in the table above, the Liberal Democrats had the third highest count of councillors. However, local elections are local, so making national inferences can be flawed.
We can instead look at the local election national equivalent vote share, calculated by Prof Rallings and Prof Thrasher (University of Plymouth).
