Skip to main content

PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Elections & voting fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about elections & voting. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

5,413 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYElections & voting

BJP secured seats in multiples of 56 in the recently held 2023 Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh assembly elections

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The review checks a social-media post claiming that BJP’s seat totals in the 2023 assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh were multiples of 56. The post’s stated figures were 56 seats in Chhattisgarh, 112 in Rajasthan and 168 in Madhya Pradesh. The review identifies the elections as part of the 2023 contests held across five states and compares those claims with the election results. For its check, the review says it consulted party-wise results on the Election Commission of India website. It reports that BJP won 54 seats in Chhattisgarh, not the 56 claimed, and that the final results showed 115 seats in Rajasthan and 163 in Madhya Pradesh. Those three reported totals do not match the respective figures in the post, nor are they multiples of 56. The review’s conclusion is therefore supported by the figures it cites: the post’s claimed totals differ from the reported results in all three states. It also points readers to constituency-wise results for the states, but the supplied excerpt does not include those underlying result pages.

Boatos.orgElections & voting

Na Dinamarca toda pessoa que recebe algum tipo de ajuda social fica inabilitada para votar. Desta forma se evita que a cidadania se transforme em clientelismo político e que sejam votantes cativos

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim says Denmark disqualifies everyone receiving any kind of social assistance from voting, supposedly to prevent political clientelism. Boatos.org examines that specific allegation, describing it as a message that circulated in Spanish and Portuguese and returned to circulation during Argentina’s elections. The review says the story was already circulating online years earlier and reports that Denmark’s embassy in Argentina had publicly rejected it in 2022. The review explains that voting eligibility and social assistance are not generally linked in the way the claim suggests. It quotes the embassy’s explanation that Danish citizens who reside permanently in Denmark and have reached voting age—then 18—can vote, unless they are under guardianship. The review further explains that the constitutional wording cited in the viral message concerns a historical category of “poor relief,” not all present-day assistance. According to the review’s account, before 1933 receiving “poor relief” could result in loss of voting rights. A 1933 social reform introduced other benefits that largely replaced that category, and “poor relief” was officially removed from Danish law in 1961. The review concludes that the viral claim wrongly turns this historical rule into a blanket current ban: it says qualified people can vote today, subject to the guardianship qualification.

Factcrescendo Sri LankaElections & voting

The Centre For Policy Alternative Has Published Survey Results On The Outcome Of The 2024 Presidential Election!

Publisher’s rating: Misleading

The claim was that the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) had surveyed Sri Lankan voters and predicted that Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the National People’s Power, would receive 51% of the vote in the 2024 presidential election. The review says the claim spread with a video, amid social-media discussion of candidates and expected results after President Ranil Wickremesinghe announced that presidential and parliamentary elections would take place in 2024. To check the attribution, the review reports that it searched mainstream media and CPA’s social-media accounts, then emailed CPA. It found no mainstream-media report of a CPA election-outcome survey and no recent CPA announcement about one. CPA told the reviewers it had not conducted a poll or survey about the upcoming election. The review also says CPA identified its last survey, published on September 15, 2023, as a study of economic reforms—not election outcomes. The video’s narration provided a clue to the apparent mix-up: although the social-media caption named CPA, the narration attributed the poll to the Institute for Health Policy (IHP). The review quotes an IHP post describing October 2023 estimates that put Dissanayake at 51%, Sajith Premadasa at 30%, Ranil Wickremesinghe at 13%, and a generic Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna candidate at 6%. Thus, the 51% figure appeared in the cited material, but it was attributed to IHP, not CPA. The review notes that social-media users questioned IHP’s methodology and asked about sample size, demographics, and representativeness. It says it emailed IHP for further information and planned to update the article with the response; the supplied text does not include that response. Its evidence therefore supports correcting the poll’s attribution, but does not provide the further methodological details sought from IHP.