YouGov/Murdoch Distort Poll To Stop Lib Dem Momentum 55


YouGov produce a daily poll for the Sun and Sunday Times. Today’s YouGov was the only post-debate poll to show the LibDems in third place.

At comment 268 on the thread linked below, we hear about their next poll:

268.

Just done a YouGov, Mostly about Clegg & LD

Here was one of the question

“Nick Cleggs says the other parties are to blame for the MP scandals, he has taken money from a criminal on the run, many of his MPs have been found guilty of breaking the rules and his own party issued guidance on how to fiddle the expenses system?”

I’d say that was fairly direct!

There were some 17 other questions re the LD

by sealo0 April 18th, 2010 at 10:33 am

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/04/18/how-do-the-blues-and-reds-deal-cleggmania/comment-page-4/

I asked on the thread whether YouGov asked that before asking about voting intention. Sealo replied that indeed this was the first question, and others attacking the Lib Dems in the same vein followed. Only then did they ask about voting intention.

The proposition above is, obviously to anyone, not really a question but a set of dubious propaganda statements designed to influence the interviewee.

Plainly this is a deliberate attempt to produce a poll which shows the Lib Dem surge as a blip, and thus discourages potential Lib Dems voters. That the Murdoch press pull such a stunt should surprise nobody. But even though they are getting huge money from Murdoch for these daily polls, YouGov must realise that this abrogates all professional methodology and breaches the ethics of the polling industry. The senior management of YouGov must resign.

STOP PRESS

Anthony Wells of YouGov (known henceforth as YouGove) admits YouGov asking these “questions, but claims the voting intention question ought to have been asked first. He also points out that the antiLib Dem questions were “Not for publication”.

I bet they bloody weren’t.

See 14.15 on this thread. Hat tip Roger Mexico.

http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2611

YouGove – Rupert Murdoch’s Pollster of Choice


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55 thoughts on “YouGov/Murdoch Distort Poll To Stop Lib Dem Momentum

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  • AJS

    Craig – It was on The Sandline Affair and the Privatisation of Security in North Africa.

    As for the blog, I never demanded anything – I just mentioned that you are sounding like one of those 16 year olds who has just discovered a political party and doesn’t hush down about it and how right they are and how wrong the others are and how they’re gonna win soooo big.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Who was/ is ‘John Cord’? Who was/ is ‘Larry’? Anyone know? Larry… Mr Cord…. are either of you there?

    Dreoilin will be back, I suspect, like Fu Manchu or Gandalf the Grey.

  • Dave McEwan Hill

    YouGov have been routinely manipulating polls for some time now, particularly in Scotland to damage the SNP. They conceded they misrepresented their Scottish polls by underestimating SNP support by 6 points and overestimating Labour by the same amount THEN THEY JUST CONTINUED TO DO EXACTLY THE SAME IN ALL SUCCEEDING SCOTTISH POLLS which are widely reported by virtually all the “Scottish” media. The day following a YouGove poll showing Labour 16 points ahead of SNP Ipsos Mori published a comprehensive poll showing SNP and Labour neck and neck. The Mail has supressed a poll showing SNP ahead (check the Holyrood magazine)yet YouGov today have Labour 18 points ahead of SNP with the Tories on the SNP’s heels. This is laughable stuff it it didn’t represent a serious attack on democracy which is being encouraged by the unionist parties.

    No serious political figure takes YouGov figures seriously in Scotland now.

  • BusPoll

    My own private survey in the Richmond Park constituency shows that the majority of residents of Petersham are supporting the Lib Dem candidate Susan Kramer.

    They’ve got her signs up.

    There’s a couple of ridiculously rich people on the Hill and down Queens Road who seem to be supporting the Non Dom Tax Refugee Tory candidate, Zac.

    I done this survey on the 371 bus from Kingston and provide it free and without prejudice to all who may wish to use it.

    I’m available to do do other surveys from the bus, to all interested agencies.

    My fees are £6 for a day travel card, £5 for a meal in Wetherspoons, and a tenner for a few pints.

    Contact me at BusPoll, “a new way of doing it”. That’s my catchphrase.

  • Gerald

    Iain Dale has noticed that the Tory party and its friends are getting desperate after Cameron’s baleful performance.

    He cautions them thusly:

    “Personal attacks on Nick Clegg will not work. They will backfire on those who make them and rightly so. Everyone who knows Nick Clegg likes him. He’s a transparently likeable individual. Anyone trying to make out that he’s anything else will come a cropper.”

    Iain’s not quite so dim as he often seems.

    Perhaps he thinks there are more subtle ways of attacking Nick?

  • Suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party,

    “My fees are £6 for a day travel card, £5 for a meal in Wetherspoons, and a tenner for a few pints.”

    “Contact me at BusPoll, “a new way of doing it”. That’s my catchphrase.”

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    My fees are £3,000 to £5,000 for a day.

    Contact me at New Labour, “an old way of doing it”. That’s my catchphrase.

