The end of the campaign - almost!
A lot of campaigning again this weekend. We had a good turn-out of members and supporters at the weekend, so were able to get a lot of leaflets and lamppost posters out. Malcolm Chisholm's being spending a lot of the time on the doorsteps; there's no doubt there's a lot of respect for him out in the constituency - hopefully that will be reflected in the ballot box on Thursday! (Here's Malcolm in our campaign HQ).
Still getting a lot of emails from people complaining about Lib Dem leaflets: the following is an example:
I saw the recent posting on the North to Leith blog (the blog of the SNP candidate Davie Hutchison) suggesting that the data given by a Lib Dem election leaflet in Edinburgh North and Leith was wrong.
I'd like to share my own disappointing experience in Edinburgh Central. In her election leaflet Siobhan Mathers shows a simple bar chart depicting the situation at the last election. She has got the right numbers, but has distorted the chart.
The result is a visual misrepresentation of the 2003 result because she has cut the size of the Labour bar to make it look like the Lib Dems are in contention. If you bother to read the data, Labour are 9 points ahead of the Lib Dems who are, in turn, 5 points ahead of SNP. So, in reality the Lib Dems are closer to the SNP & Tories than they are to Labour, but the chart shows the reverse. This visual misrepresentation is the message that casual readers of the leaflet will take away with them.
This is compounded by the text, Siobhan writes "remember, the election in Edinburgh Central is between the Liberal Democrats and Labour. No other party is challenging here." The data suggests otherwise, and is, of course historic. The urgency to create a "two horse race" and persuade the public to vote tactically based on a false and misleading statement of the truth is wrong and shameful. We are used to politicians making unprovable assertions, but this is objective data that is being distorted When Siobhan quotes Ming Campbell saying: Siobhan Mathers will be a powerful and principled voice it makes me wonder exactly what kind of principles the Lib Dems have
A couple of weeks ago there was a hoo ha because a person was featured in a Labour party political vox pop who turned out to be a member of the Labour party. But we all know that the only vox pop that will be used in a TV broadcast is the one that fits, so this scandal is in fact fairly trivial. Distorting the objective truth by manipulating data to visually depict false conclusions is indefensible, unprofessional and really rather sad.
Yours sincerely,
Giles McGellie
Still getting a lot of emails from people complaining about Lib Dem leaflets: the following is an example:
I saw the recent posting on the North to Leith blog (the blog of the SNP candidate Davie Hutchison) suggesting that the data given by a Lib Dem election leaflet in Edinburgh North and Leith was wrong.
I'd like to share my own disappointing experience in Edinburgh Central. In her election leaflet Siobhan Mathers shows a simple bar chart depicting the situation at the last election. She has got the right numbers, but has distorted the chart.
The result is a visual misrepresentation of the 2003 result because she has cut the size of the Labour bar to make it look like the Lib Dems are in contention. If you bother to read the data, Labour are 9 points ahead of the Lib Dems who are, in turn, 5 points ahead of SNP. So, in reality the Lib Dems are closer to the SNP & Tories than they are to Labour, but the chart shows the reverse. This visual misrepresentation is the message that casual readers of the leaflet will take away with them.
This is compounded by the text, Siobhan writes "remember, the election in Edinburgh Central is between the Liberal Democrats and Labour. No other party is challenging here." The data suggests otherwise, and is, of course historic. The urgency to create a "two horse race" and persuade the public to vote tactically based on a false and misleading statement of the truth is wrong and shameful. We are used to politicians making unprovable assertions, but this is objective data that is being distorted When Siobhan quotes Ming Campbell saying: Siobhan Mathers will be a powerful and principled voice it makes me wonder exactly what kind of principles the Lib Dems have
A couple of weeks ago there was a hoo ha because a person was featured in a Labour party political vox pop who turned out to be a member of the Labour party. But we all know that the only vox pop that will be used in a TV broadcast is the one that fits, so this scandal is in fact fairly trivial. Distorting the objective truth by manipulating data to visually depict false conclusions is indefensible, unprofessional and really rather sad.
Yours sincerely,
Giles McGellie
Labels: campaign, Malcolm Chisholm
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