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Suspiciously timed YouGov polls are misl ...

Suspiciously timed YouGov polls are misleading

Jan 14, 2022

YouGov have dropped two mid month polls as of today implying Labour are building a big lead, but is it really? YouGov Polls on national voting intention come out twice a month as a rule, so the sudden appearance of one yesterday to coincide with Boris Johnson’s imploding premiership has raised a few eyebrows. It was commissioned by the Murdoch owned Times and taken alongside other mainstream media outlets exposing more wrongdoing by Johnson and his government, the most recent being the Torygraph of all papers exclusively revealing two more parties on the eve of Prince Phillip’s funeral last April, its hard to deny that the press barons have decided Johnson’s time is up, even if he hasn’t. On the face of it this poll is remarkably good news for Labour, ten points clear of the Tories, however they only gained a point here where the Tories lost 5, so although it looks like Labour are well on the way to power, the devil is in the detail. The brilliant @valuesurplus twitter account has drilled down into the detail, which is often hard to read and laid out nicely what we’re actually seeing behind the headline figures circled in green at the top. the three columns on the right you can see are headed Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem across the top with numbers circled in those columns and also the same party options plus a few more cross referencing them over on the left. On the question who would you vote for if a General Election was held tomorrow, you can see by reading down the Conservative column you come to a number 5 circled in blue cross referenced against Labour over on the left. This is telling us what percentage of those Tory voters Keir Starmer is convincing to back him and vote for Labour instead. Just 5%. If you keep following that column down, you can see more numbers in blue indicating 5% of Tory voters wouldn’t vote and a massive 26% of Tory voters don’t know what to do. Conversely if you look at the Labour column where there’s some numbers in red, representing alleged progressive parties, for all of their 5% gain from the Tories, they lose 7% to the Lib Dems! A 31% rise in don’t knows and won’t vote amongst Tories since 2019 and a 13% rise in the same amongst Labour is what is actually dictating the headline numbers and therefore they’re misleading. Starmer isn’t gaining Tory votes in any meaningful way, but you’re led to believe he must be. Another poll to push this from YouGov dropped today giving Labour an 11 point lead. Convenient attacks on individuals seen as a threat to Starmer hitting the news also buys into the belief that Murdoch has decided a change of leadership is in his best interests and he’s given Starmer the nod, his interests perhaps, but not ours.

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