Voters contend with ‘dodgy’ data in party leaflets for English local elections

91~~/100~~

Verdict High Trust Highly Credible — Accurately Sourced Reporting with Minor Temporal and Unverifiable-Detail Caveats

✓ 20 checks out ✕ 2 disputed ? 7 unverified

☰ Full analysis The complete summary ⌄

The article is a faithful and substantially verifiable account of a Full Fact investigation, published in partnership with the Guardian in late April 2026, into misleading bar charts and tactical-voting claims in English local election leaflets ahead of the 7 May 2026 polls. The core quantitative spine of the piece — 331 leaflets from Democracy Club's ElectionLeaflets.org archive uploaded in the first two weeks of April, 59 containing a chart or graphic, and 14 judged unsourced, misleading or unsupported — matches Full Fact's own published methodology and findings (https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/). Each named case study (Labour in Ealing Common; Greens in Gateshead; Conservatives in Haslemere; Reform UK in Chelmsford; Liberal Democrats in Eastgate and Moreton Hall, Suffolk) appears in Full Fact's primary write-up, as do the direct quotations attributed to Full Fact's editor Steve Nowottny and to polling analyst Peter Kellner, and Ealing Labour's right-of-reply. Verifiable contextual details also hold up: the Liberal Democrats did hold two of Ealing Common's three council seats before May 2026 (Cllrs Jon Ball and Connie Hersch), and YouGov's national voting intention did shift from the Greens second in early March 2026 (Reform 23%, Greens 21%) to third in mid-April 2026 (Reform 24%, Conservatives 19%, Greens 18%), consistent with the article's characterisation. Deductions are applied for: (a) a time-sensitive relative claim ('currently puts the Greens third') that has since moved — YouGov's 9–10 August 2026 poll placed the Greens fourth on 12%; (b) reader-callout anecdotes (a green-coloured Conservative leaflet mistaken for the Greens; 'very dubious' Lib Dem statistics) which are inherently non-replicable; (c) the cited YouGov article of March 2025 underpinning the Lib Dem leaflet quote, which could not be located directly in searches; and (d) the supplied text has all hyperlinks stripped, so in-article sourcing could not be inspected as published. No claim in the article was found to be false.

What checked out (20)

