Lies, damned lies and election statistics

When it comes to election time, we’re all used to some pretty dodgy statistics being bandied about to confuse the unwary voter. But using figures from four years ago, as the Greens are doing in their election literature for this year’s County Council election in the Worthing Pier Division, and suggesting this reflects current support for the various parties, is deliberately misleading.

In the absence of a current local opinion poll, which we obviously don’t have, last year’s local election results in same area have got to be a much more reliable indicator of the current standing of the parties.

The larger Worthing Pier division used for the County Council election is made up of most of two Borough Council wards – Central and Heene. In both wards Labour were just pipped at the post by the Tories – by 34 votes in Central and 70 votes in Heene. The Greens were a poor fourth across the two wards with just 13% of the vote.

This is the actual share of the vote for each party last year (2016) in the Worthing Pier area:

Conservative 32%

Labour 30%

UKIP 17%

Green 13%

Lib Dem 8%

So the suggestion, made by the Greens in their leaflet, that they are currently in second place is just absurd. And if we look at the trend in local elections in the Pier area over the last four years, it’s even clearer that the story is all about a Labour surge with the other parties falling away. None of them, including the Greens, are now even close to being contenders to win in this area.

Share of the vote in the Worthing Pier area in the last four years’ local elections

Our results from doorstep conversations with voters across the Pier Division this year are confirming that Labour are neck and neck with the Tories and the Greens, Lib Dems and UKIP are just not in the picture.

In this election, Worthing Pier is definitely a two-horse race which Labour is well placed to win.