Viewpoint: Is opinion polling broken?

This is not something that has suddenly happened this year, this has been something brewing for a number of years, and I'm really beginning to more than question the accuracy of the polls.  I'm actually beginning to think that the whole process of opinion polling may now be fatally flawed, or at best compromised badly.

Now, there have been some changes to what is prompted by the questioners, but in my view, that is not the big problem.  My feeling is that the biggest issue right now with opinion polling is the way it is conducted right now, and how they select the people they interview.

Some pollsters now use a regular group of volunteers polling them on the internet.  Then they weight the results based on demographic information.  This I feel is seriously flawed, because it is open to manipulation.  Anybody can volunteer to give their time to the polling companies, and often, I suspect that some parties might try to get their operatives to volunteer to load the system up with representatives of a particular party.  The weighting aspect of this method is also flawed, because it's based on a lot of assumptions that don't actually always play out as you think they would. 

Those that still rely on telephone calls to canvas potential voters, are also somewhat flawed.  Calls from polling companies are often cold calls, and as such are not treated well by respondents.  The idea that you can get an accurate idea of opinions from a bunch of random cold calls, is a seriously flawed idea.

The net result is reflected in the actual results of the polls themselves.  Since Boris Johnson took over as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister, he has stumbled so many times that he makes his predecessor Theresa May look actually competent.  He lost almost all of the key votes in Parliament in the short time he was in there as PM, he lost a battle in the courts over an illegal prorogation of Parliament., and he's been losing and poorly performing in TV debates already.  Yet, this week, a poll by Opinionum for The Observer, put Boris Johnson's Conservatives 19% ahead of everybody else. 

This does not add up.  Public perception of Boris Johnson is not a good one.  He's seen as an incompetent blunderer, full of bluster and Brexit, full of sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing.  Even within his own party, he's not seen as a great politician.  Yet somehow, his party has a massive lead in the polls?  How on earth do you square that circle of hell?  Nothing about that adds up at all.

Jeremy Corbyn hasn't been viewed as a competent leader of the Opposition.  This is despite him inflicting more government defeats in his time as leader of the Opposition than any previous opposition leader in the modern era.  And whilst some of his decisions have been questionable, any lack of competence he has shown pales into insignificance behind the incompetence of both Boris Johnson, and his predecessor Theresa May as PM.

To my practiced eyes and mind, something isn't adding up here, and not all of this can be blamed entirely on the media, as much as many might like to believe that to be the case.  Sure some of it can be blamed on media bias, but the Tory press is a dying medium right now, they are losing readers, they are losing money, and they just can't be the only factor.  A contributing factor yes, but not the main one.

And as Sherlock Holmes would say, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth.  So, we must look to the polling methodologies themselves, and how flawed they are, and as I've already stated, they are seriously flawed, compromised beyond reasonable expectations.

Even the Exit Polls of the two previous elections in 2015 and 2017, which are done face to face, rather than over the phone or by internet, have been a bit off the mark when it came to actually predicting the result.  Granted they weren't as far off the mark as they were back in 1992, when they completely screwed up, but it's far enough for me to question their reliability.  In other countries, exit polling has been much more accurate in predicting the result.  It does leave me wondering how we on the UK aren't able to get it right when other countries pollsters can.

That's why I question the weighting that is given to polls.  It seems to be at least a bit out of sync with actual reality.

Overall, I have to believe that something is serious wrong in the world of opinion polling, and yes, it might be broken, maybe even broken beyond repair.

Hypocrisy and the Conservative press.

You can't rely on the Conservative newspaper press for anything, except hypocrisy.

You can't rely on them for facts, you can't rely on them not to change their minds in order to get the most readers, you can ONLY rely on them to be total hypocrites.

Case in point. The 2010 World Cup in South Africa. In particular the Vuvuzelas that have been so prevalent a sound at every match.

Yesterday, every conservative paper was practically begging for these horns to be banned from the World Cup.

Today, the Sun decided to slap their logo on 5,000 and give them away as prizes, so now we'll be hearing them at every Premiership match!

Total hypocrisy. The only thing that you can rely on from the Conservative media.

Video Blogging Week on Viewpoint - Day 5 of 7

Day 5 of Video Blogging Week



Another post tomorrow.

Russell Brand, BBC Radio 2 and a Satanic Slut... equals boredom!

I'll be honest with you, I didn't hear the so called "offensive" material go out on air, so I can't comment on the incident. I find Russell Brand boring anyway. Fame has gone to his head and he just literally is about as interesting as a freshly painted wall. And when it comes to Jonathan Ross, I didn't listen to him either and I find him boring too. Though I do respect his longevity in the industry, I just find him to be a one-trick pony, maybe two tricks at best, but that's it.

So, this story, about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross leaving phone messages on the answerphone of Andrew Sachs, who was Manuel in Fawlty Towers, had all the components of a total sleepfest for me. It took the "high and mighty" Conservative press A WEEK to get their act together with their fake offence which was pushed along by the attention seeking of Georgina Baillie, aka Satanic Slut Voluptua. Before the story broke, the BBC had received a whole 2 complaints about the show. Since the story broke, that has gone up to 30,000 complaints. That means a whole 29,998 complaints were generated not by the broadcast, but by the fake offence of the Conservative press. That's an increase of... wait for it... 1,500,000%.

That's an awful lotta sheep!

I find it sad that the Conservative press can have this kind of negative effect on people. But wait, it gets worse...

Now, the News of the World has a story about Brand and a threesome when the story broke, a so called fat cat scandal at the BBC, and Georgina Baillie starring in a hardcore porn film. Here's where the sleepfest hits maximum, complete with snoring!

Add to this the Daily Star Sunday's story about Georgina's porn film also featuring women dressed in Nazi outfits, and to be honest, I'm having trouble holding my eyes open.

I checked this story out a week ago, and discovered most everything that has been published today already. It didn't strike me as interesting, and it doesn't now, but the press doesn't have love flogging a story until it's not just dead, but into an advanced state of rigor mortis!

This story has more than run its course and done more than enough damage already. Let it go already! We're falling asleep here cos we're sooo interested... NOT!