Don’t tell him that you read the Guardian or the Indy Being the one alternative voice in the UK polling industry Peter Kellner, boss of the internet firm, YouGov, is going to come under intense scrutiny in the coming weeks and none more so than over the way those his firm surveys are “self-selecting”. For instead of a pollster going out to find “random” voters to interview all of YouGov’s polls are confined to a panel of more than 50,000…
But is the policy more popular than the party? A Populus poll for the News of the World today has more than 8 in out of 10 people backing Tory plans to screen immigrants for infectious diseases. Some 82% said people coming to Britain should undergo testing for diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis while 68% of those surveyed rejected claims it was a racist policy. There are no party break-down figures in the online version of the story and…
bbc A crumb of comfort for Michael Howard? Most of the assumptions on how many seats each party is likely to get for a given vote share are based on appyling the predicted changes on a national basis and doing a computation in each seat to see what happens there. It’s rough and ready but, in the past, has been a reasonably reliable guide. The best known calculator is the one produced by Martin Baxter. At the last two elections…
The biggest lead since the Iraq War February’s NOP opinion poll for the Independent has LAB 42: CON 30: LD 18 in figures that look similar to those produced by Populus last week and will do nothing to reinforce Tony Blair’s weekend warning about the Tories being a threat We will put our normal variation numbers on these figures when we have been able to confirm them. Last month there was a muddle at the paper when two writers were…
Will the General Election end the YouGov controversy? With the Tories claiming that the pollsters have a systemic bias to Labour there’s going to be much more focus on the battle that has been dividing the polling world – the one between the internet pollster, YouGov and the firms that carry out conventional surveys. A flavour of the ferocity of the argument can be seen in the comments from Andrew Copper, boss of Populus, in these exchanges here from UK…
Could it be the way they ask the questions? With the current claims by the Tories that the polls have a systemic bias in favour of Labour eveybody seems to ignore the fact that each firm puts the voting intention question in a unique way. There are subtle differences that could have an impact on their figures. MORI which has been in this game for longest, put it very simply: “How would you vote if there were a General Election…
bbc Take the interviewer away and Blair’s party drops 7% Starkingly contrasting figures to the telephone-based Populus Poll have just been published on the YouGov website. They are from the Mail on Sunday survey on immigration which also collected party share information which is what is now available. The figures are with comparisons to today’s Populus poll: CON 33 (+1), LAB 34 (-7), LD 23 (+5). It is important to note that the field-work took place a day ahead of…
Is it just the Lib Dems being out of the lime-light? This morning’s poll in the Times by Populus has had little effect on the spread-betting markets – even though it shows Labour at 41% – the party’s highest rating with the firm since the Iraq war. The figures, discussed in the previous article – LAB 41 (+3): CON 32 (-1): LD 18 (-2). – were revealed on Channel 4 early yesterday evening and there was plenty of time for…