After writing a post yesterday about the Yougov poll and the strange reluctance of the Greens to reveal the answers to all of the questions, I took a wander through cyberland and found that Joan McAlpine had already done a substantial piece on the poll and I could have saved myself a bit of effort! More interesting, still, however, was a message that winged its way to me from a good friend of mine who pointed out that there may be more flaws in the Yougov methodology. The points she made are as follows:
The Courier (covering Dundee, Angus, Perthshire and Fife which have high SNP support) is only listed (if at all) under "Other Paper" which would also apply to the Press and Journal which doesn't have a separate listing but is popular in a big chunk of the country. In fact, the Courier has a bigger circulation than the Herald and the Scotsman combined and I think I may be right in saying that the P&J is similarly endowed.
Additionally, the Record has very poor penetration in the North East of Scotland (and perhaps in other areas, too) so there is a question mark or two over whether the weighting for this paper should be applied evenly across the country.
Interesting, is it not? That's interesting as well as the answers that the Greens are hiding.
Mind how you go!
2 comments:
Additionally, am I right in thinking that all YouGov polls are conducted online? Which would also introduce a sample bias in that people who use the internet regularly would be over-represented. Not sure how much this poll tells us, really. Other than that the Greens are angling for a coalition with Labour.
Nice article, thanks for the information.
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