6/13/2009

Who say's the Tories don't lie with their bar charts on leaflets in Norwich North ?

I have received my first leaflet of the campaign. I know a Lib Dem leaflet is going out already in other parts of the constituency. As soon as I get it, I will put it on this blog.

The interesting thing was though that the Tories, who are so holier than thou when making accusations against the Lib Dems about bar charts, are seemingly unable to produce an accurate bar chart themselves.

As you can see the Tory column on the graph overstates their vote by about 5%, and the Green vote too by about 2%, seemingly to make the Lib Dem look much more evenly balanced with other opposition parties and the Tories much further ahead.

What confuses me is why, when the Tories were in a clear second last time, they feel the need to alter the bar charts ?

1 comment:

Foregone Conclusion said...

Hmmm. I really don't see the problem. I mean, it would be shocking if they made our bar very tiny, but it really isn't that bad. The point of bar charts is to show who's first, who's second, and who's not got a chance.

The most disingenuous bar chart I've seen in a FPTP election was in a Tory leaflet last May, which showed the results from the 2007 council election that put the Tories first, Labour second and the Lib Dems third. The tagline was, quite reasonably on the basis of that, 'it's between Labour and the Conservatives here!' What they failed to mention was that later in 2007, the single sitting Labour councillor had resigned because he was up in court for benefit fraud, and that in the subsequent election Labour had been absolutely hammered with the Lib Dems in a narrow second place.

Pages