Full Fact carried out an investigation for the Guardian into misleading tactical-voting claims and 'dodgy' bar charts in local election leaflets ahead of the May elections (primary: https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/; secondary reproduction of the Guardian copy: https://www.britbrief.co.uk/politics/polling/voters-face-dodgy-data-in-local-election-leaflets.html, 27 April 2026).
Full Fact analysed 331 leaflets from across England uploaded to Democracy Club's online archive in the first two weeks of April, identified 59 charts or graphics, and judged at least 14 leaflets to be unsourced, misleading, or lacking reliable evidence for claims about local voting intention (primary: https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
Full Fact stated that examples came from all the major parties, and that its analysis did not attempt to be representative of the national picture but assessed what a voter might understand from each chart and whether reliable evidence supported it (primary: https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
Full Fact's breakdown of the 14 examples — at least four using national polling instead of locally relevant data, three using other data such as Westminster results or projections, and two giving no source at all — is consistent with the article's summary characterisation (primary: https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
A Labour leaflet in Ealing Common, west London, warned voters not to 'let Reform sneak in here' and carried a bar chart labelled 'Greens can't win here' with an arrow marking the green bar 'Wasted vote!' (https://www.britbrief.co.uk/politics/polling/voters-face-dodgy-data-in-local-election-leaflets.html; https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
The Ealing Common Labour chart's coloured bars came from the 2024 London Assembly constituency-member result for Ealing and Hillingdon, a far larger area than the ward, which accounts for three of Ealing's 70 councillors; Full Fact described the added extra bar as producing a misleading and confusing picture (primary: https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
The Liberal Democrats held two of Ealing Common's three seats going into the 7 May 2026 election: sitting councillors Jon Ball and Connie Hersch were reselected alongside a new candidate (https://ealing.news/politics/ealing-lib-dems-select-ealing-common-candidates-for-2026-local-elections/, 11 July 2025; ward context: https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/elections/local.ealing.ealing-common.2026-05-07/).
Ealing Labour's response — that the diagram was an illustration of what could happen in a competitive election and conveyed the point that Reform were attempting real gains in Ealing, 'a common method of trying to make that point during an election campaign' — is reproduced in Full Fact's primary write-up (https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
A Green party leaflet in Gateshead showed Reform in the lead with the Greens second beneath the headline that the 'Greens are now the only alternative to Reform', based on YouGov polling from March (primary: https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
YouGov's 1–2 March 2026 national voting intention had Reform UK 23% and the Greens 21% — Reform leading, Greens second — consistent with the leaflet's underlying data (https://x.com/YouGov/status/2028765671304167655).
YouGov's national poll had moved the Greens to third by mid-April 2026 (12–13 April 2026: Reform 24%, Conservatives 19%, Greens 18%, Labour 17%, Lib Dems 13%), supporting the article's statement that the same pollster 'currently puts the Greens third' at the time of publication (https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54524-voting-intention-12-13-april-2026-ref-24-con-19-grn-18-lab-17-ld-13).
Peter Kellner's position that national voting figures have no relevance to local council contests is quoted in Full Fact's primary article (https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
A Reform UK leaflet in Chelmsford gave no source for a bar chart putting Reform on 34% and the Conservatives and Labour on 16%; Full Fact found Reform had polled at 34% with at least one pollster but found no exact match for the Conservative and Labour figures at the same time (https://www.britbrief.co.uk/politics/polling/voters-face-dodgy-data-in-local-election-leaflets.html).
Full Fact described the Chelmsford chart as 'completely out of proportion', with a calibration tool indicating that if the Reform bar represented 34%, the Labour and Conservative bars corresponded to roughly 9% rather than 16% (https://www.britbrief.co.uk/politics/polling/voters-face-dodgy-data-in-local-election-leaflets.html; follow-up: https://fullfact.org/politics/election-2026-leaflet-results/).
A Liberal Democrat leaflet in Eastgate and Moreton Hall, Suffolk, stated 'It's Lib Dem or Reform here' while its bar chart showed the Conservatives second and the Lib Dems third (https://www.britbrief.co.uk/politics/polling/voters-face-dodgy-data-in-local-election-leaflets.html; https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
A Conservative leaflet in Haslemere, west Surrey, told voters 'Reform can't win here' based on 2024 general election data for the whole county, which Full Fact called 'very unreliable evidence' (https://www.britbrief.co.uk/politics/polling/voters-face-dodgy-data-in-local-election-leaflets.html).
Steve Nowottny is Full Fact's editor and is accurately quoted saying there is nothing wrong with parties making a case to voters but that too many leaflets make overblown, dodgy claims with cherrypicked, misleading or unreliable data (https://www.britbrief.co.uk/politics/polling/voters-face-dodgy-data-in-local-election-leaflets.html; role listings: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/steve-nowottny-838b671, https://theorg.com/org/full-fact/org-chart/steve-nowottny).
Kellner's closing remarks — that 'the mechanics of democracy work reasonably well' in the UK, that party disinformation is a 'small part of a larger jigsaw' eroding trust over two decades, and his definition-based conclusion that this is 'bad for democracy' — are reproduced verbatim in the syndicated Guardian copy (https://www.britbrief.co.uk/politics/polling/voters-face-dodgy-data-in-local-election-leaflets.html).
Peter Kellner's senior YouGov affiliation is genuine: he served as YouGov chairman and subsequently as its president until stepping down in 2016 (https://www.research-live.com/article/news/peter-kellner-steps-down-as-yougov-president/id/5002872; https://www.mrweb.com/drno/news22219.htm).
Democracy Club operates the ElectionLeaflets.org crowdsourced leaflet archive used as the article's dataset, and 2026 English leaflets are publicly browsable there (https://electionleaflets.org/leaflets/?filter_by_region=ENG&filter_by_year=2026; https://democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/03/03/the-return-of-electionleafletsorg/).

