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Friday 31 October 2008

The BBC's UK political polling is skewed towards Labour

Political Betting has the details that:
"One most Fridays when parliament is sitting BBC2’s “Daily Politics” programme announces the results of its latest ComRes poll on matters of current concern. This generally gets picked up by other parts of the media who treat it, quite naturally, like any other ComRes political poll. It’s not and the BBC should say so.

For the Daily Politics polls have one fundamental difference compared with the standard ComRes voting intention surveys - there’s no effort to ensure a politically balanced sample which almost inevitably means that its skewed towards Labour supporters.

In every single ComRes voting intention poll since they introduced past vote weighting the influence of Labour supporters has had to be scaled back when working out the final figures - yet the BBC allows its political surveys on matters a significant current political interest to be carried out without this adjustment.

It’s been known since the early 90s that a disproportionate number of Labour supporters respond to unsolicited randomised polling phone calls. Who knows the reason? Ipsos-MORI think it’s because they get too many public sector workers answer the phone. Whatever - those involved in polling recognise the issue and do something about it."
Now why would the BBC choose a polling method that benefited the Labour party?

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