One tweet sums up the cynical discussion of Labour’s recent polling

Jeremy Corbyn
John Shafthauer


Some people in the public sphere and establishment media have been heavily focussing on a poll which put Labour in fourth place. These same people have had a very different reaction to a poll which put Labour in the lead. One tweet has nailed the cynicism going on here:

Silly season

Recent polls from different companies have seen Labour’s position vary from being in the lead to fourth position. Even if Labour were definitively ahead, the big dip both it and the Conservatives have faced is clearly not good for them. Despite this obvious uncertainty, many are confidently stating that Labour is trailing in the polls.

Here’s a snapshot of some recent polls from pollsters like Opinium, YouGov, Ipsos Mori, and Survation:

Britain Elects currently averages these out as follows:

Many people are discussing this YouGov poll:

The same people seem less interested in the Opinium poll from a few days later:

Politics professor Rob Ford advising people to “stop getting excited about tiny differences” is good advice. Few people seem to be following it. Political editor of Sky News Beth Rigby – tweeting after the Opinium poll came out – referred to the YouGov figure in a way which made it sound like an average rather than just one poll:

Former Labour MP Ian Austin got so excited by this one poll that he wrote an article condemning “racism and extremism” for the Daily Mail:

Several people pointed out the issue with how polls were reported on the Andrew Marr Show:

Aaron Bastani predicted this the day before:

Certainties

There are a few things we can say for certain right now:

There’s a lot of confusion. The big winners have been the Brexit Party and Liberal Democrats who’ve taken their vote from the historically larger parties. Some polling companies also have a better record than others. Polls taken before elections can be a poor indicator of how things turn out.

What we can’t say is that Labour is behind in the polls. So why are people who should know better doing exactly that?

Featured image via Sophie Brown – Wikimedia

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    2. There must be an early election in the air.
      Last week it was Corbyn’s health that was the Headlines, today it is ONE poll
      The Establishment are panicking.

    3. I am going to inject another healthy dose of cynicism here. I do not forget for one minute, not one nano second that the Tory’s are ahead in any Polls let alone second. I prefer to look at facts in these matters. Evidence shows that, in the recent Local Elections, despite information published by the MSM, the Tories took a serious drubbing losing over 1000 seats. The Labour vote actually held up very well and, although they lost seats, overall they lost very few councils and gained some key Tory ones. The Tories came third in these elections. Labour won the Peterborough By-Election despite a vicious, malicious, nasty, hateful, personal campaign by the MSM against Corbyn. The Tories? Well they came last. So the facts don’t seem to support these Polls do they.
      Allow me to acquaint you with some information from the USA elections. I cannot remember which year this was but Janet Reno the then Attorney General a Democratic Party Senator, stood for re-election in her constituency. She had been previously elected with a significant majority. The Republicans were not going to allow re-election of a Democrat and, being the Dirty Tricks Party that they are who will do anything, absolutely anything, including Watergate and other illegal activities, requested the MSM to produce Poll Figures that showed disastrous polling for the Democrats and high polling for the Republicans. Murdoch’s organisation duly complied. The Democrats were so worried they would lose Janet Reno, they pulled her out of that seat and put her into another one. Another Democrat candidate replaced her in that area. Well, the Democrats, I think if I remember correctly, won the vote by quite a large margin. When the truth eventually came out about the Polls, they were found to have been fabricated, totally fabricated in order to influence the election against the Democrats.
      Now, given that Pompeo and Trump have made public Statements that they would never allow Corbyn to come to Power, I strongly suspect they are behind the manipulation of some of these Polls. No way, and I mean no way, given recent elections can the Tory’s even be in 2nd place let alone 1st. Hey, Democracy in this country is seriously dead.

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