  • Wesley

    Can you do another post making this all a little bit clearer for the layman to understand. Do that and we can spread this like wildfire.

  • Christina,London

    omg! the wording is that questiion is disgusting for a supposedly unbiased poll.

  • Aelfrith

    What is the relationship between

    Sealo and the LibDems?

    To me this is too much of a gift to be taken at face value. What do you think? Is the LibDem election machine in overdrive or just over the top?

  • awmigosh

    Si the intention of YouGov to make LDs look good, then look poorer and poorer in the polls as May 8th draws nearer?

  • Craig

    Aelfrith,

    I don’t know sealo from Adam, but I think he was just a punter who got sampled by YouGov. The key point you are missing is that YouGove have confirmed they asked the question – that much is not in dispute.

    I am a LibDem member myself, just a humble footsoldier.

  • technicolour

    Interesting from David Yelland (former Sun editor):

    At the Sun, we deliberately ignored the Lib Dems. The cosy pro-Cameron press may now be left floundering

    I doubt if Rupert Murdoch watched the election debate last week. His focus is very firmly on the United States, especially his resurgent Wall Street Journal. But if he did, there would have been one man totally unknown to him. One man utterly beyond the tentacles of any of his family, his editors or his advisers. That man is Nick Clegg.

    Make no mistake, if the Liberal Democrats actually won the election ?” or held the balance of power ?” it would be the first time in decades that Murdoch was locked out of British politics. In so many ways, a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote against Murdoch and the media elite.

  • athirat

    Have you selectively quoted Anthony Wells’ response in order to give the impression that he acknowledges the anti-Lib Dem questions were part of the Sun poll and asked before a VI question?

    Because thats what it looks like.

  • Craig

    athirat –

    no, and I’ve given the link so you can see for yourself. I have specifically noted that he said the voting intention question should have been asked first, so how you can say I implied he agreed it was asked after is beyond me.

    The much more interesting question is – who paid for this push polling? Murdoch or the Tories?

  • Stu

    Craig, you appear to be implying (or, in fact, flat-out saying) that YouGov have used this question in a poll whose results will be published as part of their Daily Tracker in the The Sun. You’ve also stated, as fact, that this is a deliberate move by YouGov to shift the media narrative and momentum away from the Lib Dems. You’re also accusing YouGov of quite serious political bias.

    And, as athirat says, you selectively quoted Anthony Wells saying that the question was asked, without mentioning Wells’ further detail that “neither those VI or those question were anything to do with polling for newspapers or publication”.

    YouGov have now stated that the poll in question was private, not intended for publishing, and is entirely unrelated to the Daily Tracker. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/19/yougov-survey-nick-clegg-attack

    So if the poll was not being paid for by a newspaper, was not intended for newspaper publication, and was not related to the YouGov/The Sun daily tracker, how exactly does Murdoch enter into this, and how can the poll be a deliberate attempt to ‘stop Lib Dem momentum’?

  • Richard Turner

    Push-polling is the dubious US Republican Party trick of disguising a smear campaign as a legitimate phone poll, and especially targeting swing voters in marginals. Nasty back-door tactics like that say a lot about the people it’s being done for.

  • Anonymous

    11:39 anon poster

    They are not allegations as you suggest, but fact. Tram project over time and over budget. Who enters into that type of agreement. It was supposed to be a contract. How can it be a contract when the price keeps changing.

    Same sex adoptions. purely satanic, and defended by the Lib Dem mob, no consideration for the boy involved and the long terms effects of such a move.

    Hollie Greig – Covered up by all in the Scottish establishment, including Lib Dems, where was Tavish on that one?

    I am sorry to raise this with you direct. These matters are going on all the time,some get uncovered most do not.

    Before I go, what is your position on opening the Dunblane Inquiry papers to the public? That file may contain potential criminal conduct by the establishment

  • Vic SIngh

    Anyone with sense can see that the Tories are hugely unpopular.

    Its just the die hard Right wingers voting for them.

    Check the cyber space links.

  • Duncan

    This is truly stunning. It’s one thing to endorse a party, it’s another to massage poll figures by telling voters fraudulent statements.

    In case you’re wondering ‘his own party issued guidance on how to fiddle the expenses system?’ is slander. It assigns a motive which was not there.

  • maureen f.

    Could YouGov have a built-in anti-LibDem bias? Consider the following:

    One of YouGov’s two co-founders is standing as a Tory candidate in the safe seat of Stratford-on-Avon. He is Nadhim Zahawi, who is of Iraqi Kurdish origin. He was also YouGov’s chief executive officer until standing aside so he could focus on his election campaign.

    The Labour link is that Chairman Peter Kellner’s spouse is Labour’s Baroness Ashton. She is the EU “foreign minister”.

    Are there not clear, or at least possible, conflicts of interest that could shape the way questions are posed and questionnaires designed for publication in the rabidly anti-Clegg Sun?

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