Electoral Reform Society Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020 7 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Democracy in the Dark – our new report from two of the UK’s leading election finance academics Dr @KateDommett
and Dr @sampower reveals a major rise in online spending during the 2019 general election – with little transparency over how it was used.
electoral-reform.org.uk/ers-reveals-th…
The £19.5 million the Conservatives raised in the six weeks leading up to the election is greater than the sum total of reported donations to all political parties in 2017 during the same period (Chart: Weekly pre-poll donations over £7,500)
2019 saw big donors that were far more willing to part with their cash than in 2017 – the total reported donations in the run up to the vote topped £30.4 million (All parties, donations over £7,500).
We can see that while Facebook was used by all three national parties to a relatively equal extent, the Conservatives invested dramatically more in Google. (As reported by advertising archives)
The headline figures for Facebook do not give a full impression of the political campaign though. If we include these other types of party campaigner, we see that Labour outspent the other parties. (Data reported by advertising archives)
It's not just parties spending money on Facebook, looking at the data from the Facebook API, 88 organisations were coded as non-party campaign groups. These groups placed 13,197 adverts at a calculated cost of £2,711,452.
Our analogue electoral laws are not designed for digital campaigns like these. With our new report, Democracy in the Dark, we're calling on the government to take urgent action, far beyond merely a consultation on digital imprints.
electoral-reform.org.uk/ers-reveals-th…

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More from @electoralreform

Dec 12, 2022
Today is the 3rd Anniversary of the 2019 General Election ge2019.electoral-reform.org.uk
As always, the parliament we ended up with looked nothing like the way we voted - this is because Westminster's voting system warps the results. Two pie charts show how we voted in 2019 and the percentages
With First Past the Post, minuscule changes in the vote can have major impacts. The Conservatives gained a 7% increase in seats from 2017 – on a 1% increase in vote share - delivering their largest majority since 1987. The Lib Dems increased their vote share, but lost a seat. The Conservatives' 1.3 percentage point increase in votes be
Read 5 tweets
May 6, 2022
As results are announced today for councils across the country, we are already starting to see some wildly disproportionate results.
It doesn't have to be like this, when Scottish council results are announced later, the seats each party get will be in proportion to how many people voted for them - as they don't use first past the post. ers.tools/local-democracy
Read 7 tweets
May 4, 2022
What can london learn from how Scotland runs their local elections? Read our new briefing: electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-an…
The last batch of local elections in London saw some wild divergence between how Londoners voted and what their councils look like.
All the main parties won more seats than they deserved in some areas in 2018, but lost out in others.
Read 7 tweets
Apr 28, 2022
The #ElectionsBill, which passed last night, will make it harder to vote for millions, while making it easier for the government to control the Electoral Commission. It’s a travesty that parliamentarians passed a Bill that erodes our precious democracy. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
The law will only make it harder for some people - older people can use bus passes and 60+ Oyster cards as valid forms of ID - but young people’s railcards, and student Oyster cards will not be permitted. bigissue.com/news/politics/…
The government overrode a compromise amendment, suggested by a Conservative Peer, that would have expanded the list of acceptable IDs - instead they adopted their own arbitrary and restrictive list.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 23, 2022
The #ElectionsBill is having its second reading in the House of Lords today - there is a lot wrong with this bill, from spending millions to make it harder to vote, to reducing the independence of our Electoral Commission.
Around 2.1 million people lack the necessary identification for their voter ID scheme, according to the government’s own research. Checking millions of documents and supplying ID will cost up to £180 million a decade electoral-reform.org.uk/expensive-vote…
Poll workers will have the power to turn voters away if they think an old photo doesn't look enough like them. Unlike border police, poll workers are not specially trained to do this sort of work. Growing a beard or getting a bold haircut shouldn't disenfranchise you.
Read 7 tweets
Jan 31, 2022
Following the retirement of Viscount Ridley there is going to be a Conservative hereditary peer by-election. The 45 Conservative hereditary peers in the Lords will be voting to select who will get a seat in the Lords for life as his replacement. parliament.uk/globalassets/d…
Candidates, drawn from a list of Conservative hereditary peers outside the Lords, submit short, often bizarre, statements such as the below to garner support. Image
This time though, one candidate has gone a bit further than usual, submitting a peculiar YouTube search link as his statement... youtube.com/results?search… Image
Read 5 tweets

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