Thread by @electoralreform

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…