Why did the Guardian & others give it coverage

Last Saturday in what appeared to be a very aggressive move the Conservative party published the findings of a survey about Ed Miliband and Labour that it had commissioned from Populus. Unlike the firm’s standard voting intention surveys the poll was carried out online.

Several papers including the Guardian and the Times gave it quite a bit of coverage and all added to the narrative about Ed Miliband. Populus, of course, is the pollster for the Times.

I’ve now got hold of the poll detail and the precise wording of the questions. These are the first seven:

The following statements are criticisms made about the Labour Party and Labour leader Ed Miliband by people who support other parties. Regardless of which party you would vote for, please say in each case if you agree or disagree?

Ed Miliband just doesn’t have what it takes to be Prime Minister, especially in these tough economic times

Regardless of which party you would vote for, please say in each case if you agree or disagree?

Labour elected the wrong brother as their leader – they should have picked David Miliband instead of Ed

Regardless of which party you would vote for, please say in each case if you agree or disagree?

I would be more likely to vote Labour if they had a stronger leader than Ed Miliband

Regardless of which party you would vote for, please say in each case if you agree or disagree?

Labour need to apologise for the part they played in causing Britain’s current economic problems before people will trust them again on the economy

Regardless of which party you would vote for, please say in each case if you agree or disagree?

Labour’s only idea for the economy is more borrowing and more spending – which is one of the ways we got into this mess in the first place

Regardless of which party you would vote for, please say in each case if you agree or disagree?

Labour just oppose everything the government is doing to deal with the deficit & turn the country around, but they never put forward any policies of their own

Regardless of which party you would vote for, please say in each case if you agree or disagree?

Ed Miliband is just too weak to be a credible Prime Minister

The results looked terrible for EdM and Labour – maybe that was the objective?

As a general rule all privately funded political polls should be treated with an enormous pinch of salt. I don’t blame the Tories for trying this on but the parts of the media which carried the findings should have been more guarded.

Update: Sam Coates from the Times has just sent me this message: “Hi Mike – just seen your post re Populus. One small thing – we didn’t touch the Tory poll at all. We only reported questions we commisioned”

Mike Smithson

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