There’s been some chatting about a push-poll that YouGov allegedly put out as part of its daily tracker for News International. It was a quiet weekend so I can forgive that but it’s not plausible for any number of reasons.
Here’s the question:
Nick Cleggs says the other parties are to blame for the MP scandals, he has taken money from a criminal on the run, many of his MPs have been found guilty of breaking the rules and his own party issued guidance on how to fiddle the expenses system?
Firstly, that’s not a question. It’s a statement that has had a question mark stuck to the end. Secondly, YouGov would be out of their mind to publish such a flagrantly misleading question – it would trash their reputation and shut down their main competitive advantage: that they are the only firm posting daily poll results, which has gained them a phenomenal amount of publicity in this cycle. The key to this story is in today’s Guardian, where one of YouGov’s top brass have come out and stated that the question’s not actually from the tracker poll:
Anthony Wells, the YouGov political analyst running the poll over the weekend, said: “We test lots of messages and ask people in different ways to see which are the most effective ways to sell an idea. I cannot say who the client is but this was not part of the work we do for News International.”
The key point there is that YouGov (like every pollster) tests messages for whoever pays them to do so. This is part of their commercial business and is perfectly legitimate; they usually go out to small samples and are designed to see what happens to a generic voting intendion question when it is prefaced with the message in question that is to be tested. Polling firms are commercial businesses and political polls are usually posted at a significant loss; they are done as a form of advertising, to enhance the prestige of the firm doing the polling (especially if the polls turn out to be accurate) and to attract message testing work of exactly this sort. It’s not unreasonable to expect that all three parties are doing it, or have done it in the recent past; the Tories were just deeply unlucky to get caught out. I seem to recall that an episode of the West Wing dealt with this exact scenario.
Why the Tories? Well, whoever wants to test the message is testing the ground for a smear attack on the Lib Dems, and Labour don’t have any money. Another helpful clue is that the Tories have already overtly stated that they are using YouGov for message testing. It doesn’t take a genius to thus ascertain that someone in CCHQ is planning an assault on the Lib Dems’ change credentials. Whether this leak will deter them or not remains to be seen.
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I must say I was surprised that an internet rumour from a partisan blog based on a comment on a news story made it into the Guardian. Five minutes of checking reveals that the “question” is from an entirely separate poll and that it’s obviously the Tories gearing up for a smear attack on Clegg should his poll numbers prove to be more robust than people currently think. This is interesting in and of itself – at least to me – in that it suggests the Lib Dem surge has caught the Tories napping and that they’re now desperately trying to smash it with a hammer, but it’s not exactly unusual.