Days Of Dodgy Polls Are Numbered

A flurry of opinion polls are putting paid to the well-spun, well-hung parliament narrative nonsense, which set tongues a-waggin' and moneymarkets a-jitterin'. A more realistic outcome is beginning to emerge. What will the chattering class find to talk about?

Push polls, masquerading as legitimate political polling and used as a political campaign technique, are nothing new. Used effectively during US presidential elections and the Obamathon, they have their uses. Driving headlines and pushing a particular political agenda with political propaganda in ways that would make Bush's Karl Rove blush.

Here they have had their day but served their purpose. Giving complacent Tories a kick up the backside, giving fag-end New Labour a ray of false hope and giving little boy Clegg the dream of being kingmaker on Fantasy Island.

Now election weary voters are beginning to make up their minds without slanted spin rammed down their throats.

The Orange Party has wearily beaten the drum over dodgy polls - only as good as the fishy weightings, sample size and questions asked. Projecting a uniform swing which takes no account of Tory inroads in key marginals was a mug's game.

Private party polls are kept well under wraps. But, as Lawson points out in the Indy today, polls come with a health warning and a sample error of around 3 per cent. You takes your opinion poll and takes your choice depending on political persuasion.

And what have the narratives, in the main, been based on? A single pollster, YouGov. There's been something fishy about the whole thing from the start.

From a ridiculous two points difference in a rogue poll for The Sunday Times a couple of week's ago, YouGov now has a seismic shift with Con 37% (0), Lab 32% (-1). You couldn't make it up.

Pollsters are not charities. Opinion polls are commissioned by the media, looking for a line and a headline to suit a political agenda.

A Guardian/ICM poll now shows Tories up three points as "New Labour fightback stalls" with Con 40 (+3), Lab 31 (+1).

Over at The Daily Express/Opinium, it's: Con 39 (+2) Lab 28 (-2).

Given the margin of error, a Tory lead of 39% to New Labour's 28%, whatever, can be read as Tory 42% to New Labour's 25% - or the other way around. Only Nowhere Man Clegg is going nowhere.

Once Bottling Brown finally gets round to naming the day, voter intentions will harden and pollsters will sharpen up their act.

The YouGov daily tracker will be joined by others and polls in the marginal battlegrounds more commonplace. And Smithson's rule of thumb over political betting will probably hold true: the pollster with the lowest Labour percentage will probably give the most accurate prediction.

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What's Behind The Dodgy Push Poll?

A dodgy push poll with fishy weightings has left New Labour all in a lather fuelling the spin the lamentable leader could make it back to No 10 after all. You can't make it up - but someone did. Behind the foggy figures and heady headlines lies a fishy poll and a telling Sunday story.

If it's too good to be true, it probably is. Even with a scant glance at the latest opinion poll, hacks would be hard pressed to come up with a headline: "Brown on course to win election", but not on The Sunday Times.

It seems a new Sunday Times poll reveals New Labour is just two points behind Tories. "The YouGov survey places David Cameron’s Conservatives on 37%, as against 35% for Labour — the closest gap between the parties in more than two years."

Five or six per cent maybe but two? Does anyone believe the Tory lead has shrunk to a mere two percent, as suggested by the poll? Not the bookies. But maybe the money markets waking up in a cold sweat after a night of Brown nightmares.

The rogue poll is clearly an outlier. The Orange Party is deeply sceptical about commissioned push polls, particularly when they show such sharp spin and take no account of the battleground of the key marginals.

Wise Wells at UKPR warns: ”Until we see some more polls that support or contradict the further narrowing of the polls – be wary.”

But the real question is - was it is real?

As Wells notes, the changes from the previous poll are well within the margin of error: "YouGov’s polls this week have been very consistent in showing a 6 point lead, and these figures are actually within the margins of error of a true position of CON 38%-39%, LAB 32%-33%."

Now that's more like it.

Push polls are only as good as dodgy weightings, skewed sample and questions asked - or not asked. The outcome relies on spurious uniform swings.

The actual tables show a different picture. The left column shows an unweighted Tory six percent lead, the bold one to the right, actual weighted numbers, has two percent.

So how are they "weighted"? The views of 'Labour IDs' on the poll sample will have to be scaled up in order to meet the 'quota' for each poll. Polling pundits point out this is something that they have not had to do in the past to the same extent. So why is it happening now?

A quick look at the method reveals YouGov "interviewed a sample of 1,436 adults online across Britain on Feb 25-26."

Do ordinary folk actually sign up for opinion poll panels? How much credence can be placed on a sample taken online rather than in face-to-face interviews? A tinyYouGov 'panel' made up of faceless online people is hardly representative of the whole country.

When asked the question "Do you think Gordon Brown is doing well or badly as PM", both the weighted and unweighted samples show the same result.

A staggering 58 percent in total reckon Brown is behaving Badly.

Very little differences in the view of a pathetic PM between weighted and unweighted. But miraculously a significant difference between the two for the headline-grabbing poll. Enough to send New Labour jumping up and down with glee. Now that's odd.

The Orange Party suspects a very different agenda at work and play here.

A Murdoch inspired wake up call to Dave. A poll which may tip the struggling Supreme Leader over the edge to name the day. A headline grabbing story after being eclipsed by the Observer and Rawnsley's Bullygate revelations.

