Wednesday 19 November 2008

Correcting The Times

Slightly concerning to see this this morning.

Many are now looking nervously towards next year’s European elections. The absence of UKIP, which squeezed the BNP vote in 2004, means that Britain’s first BNP Euro MP could be just months from taking office.

Absence? That makes it sound like we're not going to be fighting the election!

Yes, we have been on to him and yes, he does say that the sub-editors mangled what he meant to say. More like "in the absence of UKIP's strength of 2004" and a correction or clarification will be run tomorrow. Even that's wrong of course, for no one at all has done any polling at all about how people are likely to vote at the euro-elections, so no one can make any informed comments upon relative strengths.

But just to set minds at rest, yes, we are fighting the elections, no we've not all gone home.

As you've been told, you shouldn't believe everything you read in the newspapers......

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do we have any indication of when the first commissioned YouGov poll is going to be done in relation to the EU elections next year? YouGov were very accurate with their predictions in the run-up to the 2004 elections...will be interesting to see what we're currently running at % wise.

Vindico said...

How about we commission our own poll in Jan/Feb 09, phrasing the question in an honest and meaningful way, and pre-empt the media, etc? Might be an interesting marker from which to launch and run our campaign?

Tim Worstall said...

The reason we don't commission polls is because they cost lots and lots of money.

Michale, I've called YouGov to ask and they don't know yet either.