Do politicians keep their promises? The evidence

Citizens seem to have little faith that the policies parties endorse at the ballot box will ever come to fruition

Michael Gove and Boris Johnson
Michael Gove and Boris Johnson at a press conference in London
(Image credit: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

The conventional wisdom holds that politicians can’t be trusted to keep their promises, yet decades of research across numerous advanced democracies shows the opposite. In truth, political parties reliably carry out the bulk of their campaign pledges, especially in majoritarian systems like Westminster.

At a time of such political cynicism, the average voter could be forgiven for doubting this claim. The idea that politicians are insincere about their campaign pledges is reflected in public beliefs about election pledge fulfilment. When Chris Carman and I ran a survey earlier in 2019, the findings of which will be published in an upcoming John Smith Centre report, we asked respondents whether they agreed that “the people we elect as MPs try to keep the promises they made during the election campaign”.

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