iwantareferendum: are they censoring their own poll or have they made up the results?

6 Comments

• Eastender
  Posted 3rd March 2008 at 7:05 pm | Permalink

  I got polled by ICM over the weekend and they definitely did ask the question…
• Dave H
  Posted 3rd March 2008 at 7:18 pm | Permalink

  A shame we can’t have both, but the boy Clegg has scuppered that possibility despite a majority of Lib Dem in the real world wanting him to honour a manifesto commitment. And please don’t tell me that the treaty is totally different to the constitution nobody believes a word of that no matter what is said in public.

• Mark Pack
  Posted 4th March 2008 at 8:12 am | Permalink

  Eastender: When this was queried with I Want A Referendum yesterday, they weren’t able to produce any poll question which backs up the claim in their news release. I think you were either asked a different question (can you remember the exact wording?) or it was a different poll.

• AP
  Posted 4th March 2008 at 10:02 am | Permalink

  I think by cutting and pasting only that you are taking the words out of context.

  The press release actually says:

  “The poll also finds that if only one question is to be asked then Liberal Democrat voters would prefer a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty to a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. In a MORI poll released today by the Liberal Democrats, just over half (54%) of voters support a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. But the ICM poll of Liberal Democrats shows that over two thirds (67%) support a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.”

  If you actually reproduce the text in full it makes it clear what is really being said. Cutting out of context is very dangerous!

• Mark Pack
  Posted 4th March 2008 at 10:20 am | Permalink

  No it doesn’t. Their claim is very specific – that their poll (“the poll” not “someone else’s poll”) shows something, when in fact their poll doesn’t show it at all.

  They then go on to mix apples and oranges with a comparison between figures about voters and about Liberal Democrat supporters (only). Quoting the rest of the paragraph just makes even clearer what a fast one they’re pulling.

  The bottom line is this: their press released claimed their poll showed something which it actually never asked.

• Martin Pantling
  Posted 5th March 2008 at 5:51 pm | Permalink

  All of this is irrelevant Mark, because Dave H is unfortunately on the mark.

  Our MPs may not line up to lose their front bench posts, but the fact remains that most people don’t believe or accept the line that the Treaty is radically different from the proposed Constitution.