✕ Disputed claims 2 claims ⌄

Precision caveat rather than falsehood: the article says 14 leaflets 'included a chart or graphic ... unsourced or misleading', whereas Full Fact's primary text says 'at least 14', a marginally more hedged formulation (https://fullfact.org/politics/election-leaflets-2026/).
Temporal caveat rather than falsehood: 'the same pollster currently puts the Greens third' was defensible in mid-April 2026 but is now outdated — YouGov's 19–20 April 2026 poll had the Greens level-second on 17%, and by 9–10 August 2026 the Greens were fourth on 12% (https://x.com/YouGov/status/2046504222112309365; https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/55331-voting-intention-9-10-august-2026-lab-24-ref-22-con-21-grn-12-ld-11).

? Unverified claims 7 claims ⌄

Reader-callout anecdote that some recipients initially mistook a Conservative leaflet for Green party material because it was printed in green with a small Conservative logo — Unverified: this rests on unnamed Guardian readers' impressions and no independent record of that specific 2026 leaflet was located (a documented 2023 precedent exists at https://broadland.greenparty.org.uk/2023/01/23/conservatives-are-branding-leaflets-to-copy-those-of-the-green-party/, but it does not evidence the 2026 instance).
Reader-callout anecdote describing 'very dubious' Liberal Democrat statistics presenting a party as 'the only sensible way to vote' — Unverified: attributed to an anonymous reader and not traceable to a specific archived leaflet.
Kellner's comparison that 'if commercial companies were making some of these claims, they wouldn't be allowed to get away with it' — Unverified as a specific quotation: not located in accessible copies of the primary or syndicated text, although the underlying regulatory gap is documented (https://www.asa.org.uk/news/most-political-players-shun-ad-standards-that-big-companies-sign-up-to.html).
The YouGov article of March 2025 said to underpin the Lib Dem leaflet's 'most likely to see off Reform UK' quote, and the associated statement by the Lib Dem candidate's agent that 'the image is illustrative and not a true graph as such' — Unverified: the specific March 2025 YouGov publication and the agent's statement were not retrievable in searches, though the Suffolk leaflet case itself is confirmed by Full Fact.
Full Fact's characterisation that it was 'reasonable for political parties to address significant swings in the national polls' — Unverified as worded: the sentiment is consistent with Full Fact's stated methodology, but the exact qualifying passage and its linked evidence were not directly recovered from the primary page.
The identity and nature of the 'online calibration tool' used to measure the Reform bar heights — Unverified: referenced by Full Fact but the tool itself was not identified in retrieved material.
All in-article hyperlinks were stripped from the supplied text, so the article's own sourcing chain (including the Guardian's publication URL and date) could not be inspected as published; publication timing was inferred from syndicated copy dated 27 April 2026.

⌕ Sources & how we checked Search journal, source grades, confidence ⌄

Confidence

High (0.87) — Confidence is high because the article's load-bearing claims — the investigating organisation and its commissioning partner, the sample methodology and counts, all five named leaflet case studies, the quoted assessments from Full Fact's editor and Peter Kellner, the parties' responses, and the underlying YouGov polling positions — were corroborated against the fact-checker's own primary publication, dated pollster releases, a dated syndicated copy of the Guardian text, and independent local reporting confirming the Ealing Common seat count. Confidence is held below the maximum for four reasons: the Guardian's own page could not be opened directly, so quotation verification depended on a dated reproduction; several peripheral items (the March 2025 YouGov article, the Lib Dem agent's statement, the Kellner commercial-advertising line, the identity of the pollster showing Reform on 34%, and the calibration tool used) could not be independently confirmed and are recorded as Unverified rather than False in line with the guardrails; the reader-callout anecdotes are structurally unverifiable; and one relative polling statement is time-decayed, since YouGov's most recent August 2026 figures place the Greens fourth rather than third. No evidence contradicting the article was found, which is the principal reason the score sits in the high band despite these residual gaps.