The poll came on the day of Dave's big speech to the party faithful in Brighton at a time when he is under increasing pressure to come out of the closet with clear, realistic policies and stop wobbling around. "Now we'll see if the Tories have the mettle" thunders Murdoch's Sunday Times.

Speculation that Bunkered Brown may name the day any day soon is intense. But Bottling Brown has form. A poll showing victory is within his grasp may just be enough to swing the balance.

The two point lead is the smallest YouGov has recorded since Bottling Brown's election-that-never-was back in 2007. Then the Tories went on to peak in May 2008 with a 26 point lead. The message is in the Sunday Times bottle. Bottling Brown beware.

Meanwhile in the real world of fantasy school league tables and dumbed down exams...

Thousands of school pupils had their GCSE results secretly downgraded last summer to avoid the embarrassment of too big a jump in the numbers achieving top grades, reports The Sunday Times.

Exam chiefs ordered boards to raise the bar and move the goalposts to cut the number of pupils receiving A* to C grades in Mickey Mouse exams to avoid more egg on their faces over rigged grade inflation.

Push poll opinion polls and dumbed down school exams. You can't make it up. But some will have a damn good try, until they're caught out.

Top picture: Scarfe, Sunday Times. Mid graphics: YouGov/Sunday Times survey results (click images to enlarge)

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Rogue Poll Sends Parties In A Tizz

A rogue poll has sent political parties in a tizz offering a meagre crumb of comfort for a fag-end government and its lamentable leader. Election weary voters were given only a short respite from hard core politicking. Now it's all hands to the pumps of a sinking ship.

A sure sign of political unrest and uncertainty comes when a single poll out of kilter with other polls is seized on to make political capital.

The 'surprise' Ipsos/Mori poll in yesterday's Observer should be taken with a pinch of salt.

As Anthony Wells over at UK Polling Report points out: "the big difference between MORI and other pollsters is that MORI do not politically weight their sample."

It's all down to the sampling and the political weightings, as Wells makes clear:

"Part of the reason for the shift in MORI’s voting intentions since last month is that their sample appears to have had significantly fewer people who voted Tory in 2005 and significantly more people who voted Labour in 2005."

Push polls, used extensively during the US presidential campaign, are common place in the run up to elections.

Taken on dubious face value, the poll cuts the Tory lead over New Labour to a narrow six points with the Tories on 37 per cent, Labour on 31 per cent and the Lib Dems down in the dumps on 17. A far cry from, er, the last major poll a couple of weeks ago.

But that didn't stop everyone and their political dog putting on their best Sunday spin, with the Observer proclaiming: "Poll boost for PM as confidence in economy grows". Yeh, sure.

The LibDem loving Observer even put a smile on the face of glum Clegg, jumping on his dream of a 'hung' parliament: "Chance of hung parliament as Conservative lead falls to 6%". LimpDems hanging on the coat tails of a hung parliament. Every wet liberals dream.

Tories have a fight on their hands to form a workable government. But that was always the case with an electoral system rigged in New Labour's favour. Even with a consistent double digit poll lead, Tories are not home and dry.

Cameron has managed to position the Tories as a 'government in waiting'. Boy George has done well to turn into Honest Osborne. But the sales pitch to voters is still 'David Cameron's Conservatives'.

The spectre of Cameron as a hyped up heir to Blair still haunts, is difficult to shake off and for many a turn off, despite the Sun banging the drum for Dave.

Dave's dithering EU referendum shuffle was a watershed. For the first time it seemed Cameron was heading for a Bernie Ecclestone moment even before he was in Downing Street.

Any politician who has to fall back on the lame of excuse of being 'a pretty straight kind of guy' to deflect deflated trust, faces an uphill task to win hearts and minds in the battle to contact and convince voters.

As the election approaches, the Orange Party believes the polls will have less to do with a 'hardening' of New Labour support, more to do with a 'softening' of Tory support.

Would-be Tories voters could well turn to UKIP if they were not such a joke and embarrassment. Hanging over New Labour is the traditional 'Liberal' enemy. Hanging over both main parties is the dark shadow of the BNP.

Buried in the Observer poll report was a salient sliver of truth which should send a shiver down the spine of the struggling Supreme Leader. A question over the party leaders which never saw the light of day in all the poll spin.

Brown is still down. Cameron is still on his uppers.

"Brown's personal rating remains in the doldrums. Only 34% of people are satisfied with his performance, against 59% who are dissatisfied. David Cameron had approval ratings of 48%, with 35% against."

What is clear is that the election grid is now fixed whoever carries the burnt out baton in the dying days of the doomed New Labour project.

Sealed with the sham of a Queen's Speech. Sealed with a deliberate campaign to increase the scandal of postal votes. Sealed with the outrage of pulling a squalid rabbit out of the hat close to election day.

Soon the recession depression will be officially over. Brown's BBC cheerleaders can finally wheel out their unrealistic but reassuring 'Upturn' graph. Couple that with a promise to pull troops out of the Afghan killing fields - sometime. Things can only get better but who will clean up the mess?

For voters a stark choice still remains. Who do they trust to place a firm hand on the economic tiller? Who do they trust to get to grips with a decade of lies, deceit, failure and disaster?

And who do they trust when a rogue poll is placed in a New Labour supporting newspaper on a wet Sunday to give Beleaguered Brown a much needed bounce?

UPDATE 7pm: A new Angus Reid Strategies poll for politicalbetting paints a very different picture. Conservatives 39%, Labour 22%, LibDems 21%.

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