politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » ComRes and the Telegraph come under fierce fire from other pollsters over the latest poll
I can't recall a national opinion poll for a leading newspaper being so criticized as tonight's one from ComRes for the Daily Telegraph.
Read the full story here
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This is something it has been doing for years and for which I’ve criticised in the past.
So this isn't anything new with ComRes. You pays your money, you takes your choice.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1161175304615993344
https://twitter.com/ComRes/status/1156877440934920193?s=20
You want to stay in the EU. You want to retain single market membership and free movement. The Conservative Party doesn't. It's not your party any more, sadly for you I'm sure.
It must be Brexit.
(Of course, if the pollsters are so outraged by ComRes, they will doubtless be putting out their own polling on the issue, gratis....)
https://twitter.com/chriscurtis94/status/1161018469451784192?s=21
I believe they will be polling on this again soon.
It appears ComRes have broken MRS/BPC rules with this poll.
For the millions of people who live close to a Schengen land border the Agreement is the complete opposite of "dumb".
IT ISN'T 54% IT'S ONLY 44%
"Only" 44% - so still quite a lot then.......?
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1161196704231755777
But if you are polling whether people support, oppose, or are unsure about a proposal, they really should be reporting all three categories, since you're trying to discover the balance of opinion across a whole population, and not a subset who may or may not be likely to take any particular action as a consequence.
This is quite obvious if you imagine a highly obscure and arcane issue where almost everyone doesn't know and only a tiny minority have a view.
In this day and age the laudable aim of frictionless borders between nations is baloney. Many European countries now recognise this and far more checks have come in. Places have turned their backs on Schengen.
Schengen belongs to 1980's Metropolitan elitism. Lovely idea for lovely people in a lovely cuddly era. This is the age of terrorism and trafficking.
It reminds me very much of this wonderful 30 second sketch featuring Rowan Atkinson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4VUQTLznwU&list=PLE2BF3F639231952C
Although even taken individually the questions are worded to encourage a yes answer.
But it is surprising that Comres allowed itself to be used in this way.
I find it worrying that as many as 44% want to suspend democracy for the purpose of enacting a particular interpretation of a democratic vote.
On the upside that's a lot of people to be taxed to pay for the costs of it all. So there is that.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/UK_cable_on_Tiananmen_Square_Massacre
Surely that's an innovation?
Haven't we previously been told that people attack polls because they don't like the results ?
Whatever the situation people will spin the numbers that suits them best.
As an example take the employment / unemployment numbers.
Last month unemployment fell by 51k over the quarter but employment only rose by 28k - guess which aspect leavers focused on and which remainers chose.
This month unemployment has increased by 31k over the quarter but employment has increased by 114k.
Now which aspect will leavers focus on and which will remainers focus on ?
I wasn’t creating a majority where none existed, unlike ComRes/The Telegraph.
Next.
If they use lethal force in HK I expect a lot of huffing and puffing in the rest of the world but no action.
Here's a sneak preview of their next poll:
1. I love Boris.
Agree/Don't Know
2. Ignorance is Strength.
Agree/Don't Know
3. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Agree/Don't Know
Next poll for the Telegraph - Who do you feel would make the better PM?
(i) Corbyn/Swinson etc
(ii) BORIS
https://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/The-Telegraph_August-2019-Tables.pdf
After voting intention questions the questions seem to go:
- Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
Parliament is more in tune than Boris with the British public
- Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
Parliament is out of touch with the British public
- Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
On Brexit, most MPs seem to ignore the wishes of voters and push their own agendas
- Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
The Queen should remain above politics and refuse to get involved in Brexit
- Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
Boris needs to deliver Brexit by any means, including suspending parliament if necessary, in order to prevent MPs from stopping it
Then questions on N. Ire, and more on Boris. So classic priming to get people to agree with "including suspending parliament if necessary".
The Yougov survey quoted above which has Support proroguing parliament at 24% oppose 47% seems to be asked in a more neutral way:
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/f3umz13qvw/InternalResults_190610_Brexit_W.pdf
but it is from June.
I don't think anyone sensible would seriously deny that the international movement of people and global terrorist threat have been at an unprecedented levels since c. 2000
Schengen belongs to a different era. Fortunately, the ever-pragmatic EU have realised that and are casually making alterations or, in some cases, outright ignoring it. I think this is something British people regularly get wrong about the EU. It's not static or monolithic. It's always amending or, when it suits a country's interests, by-passing certain rules and regs. If something is 'dumb' to use Richard Tyndall's apt description, those who wish to ignore it may do so.
