Posts Tagged ‘politics’
Five reasons to be suspicious about any data published by You Gov
For the past few weeks it has felt as if balanced journalism has taken a break and that everything is propaganda.
I suppose it’s wise to be suspicious of everything until 6 May has passed, and in particular it’s a good idea to question any information published by the opinion pollsters You Gov. Here’s a five reasons why.
1. Loaded questions
Here’s an example of a You Gov question, posted on a Digital Spy forum two days ago. In the words of the author: ‘Notice anything missing?’
27 April 2010 – Still No Lib Dems?
Click image for full-size – original can be seen here
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2. More loaded questions?
It’s difficult to tell how balanced You Gov’s questions are without going through them all, but from the evidence of this Twitpic image and the comments beneath, well – you can make your own mind up.
“Everything scares me about the Liberal Democrats” – 22 April 2010
Click on the image to view full size. Original posting can be seen here.
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3. Fixed debate polls?
As Michael Crick explains in this blog post, You Gov ran their post-debate poll following the second televised debate at a rather curious time. Between 9.27pm and 9.31pm, to be precise. The debate finished a 9.30pm – meaning:
In Crick’s words:
This may explain why Yougov gave David Cameron a better rating than the other post-debate polls did last night. For Nick Clegg ended the debate with a very powerful closing speech, probably the best of the evening.
According to the BBC video system Clegg didn’t start speaking until 9:29:18 and finished at 9:30:47
So many of those polled by You Gov last night must have voted without seeing his final speech. [link to Crick's blog]
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4. Stephan Shakespeare (the CIO)
You’d think that the most important aspect of any poll is that it is unbiased. And who’s You Gov’s CEO – the man ultimately responsible for making this so? Stephan Shakespeare, an ex-Conservative parliamentary candidate for Colchester and the owner of Conservative Home.
Perfect. Craig Murray offers his description of Mr. Shakespeare here but if that is a little too, er, biased then you can have a look at his Wikipedia entry.
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5. Nadhim Zahawi (the founder)
A follow on from the last one. Nadham Zahawi founded You Gov 10 years ago and was its CEO up until February this year when, of course, he stepped down to stand as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Stratford.
It’s just the type of business arangement that I used to experience during my time in Madrid. Florentino Perez would be proud.
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Still, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that any information published by You Gov was false is any way. They might send me a letter or something.
Image credit: secretlondon123
Politics and Social Media
I’ve already written about paid search and politics, but a far more obvious digital tool for politicians over the next few months is social media.
It’s an obvious and efficient way of politicians (and budding politicians) engaging with their constituents or target audiences to get their message across. Some good examples being:
Ed Fordham’s website
Alastair Campbell’s Blog
Iain Dale’s Diary
Tom Watson’s Twitter Feed
Watching each of these grind into motion over the last year has been interesting and this week it has been satisfying to get a bit of social-media-political-attention for myself.
Clowns and Parks
I live in Islington, just off Pentonville Road. Opposite my flat is Joseph Grimaldi Park, named after the man who invented the identity for the modern clown and who, Joe Frankenstein contends in a recent book, was the very first celebrity.
For interest, here is a snippet about Grimaldi:
Grim-all-day
A man goes into the doctor’s. ‘Doctor,’ he says, ‘can you help me? Life doesn’t seem worth living, and I am shrouded in constant gloom.’ ‘My good man,’ says the doctor, taking a look at the melancholy face before him, ‘there is only one cure for you. You must go to see Grimaldi the clown.’ ‘Sir,’ replies the patient, ‘I am Grimaldi the clown.’
Depressed or not, Grimaldi was a sensation and two centuries on his bones lie in the park opposite my flat.
All good and interesting until workmen arrived a month ago and dug it upside down.
After weeks of muddied shoes and sharp clatters from beyond the window, I wrote on Twitter:
“Oh. And congratulations to Islington Council for transforming the lovely Joseph Grimaldi Park into something that resembles a bowl of porridge”
It was about as much as I had time to say on the subject. It wasn’t a concern but it was an irritant. The kind of latent issue that a councillor/politician would never get to hear about in a letter or at a public forum, but which they might just find out about if they took the time to study the Internet.
And well done to Bridget Fox for doing just that. Within the hour I received an @tweet informing me about plans for the park and estimated deadlines and this morning it was followed up by a blog post.
If you glue those two things together it adds up to about as much direct engagement I’ve had with a politician for years. Mostly my fault, I know – but a lesson for politicians nonetheless. If you want to dig beneath the surface (pun intended) and engage with the apathetic masses – then social media is a pretty good way to go.
I suppose it would be glib and rather self-absorbed of me to suggest that I was going to vote for a politician because I’ve appeared in one of their blog posts. But in a world of beeping computers, identity numbers and automated messages it is comforting to communicate with another directly. And when it comes down to it, that might just make the difference.
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Image Credit: Rich Lewis