Here’s a question that has always interested me – do polling companies feel strong enough to take action if one of their clients, who after all is paying them thousands of pounds, misrepresents the results of a poll? Some people say very cynical things about Panelbase, but what you might not realise is that Panelbase actually check in advance everything their clients publish about a poll. Every single blogpost I have ever written about Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase polls has been pre-checked before publication – that doesn’t mean, of course, that Panelbase were endorsing my political interpretation of the poll results, but it does mean that if I said anything factually inaccurate about the results, however small, however inadvertant, that would be flagged up and resolved. Most firms do not follow the same practice, which begs the question of what they do after the event when a client says something wrong or misleading.
YouGov take the Telegraph firmly to task – indirectly highlighting a crucial point the SNP need to weigh up when interpreting the new MRP poll results
Before we start this blogpost, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost – let’s not leave it in limbo for months. It’s important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients – we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked. The fundraiser page is HERE and details of how to donate directly by Paypal can be found at the bottom of this post.
One notorious example was the #Matchettgate fake poll scandal of 2021, when the Scotsman (or possibly Scotland on Sunday) put ComRes on the spot by falsely claiming there was an independence poll showing a poor result for Yes. To their credit, ComRes didn’t let the matter pass, and put a note on their website explaining that what had been published shouldn’t be considered one of their official independence polls, but notably they didn’t feel able to criticise their client or explain how on earth the episode had come about.
Today has brought another example of sorts, because YouGov have directly criticised the Daily Telegraph for misleading claims when publishing the YouGov MRP megapoll – however that still doesn’t count as a pollster taking a client directly to task, because the poll was in fact funded by Tory donors who passed it on to the Telegraph to publish. Basically the Telegraph have claimed that the Labour vote is only up four percentage points since 2019 under Corbyn, and that thus the only real problem for the Tories is that they are losing votes to parties other than Labour, meaning mainly Reform UK. YouGov have pointed out that an aggregate of constituency level results puts Labour on 39.5% and the Tories 26%. This would appear to be a gain for Labour of seven and a half points, not four, but crucially Don’t Knows are being treated in a special way, with an assumption that many will return to the party they voted for in 2019 – hence Labour not quite scaling the heights they can normally expect in YouGov’s conventional polls.
The SNP probably need to take heed of that point too, because in Scotland allocating Don’t Knows in that way will presumably have benefited the SNP far more than Labour, and whether that really reflects what voters will do in circumstances that have changed so radically since 2019 must be doubtful. I said in my earlier post that there must be a danger that a weirdly complacent SNP leadership might look at a projection of 25 seats and think “we’ll settle for that”, even though it would mean the loss of half their MPs. Well, this is another reason why they would be very foolish to think along those lines, because 25 may be an overestimate even as a snapshot of current public opinion.
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Scot Goes Pop poll fundraiser: If you haven’t already, please consider helping Scot Goes Pop commission a New Year poll so we as jndependence supporters can actually ask the questions we want asked and think need to be asked. The fundraiser page is HERE, however if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly. My Paypal email address is:
jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
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