Britain can happily remain a member of the EU without subscribing to Schengen.
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1161202296748945408
- "Your opinion polls can deceive you - don't trust them!"
What’s alarming is that ComRes and the Telegraph are willing to distort and frame a story in the aid of an anti-democratic/authoritarian agenda.
Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? (Agree / Disagree / DK)
- Parliament is more in tune than Boris with the British public (25 / 40 / 35)
- Parliament is out of touch with the British public (77 / 11 / 12)
- On Brexit, most MPs seem to ignore the wishes of voters and push their own agendas (78 / 9 / 12)
- The Queen should remain above politics and refuse to get involved in Brexit (62 / 19 / 19)
- Boris needs to deliver Brexit by any means, including suspending parliament if necessary, in order to prevent MPs from stopping it (44 / 34 / 19)
- Brexit should be halted if problems over the Northern Ireland border threaten to split the Union (36 / 37 / 25)
- Boris Johnson has been a better Prime Minister so far than I expected he would be (38 / 33 / 29)
- Boris Johnson cannot unify the country as Prime Minister of the UK (45 / 26 / 29)
https://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/The-Telegraph_August-2019-Tables.pdf
I don't think there's a snappy name for this kind of poll, but it's a poll with slanted questions.
The history of the troubles is so viscerally present that Ireland has to be treated with enormous sensitivity. The Good Friday Agreement is a critical part of the special situation in place. It's deeply disturbing that some on the far right appear ready to throw Ireland, and are even relishing the prospect, to the dogs. Appalling.
But that's what I mean about the EU. It can handle pragmatic solutions. Given the stupidity of Britain's decision to Brexit, it came up with the backstop, something that protects Ireland.
As has recently been pointed out, the recalcitrance is largely from the Brexiteers.
Good on you if you haven't. ;-)
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
It’s slanted. It’s a “crooked poll”.
"Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said an additional £2.5 million will help pay for the installation of more than 1,000 new [EV] charging points on streets around the country"
Social media has destroyed the economics and the structures of news-making and news-taking.
Turns out that this was an vital pillar of democracy.
Trump, Brexit, and this general turn to an authoritarian populism etc are impossible to conceive of without Facebook et al.
I don’t know what the solution is.
There’s a reason why the MRS/BPC are strict on pollsters reporting DKs.
Despite the fact that I mainly use YouTube to watch old Dylan and Aretha clips etc, my recommendations constantly feature Jordan Peterson, Alex Jones and even darker stuff.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51294/waiting-for-the-barbarians
Numbers of protesters at the airport are building again, raising the prospect of another day of chaos."
https://news.sky.com/story/hong-kong-protests-could-push-it-into-the-abyss-says-carrie-lam-11784210
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_be_upon_him
That would be quite a profound declaration against repression and toward a “global Britain”.
I also don't recall this stream of invective about dodgy 'Peoples Vote' polls.
Protecting the country from a No Deal Brexit is not an opportunity to make a symbolic stand for gender equality. Moreover, it just turns off (at least) 50% of the population.
Do you have any idea what a grim view the general public takes about this sort of nonsense?
Leaverdom is (and in fact always has been) a populist project with a strong tendency toward authoritarianism.
Civil liberty Brexiters, one which you claim to be, don’t realise (or perhaps don’t care) that you have harnessed yourself to one of Yeats’s “rough beasts”.
I'd offer citizenship to anyone from HK (unless they have a serious criminal conviction or are otherwise undesirable). They seem a hard-working and enterprising people. Whether they would want to come to an island governed by people who think that suspending democracy is a good idea is another matter, of course.
British National (Overseas), abbreviated BN(O), is a class of British nationality that was granted by voluntary registration to British Dependent Territories citizens who were Hong Kong residents before the transfer of sovereignty to China on 1 July 1997. Nationals of this class are subject to immigration controls when entering the United Kingdom and do not have the automatic right of abode there or in Hong Kong.
Despite petitions from Governors David Wilson and Chris Patten asking for full citizenship to be conferred on the colony's residents, Parliament ultimately refused to grant all Hongkongers right of abode in the United Kingdom, citing difficulty in absorbing a large number of new citizens and that doing so would contradict the Joint Declaration.Instead, it offered citizenship to only 50,000 qualified residents and their dependents".
Strikes me as a bit early to be tearing up the Joint Declaration but ask me again in a few weeks.