YouGov Messed With The Wrong Guy
YouGov have been on a roll lately, dishing out a series of ‘damning’ anti-Corbyn polls with leading questions like ‘why is Jeremy so shit?’ and bullshit like that. So naturally they got my back up. Whilst Blairites have been lapping it up and pointing fingers at the leadership, genuine Labour supporters and truth-seekers have been saying ‘hold on a second, maybe we should read between the lines.’
So, I did a bit of digging and went on the internet. I googled ‘YouGov’ and spotted a link to their Wikipedia entry. It Immediately seemed like a good place to do much of my research. First thing that strikes you is the revenue, £88.2 million, spread between 692 employees — that’s a pretty tasty earner. Especially when you consider that a good proportion of that number are going to be non-unionised catering and cleaning staff, probably on minimum wage. Seems odd that a company makes that much money simply asking people how they’re going to vote, almost like there are powerful outside interests involved.
The second thing that strikes me is the name of a prominent Tory MP, a Mr Nadhim Zahawi in the list of founders. Google his name and the first thing that comes up is a Guardian article detailing extensive links to companies with tax havens. Also noted, one of those companies owns a £20m stake in YouGov. Absolutely fucked up for a start, but even more so when you think the absolute one guy who would be coming after them like a train on fire is, one, Jeremy Corbyn. If Jeremy became PM (and this will happen, trust me on this), first thing he’s going to think is ‘right, which tax dodging pricks do I need to shakedown to get the NHS back on its feet?’ See where I’m going with this?
So, anyway, there’s only one true way to debunk their bent polling. Firstly, you need to take a truly unbiased approach to test their findings. So I decided to produce my own set of polls to see how they fared against YouGov’s findings. Not really a face-to-face guy, but every time I produce a poll on Twitter and Labour win (in a landslide), Blairites tweet at me saying ‘echo chamber, rah rah rah.’ Listen, there’s 16 million users of Twitter in the UK — if that’s not a representative sample then I don’t know what is. Apparently only 12% of votes cast are used for an Exit Poll, and yet 16 million is more than 20% of the population. But anyway, at least with face to face you can’t be accused of tampering.
So, I thought ‘fuck it, I live in London for a start — so I’ve got every race, religion, nationality, sexuality, class, gender and political view I could want on my doorstep. I don’t have to travel far, because I’m already somewhere that’s a representative cross-section of the whole nation.’ So, I loaded up on my Oyster Card, hit the railways hard and got chatting this city’s finest.
After a gruelling day travelling all around zones 1 & 2, I leafed through my notes and totted up all the responses. ‘Not bad for a day’s work’, I thought. So, then it was time to produce my findings. ‘Even more work now’, I thought, again, to myself. So, I sucked down a bong to get some focus and went hard at it. This time it was less physical, but it still took its toll as I spent several hours tweaking algorithms and playing around with some advanced maths. Luckily that shit comes easily.
The first poll question was around people’s voting intention. Look at this shit. For a start, it’s eerily similar to some of the polls I have run and seen on Twitter. Underrated observation here is that the Greens are doing way better than the MSM are giving them credit for.
So then, let’s look at the equivalent YouGov poll published recently:-
Something doesn’t quite feel right, does it?
The second poll question was for Labour voters only — which, as we know by now, made up 50% of all of my correspondents.
Turns out he is, according to 73.1%. So, what’s all this about Labour voters wanting him out? Surely not more Blairite-led smoke blowing? It probably is.
Last one, was a direct head-to-head between Corbyn and May.
I couldn’t believe the result of this one at first, so spent a good couple of hours tweaking and re-calibrating my algorithms. Turns out it was true, Jeremy was far more popular than May. So, why then — is this shady pollster linked to tax havens (YouGov) trotting out this poll?
Beats me, ask them.
