What is it with newspapers giving totally misleading headlines following an opinion poll? I've blogged about this before.
Today we've seen the Telegraph lead on its front page with the headline: "Credit crunch slashes Tory poll lead." The Telegraph uses the pollster YouGov. The impression the headline gives is that the Conservative lead has indeed dramatically fallen. However, this has not happened.
The poll results are:
Conservatives - 42%
Labour - 33%
Lib Dems - 15%
According to the Telegraph, this represents a narrowing of the Tory lead from 14 points to 'just' 9 points, with the Tories down 3 and Labour up 2.
However, this is because the Telegraph contrasted the results not with the last YouGov poll but with the last Telegraph YouGov poll (4 October). All newspapers do this with their poll results.
It is totally misleading!
Had the Telegraph contrasted the latest YouGov results with the last YouGov poll it would be the Mirror YouGov poll (20 October) and the headline would have been completely different because the changes were Conservatives - no change; and Labour - minus 1. So the headline should have been: "Tories increase lead back to double figures" or "Tory lead holds steady" or even "Labour advance halted." It most certainly should NOT be "Credit crunch slashes Tory poll lead"!!!
Another annoying thing the newspapers do with polling, while I'm getting this off my chest, is not even accept the last polling result of their sister newspaper. For example, both the Independent and the Independent on Sunday (IoS) use ComRes. One would have thought that when comparing the latest ComRes Poll with the last one, the Independent and IoS would refer to each other's polls - after all their owners are the same even if they have different editors. Don't be stupid, that would eliminate the ability to have grotesque headlines that distort the political reality.
It's about time this was sorted out!
2 comments:
It's part of a downward trend. The lead is deflating. I'm afraid we have to take this seriously and turn it around, rather than complain about the coverage. I've written about this on my own blogs - the Polish have a saying - "ostrich politics" - which a lot of the Tory response to falling poll leads resembles. Worrying about the coverage of it won't turn it round; the Tories need to clarify, streamline and intensify their message or go under again.
I'd disagree. I didn't complain when the coverage accurately reported a downward trend but the polls have stabilised now at between 8-12 percent Tory lead (depending on pollster). The point i was making was that newspapers distort current trends by comparing with their last poll, not their pollster's last poll.
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