Surrey Liberal Democrats defend data use after claims it is misleading

The Surrey constituencies of Woking and Esher and Walton were among those named this week as areas where Liberal Democrats used national projection data in election material or social media posts from a website called Flavible. 

A company spokesman said some use of their projections had been misinterpreted and mislabelled “for political advantage”. 

Woking and Esher and Walton were among those constituencies where this was reported as happening. 

But Liberal Democrat candidates for the Surrey seats defended their use of data and said they acted accordingly. 

Responding to the claims, Woking candidate Will Forster said he only used Flavible projection figures on one leaflet and he labelled it correctly as guided. 

He said he now mainly uses figures from the European elections for his materials and that he is clear and transparent.

He said: “The Liberal Democrats and I regularly use the last election – the Europeans in May which showed us winning Woking by a long way and we want to use that in our literature to show Liberal Democrats are working hard.”

Monica Harding, who is standing in Esher and Walton, said she was alerted to the misleading data and apologised for using it in a post she published on Twitter. 

She said: “The tweet in question was made in June – quite early on in the campaign.

“Since August we have been very careful that every polling we put out since then we are very clear of what exactly that is.”

Green Party candidates in three Surrey constituencies will stand down in order to give the Liberal Democrats a better chance in the upcoming general election.

The national Unite to Remain agreement will see no Green Party candidates standing in Guildford, Esher and Walton, and South West Surrey.

The agreement, between the Lib Dems, Greens and Plaid Cymru, is an effort to ensure that as many remain supporting MPs as possible are elected on December 12.