It’s the stand-out growth area for online spending in this General Election. Analysis of data by ITV News shows the rise of non-party campaigners spending in the run-up to polling day.

Non-party campaigners registered with the Electoral Commission have spent more than £600,000 online in the last 30 days (FB data up to November 2) -more than six times the total amount spent in the 2017 campaign.

Figures in the table below show how much money has been spent on Facebook by various non-party groups in the past four elections.

Graph showing amount of money non-party campaigners have spent during election period Credit: ITV News

• Data for GE2019 is taken from Facebook Ad Library spending inclusive for 30 days prior to 2nd December . All other data is from the Electoral Commission

It’s not just the investment there are nearly three times as many organisations than there were in the general election of 2017, just two years ago.

The Electoral Commission describe non-party campaigners as individuals and organisations who “campaign around elections without standing candidates themselves”.

For example, Momentum is a non-party group which has been supportive of Jeremy Corbyn.

Some, like the Labour supporting Momentum group, are well known names, others such as ‘Capitalist Worker’ who claim to be “disseminating the truth about Jeremy Corbyn’s extreme economic policies” are less so.

Whether high-profile or not they are all spending considerable amounts of money online during the campaign and so must now be considered part of the election landscape.

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