Pollocks

8 February 2006

I’ve been told off before for over-exercising the right side of my brain, but was yesterday’s botched YouGov leak an over-enthusiastic Huhne supporter, or a cunning Campbell supporter who wanted to undermine him? After all, Camp Campbell is the team with all the past form for anonymous briefing. Secondly, regarding Peter Kellner’s denial, is it…

Written by

James Graham

musings

Secondly, regarding Peter Kellner’s denial, is it that the figures are innaccurate (Campbell was on 41% not 40% for example) but broadly along the right lines or are they way off? In short, this could still be a leak regardless of that missive. Unfortunately – and reasonably – Kellner has refused to comment further.

The fact remains that somebody commissioned that poll, presumably a supporter of one of the candidates, and that they don’t want us to see the results. All we can hope and pray for is that whoever commissioned the second YouGov poll will publish no matter what.

The advantage of YouGov is that they are able to easily contact select groups such as members of political parties, unlike telephone polling companies. The disadvantage with using them is that subsequently party hacks with an over-inflated sense of their own importance (i.e. bloggers) get wind of any poll pretty quickly. Take note.

Comments

9 responses to “Pollocks”

8 February 2006

Gareth

Agree with your broad analysis James. But my Huhne camp connections indicate nobody had a clue about this ‘poll’.

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8 February 2006

Peter

“all the figures that you, and Guido Fawkes, attributed yesterday to our recent poll of Lib Dem members are wrong.

says Peter Kellner.

Personally I don’t care who invented or leaked these figures.

The election should be settled on the qualities of the candidates to be leader.

Invented/Leaked/Spun/voodoo poll figures don’t answer that question one way or the other.

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8 February 2006

James

Peter, you clearly care about it as much as anyone as you keep blogging about it. But you’re right that this is all a distraction.

I’m too much of a campaigner however not to be interested in actual polling figures.

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8 February 2006

Angus J Huck

How does You Gov have access to the Party’s confidential membership register? Have they knowingly received information transfered to them in breach of trust?

More likely, they ran through a few lists and contacted activists. Most of them in London and the South-East, thus exaggerating support for Chris Huhne. How many members in Cornwall and Scotland were contacted? Or is that too far for most pollsters to travel?

Yes, You Gov got Cameron’s margin of victory right, but that is because Cameron’s support was uniform across all sections of the Tory party.

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8 February 2006

Neil

It is one of the boxes you can tick when you sign up for YouGov. I assume they have no way of checking that people who have signed up really are members and have to take it on trust. This does mean that the results may be skewed towards those who regularly use email and internet. Saying that they predicted the Tory leadership result fairly accurately.

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8 February 2006

James

Nice attempt at prebuttal Angus, but the truth of the matter is that nobody knows. It is fair to say however that people have said all that about YouGov in the past innumerable times (myself included) and yet they keep coming up with uncannily accurate figures.

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8 February 2006

Anthony

“How many members in Cornwall and Scotland were contacted? Or is that too far for most pollsters to travel?”

Err…it’s an internet poll. The pollsters don’t need to travel beyond their desks.

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8 February 2006

James

I think Angus’ point is that they haven’t got the internet in those exotic, far away places yet.

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9 February 2006

Special Bets

James, check our our analysis on that link…this is clearly all spin from Team Huhne…

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