Charities made up almost two-thirds of the organisations who responded to the Electoral Commission’s survey on developing its guidance on new non-party campaigning rules.
Just over 120 organisations responded to the survey, and of these 64 per cent were from a charity.
The new rules, a result of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014, which was passed by the UK Parliament earlier this year, will cover a wider range of campaigning activities that can be seen as intending to influence voters at an election.
To help inform its guidance, the Electoral Commission launched a survey encouraging non-party campaigners to provide details on the activities they were planning and what advice they most wanted from the Electoral Commission.
The main findings were:
- Thirty-two per cent of respondents felt quite confident that they understood the new rules but over half of respondents (55 per cent) were not very confident that they understood the new rules. A further 12 per cent were not confident at all.
- Almost all respondents (88 per cent) were planning activities in the run-up to the 2015 UK Parliamentary general election.
- Over 70 per cent of respondents are planning email or website-based campaigning, 65 per cent are planning report launches and 61 per cent are planning to use leaflets. Only 20 per cent of organisations said that they were planning to use advertising boards.
- Almost two-thirds of respondents (64 per cent) were from a charity, 16 per cent from a campaign group and 6 per cent from a trade union or professional organisation.