Search journal

Full Fact Guardian investigation election leaflets misleading bar charts May elections

Peter Kellner grotesque leaflets Full Fact Guardian bar charts

Full Fact 331 leaflets Democracy Club archive April charts misleading

Steve Nowottny Full Fact editor

Peter Kellner former chair YouGov political analyst

Ealing Common ward councillors Liberal Democrats seats

"Ealing Common" by-election Liberal Democrat gain councillor Ealing 2024 2025

YouGov voting intention Greens third poll 2026

YouGov voting intention April 2026 Greens third Reform Labour

poll Reform UK 34% voting intention 2026 pollster

Find Out Now poll Reform UK 34 per cent voting intention 2025

Full Fact Reform leaflet Chelmsford bar chart out of proportion 34%

Full Fact Labour Ealing Common leaflet Greens can't win here wasted vote London Assembly Ealing and Hillingdon

Ealing Labour party response leaflet illustration competitive election Reform gains Ealing

Full Fact local election leaflets Gateshead Greens only alternative to Reform

Full Fact Conservatives Haslemere leaflet Reform can't win here Surrey general election 2024

Lib Dem agent "illustrative" "not a true graph" leaflet Full Fact Eastgate Moreton Hall

Kellner "commercial companies" claims leaflets not allowed advertising standards political

Conservative leaflet printed green mistaken for Green party 2026 local elections

Democracy Club electionleaflets.org archive leaflets uploaded 2026 local elections

Full Fact local election bar charts revisited how misleading were they in the end

theguardian.com election leaflets grotesque Full Fact April 2026 article

Article metrics

Emotion 10% · Reading grade 13.3 · 1152 words

≡ The article we checked Full text as retrieved ⌄

Election leaflets are providing “grotesque” information about how to vote tactically in the May elections, using national polling data, “dodgy” bar charts and doorstep surveys to support claims about parties’ chances of winning.

Leaflets distributed by local politicians across England are claiming that only their party can win, or that another party “can’t win here”, when there is no good evidence to show this is true, a [Full Fact]( investigation for the Guardian has revealed.

Some of the campaigning material Full Fact looked at that contained a chart or graphic “failed to provide reliable evidence to back up a specific claim about how people are likely to vote locally, or were unsourced or misleading in some other way”, with examples from all the major parties.

Readers who responded to a Guardian callout shared images of leaflets they had received. Some said they had at first thought a leaflet from the [Conservatives]( was from the Green party, because it was printed in green with only a small Conservative logo.

A Conservative party leaflet. Photograph: Guardian reader

Another expressed doubt about what they described as “very dubious” statistics from the [Liberal Democrats]( showing a party was “the only sensible way to vote”.

The polling and political analyst Peter Kellner, a former chair of YouGov, described some of the claims and data used in leaflets as “grotesque” and said spurious claims backed up by unreliable data were becoming increasingly common.

“Because there are far more parties, and it is far less clear who you should vote for if you want to vote tactically, all parties are putting a lot of effort into convincing voters that they are the only option,” he said. “But if commercial companies were making some of these claims, they wouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”

Full Fact said good data on voting intentions was often not available in local elections and it was reasonable for political parties to address [significant swings]( in the national polls. But the organisation concluded: “Some of these leaflets could mislead people as they choose how to vote, for instance by claiming definitively that another party ‘can’t win here’ or that only one party can stop another.”

Full Fact’s editor, Steve Nowottny, said: “There’s nothing wrong with parties making a case to voters, but too many leaflets are making overblown, dodgy claims with cherrypicked, misleading or unreliable data.”

