The research commissioned in the last few weeks indicates that the overwhelming majority of the UK would support introducing rules for factual claims used in political advertising.
Only 3% of those polled disagreed with the statement “Do you think it should or should not be a legal requirement that factual claims in political adverts must be accurate?”
In addition it showed clearly that the UK public are not aware of the fact that there are almost no rules for political ads to follow in stark contrast to the governance around consumer advertising. Consumer advertising has a self regulatory code set out by the BCAP and CAP codes and is regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority.
In response to the question “As far as you know, are adverts by political parties and campaigns in Britain required to follow similar rules as adverts for commercial products and services?” 14% thought “they are not required to follow similar rules as commercial advertising” and 51% answered “don’t know”.
As you can see from the data (that can be accessed below) the YouGov sample had an equal weighting of respondents that voted Leave and Remain in the EU referendum.
You can download the full YouGov research here CRPA_181120_YouGov.
We believe that ahead of any potential upcoming electoral processes (such as a second referendum or snap general election) there is urgency in the political parties agreeing to change in this area.
You can read more about how we propose the rules around factual claims in political advertising could work here.