The ComRes “East of England” poll that isn’t quite what the BBC reported it to be
How BBC East reported a sub-set of 58 people from a 3 wk old ComRes EU2014 poll
The party %ages add up to 112 pic.twitter.com/t6vVQkP8Tg
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) April 1, 2014
There’s been a huge fuss over the past couple of hours over a ComRes a EP2014 “poll” that has UKIP on 44% in their area of greatest strength, East of England. The above is a screenshot showing the data was portrayed in the “Look East” programme.
Only problem is that there has been no poll. What, apparently, this is based on is a sub-sample of 58 from the three week old ComRes online poll for the Indy on Sunday/S Mirror.
Notice also that the total of shares shown on the screen added up to 112%.
As we say repeatedly there is always a danger when you pick a sub-sample of this size and seek to draw conclusions. The demographic weightings in the poll apply to the whole sample of 2001 and not to each individual component.
Overall that ComRes poll was the best the the purples have seen with a national share of 30% and I’d predict that in this region UKIP will do better than the national numbers. But 44% seems very much on the high side.