Polling finds British voters think Tory ‘fact check’ stunt was unacceptable

The Tories' FactCheckUK account. Photograph: Twitter. - Credit: Archant

Despite the Tories lining up to claim that voters were not bothered by the Tories attempts to mislead the public with a fake false-checking Twitter account, a new poll has revealed that they are.

During the ITV leaders’ debate the Conservative Party changed its press office account to ‘FactCheckUK’ to counteract claims from Jeremy Corbyn made about Boris Johnson, as if it came from a neutral perspective.

While the account itself said it was a Conservative Party account, those reading the hashtags surrounding the debate would not have seen this disclaimer.

It went on to say that Boris Johnson had won the debate, with widespread anger that the Tories had pulled such a stunt.

But the Tories have lined up to defend the move, saying that it did not matter to voters.

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab claimed that “no one gives a toss” about the stunt, while former minister Nicky Morgan said voters were not bothered by it.

But a YouGov poll showed that the public do take issue with it.

The polling found half of Brits say it was not acceptable for the name change, with 38% saying they disagreed.

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The issue was split across party lines with a total of 74% of Labour voters thinking it was unacceptable, and 48% of Tory voters thinking it was acceptable.

But 29% of Boris Johnson’s party supporters thought it was unacceptable, and a further 23% were unsure.