Monday, 23 November 2009

Mystic Mac

TB has had a busy day making life difficult for a certain MP, but he did have the opportunity to laugh, and promptly send hoards over to James Macintyre's

latest fantasy blog post
. First it was Blair to win and now fifty odd piss taking comments must surely be a new record for the the low traffic Statesman site?
"Indeed, yesterday's poll and the apparent trend reminded me that, after I dared to suggest in my new year predictions (some wrong, some right), that the two main parties' positions in the polls would switch by the end of this year Iain Dale, the aimiable and popular partisan Conservative blogger, reacted with "cackling laughter" and said "In your dreams, sunshine".

In fact, private polling commissioned by Number Ten is today showing just that."
Course it is James.

TB's fav comments have to be the "Did Gordon slip you some of his happy pills?" and "Is this secret poll No.10 has, is like the secret intelligence report no. 10 had about iraq having WMD's?"

Now as far as TB is aware there are very strict rules on how Downing Street can use party political polling, and particularly if they brief the media on them. British Polling Council
rules
say that if you media release any results from a poll, then the whole poll must be published in full within 48 hours by the pollster:
2.3. Public opinion polling organisations reporting results will endeavour to have print and broadcast media include the above items in their news stories and will in any event make a report containing these items together with full computer tables of the results available on their web site within 2 working days of the original release.

2.4. In addition to the information outlined above, the public opinion polling organisation responsible for conducting the survey that has entered the public domain will place the following information on its own web site within 2 working days of the data being published.

· A full description of the sampling procedures adopted by the organisation

· Computer tables showing the exact questions asked in the order they were asked, all response codes and the weighted and unweighted bases for all demographics and other data that has been published

· A description of the weighting procedures employed and weighted and unweighted figures for all variables (demographic or otherwise) used to weight the data, whether or not such breakdowns appear in any analysis of sub samples.

· An e-mail address for further enquiries. It is assumed that all other reasonable requests for other data, over and above the requirements specified herein, necessary for readers of the polls to assess the validity of the data will be answered

· A link to the BPC web-site

So who is the pollster and where is the report on their website?

Are they not a proper BPC registered polling organisation?

Or was Macintyre making up anonymous LOOK AT ME I'M IMPORTANT briefings from No10?

Well they have 48 hours to publish, but TB isn't holding his breath...

5 comments:

HarlowTory said...

From his reaction to the mass of comments it looks like you have really upset him.... ahhhh bless.

Chris Paul
said...

Private polling is not the same as an opinion poll. Though parties can and do commission Qs within and indeed full opinion polls.

YouGov, ipsosMORI and other omnibus polls often include stray party politics questions. These don't generally get published. Any more than other private clients necessarily publish either full or partial results from their questions in similar.

I'd guess the use of "Number 10" in the piece may be sloppy and mean "the LP". And private polling can be anything from voterID calls upwards. Not bound by MRS or the laws you quote.

Any Colour but Brown said...

Ahhhh, Chris Paul - ZaNu Labour's pet apologist.

Anonymous said...

I think I've worked out what's going on here. A couple of weeks ago Jackie Ashley told us Labour's private polling said they were going to end up with about 120 seats.

What actually happened is that she and McIntyre were sitting opposite each other with a graph showing voting trends on the desk between them, so one of them was looking at it upside down. It's an easy mistake to make...

Anonymous said...

Bad enough that some of your posters still think "ZaNu" Labour is funny. Yawn.

But posting your appreciation of a 'joke' about mental health? Very classy.

I'll bear that in mind should you ever call up a Labour supporter for passing on something that amused them, but which you find tasteless. Not that you would, seeing as you're not a hypocrite...

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