Voodoo polling v proper polling (festive edition)
One of the earliest lessons I learned about opinion polls was that an unweighted poll, no matter how large the sample size is, isn’t an accurate barometer of the public. The most famous voodoo poll was the 1936 Literary Digest poll that had a sample size of over 2 million predicted that Alf Langdon would beat FDR in the 1936 Presidential election. It was only 39% out on the actual result as FDR as won by over 24% of the popular vote. Gallup, with a much smaller sample size, got the election largely spot on.
The astonishing thing for me is that GB News has 4,200 viewers but the properly weighted poll by YouGov from 2017 shows the true picture, the 52% of voters have awesome judgment. There’s more snow in The Empire Strikes Back than in Die Hard and even Bruce Willis says Die Hard is not a Christmas film. How many Christmas films are released in July?
If you still think Die Hard is a Christmas film do you really want to be in the same cohort as a GB News viewer? A channel that seemingly promotes antivaxxer theories?
TSE