Defence secretary dismisses poll, saying things will change by time general election takes place
Good morning. News organisations, including the Guardian, tend to be a bit wary of splashing on opinion polls. Polls are never 100% reliable, there is a good case for saying they constrain political reporting (because if journalists assume X can’t win, they don’t cover what X might do if they were to win very seriously), and in 2015, and 2016 and 2017 most polls turned out in essence to be wrong, which delivered a big blow to the credibility of the industry.
But politicians have never stopped commissioning and studying them, and recently polling has had a much better record. Newspapers are still a bit cautious about using them, but today the Daily Telegraph is splashing on a YouGov MRP poll saying that Labour is on course to win by a landslide.
If you take a poll now, you are not going to get the same answer as a poll when — for example, things like the tax cut, £450 for a person on the average salary right now – people are feeling that because they have then had it in their pay packet for several months, for example, with inflation at these much lower rates, with growth in the economy. With all of these factors, I think they take time to feed through.
Continue reading…Defence secretary dismisses poll, saying things will change by time general election takes placeGood morning. News organisations, including the Guardian, tend to be a bit wary of splashing on opinion polls. Polls are never 100% reliable, there is a good case for saying they constrain political reporting (because if journalists assume X can’t win, they don’t cover what X might do if they were to win very seriously), and in 2015, and 2016 and 2017 most polls turned out in essence to be wrong, which delivered a big blow to the credibility of the industry.But politicians have never stopped commissioning and studying them, and recently polling has had a much better record. Newspapers are still a bit cautious about using them, but today the Daily Telegraph is splashing on a YouGov MRP poll saying that Labour is on course to win by a landslide.If you take a poll now, you are not going to get the same answer as a poll when — for example, things like the tax cut, £450 for a person on the average salary right now – people are feeling that because they have then had it in their pay packet for several months, for example, with inflation at these much lower rates, with growth in the economy. With all of these factors, I think they take time to feed through. Continue reading…