The organisation analysed 331 leaflets from across England uploaded to Democracy Club’s [online archive]( in the first two weeks of April. Fifty-nine included a chart or graphic, with 14 of these unsourced or misleading or failing to provide reliable evidence about voting intention.

Among the most egregious examples uncovered in the leaflet analysis was a [Labour leaflet]( distributed in Ealing Common, a ward in west London, that warned voters not to “let Reform sneak in here” and included a bar chart that stated “Greens can’t win here”, with the addition of an arrow pointing to the green bar on the chart stating: “Wasted vote!” The Lib Dems, who control [two of Ealing Common’s three seats]( were the smallest bar.

A Labour leaflet for Ealing. Photograph: electionleaflets.org

The chart used the 2024 London assembly result for [Ealing and Hillingdon]( a much larger area. It added an extra bar that appears to reflect Reform national polling, “giving a picture that is misleading and confusing,” according to Full Fact.

Kellner said: “What they’ve done is grotesque, and they’ve not been candid. The figures are in no sense indicative of Ealing Common.”

Ealing [Labour]( party said the diagram was “clearly an illustration of what could happen in a very competitive election, and can’t be taken literally, as no element of trying to predict the future can be”. It conveyed “the very real and serious point that Reform are attempting to make real gains in Ealing”, and was “a common method of trying to make that point during an election campaign”, it said.

A leaflet from the [Green party in Gateshead]( showed Reform in the lead with the Greens in second, beneath a headline that said the “Greens are now the only alternative to Reform”.

The chart stated it was based on opinion poll data [from YouGov in March]( but the same pollster [currently puts the Greens third]( Regardless, Kellner said a national poll was not a reliable indicator of local outcomes.

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A [Reform leaflet from Chelmsford]( gave no source for its bar chart that put Farage’s party on 34% and the Conservatives and Labour on 16%. Full Fact said while Reform had polled at 34% with at least [one pollster]( in the past, it had not found an exact match for the Conservative and Labour figures at the same time.

A Reform leaflet from Chelmsford. Photograph: Democracy Club, ElectionLeaflets.org

The bar chart was also “completely out of proportion”, it said. An [online calibration tool]( suggests that if the Reform bar represented 34%, the height of the Labour and Conservative bars put them at about 9%, not 16%. “This is obviously misleading about the numbers themselves, whether or not they’re accurate or relevant,” Full Fact said.

A [Liberal Democrat leaflet]( from Eastgate and Moreton Hall in Suffolk stated “It’s Lib Dem or Reform here” while using a bar chart showing the Conservatives in second and the Lib Dems in third.

A Liberal Democrat leaflet from Eastgate and Moreton Hall in Suffolk.  Photograph: Democracy Club, ElectionLeaflets.org

It used a YouGov quote stating the Lib Dems were “most likely to see off Reform UK”, probably a reference to a [YouGov article from March 2025]( that asked voters which party they would vote for if only Reform and the Lib Dems had a chance of winning. The Lib Dem candidate’s agent said: “The image is illustrative and not a true graph as such, which we emphasised by not putting in any indices.”

Meanwhile, a leaflet from the [Conservatives in Haslemere]( a ward in west Surrey, told voters “Reform can’t win here”, apparently based on [data for the whole of Surrey]( from the 2024 general election, which Full Fact said was “very unreliable evidence”.

A Conservative leaflet in Haslemere. Photograph: Democracy Club, ElectionLeaflets.org

Full Fact said the assessment of leaflets was not intended to be fully representative of the national picture but instead looked at what voters might understand from the information given and whether it included reliable evidence.

Kellner said that while “the mechanics of democracy work reasonably well” in the UK, disinformation peddled by political parties were a “small part of a larger jigsaw” that had led to trust in politics, politicians and institutions being more widely eroded in the past two decades.

“If one defines a healthy democracy as one where there is an open, free exchange of views and information which allows voters to make up their minds on the basis of truth rather than lies, then, yes, this is bad for democracy,” he said.

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