How did newspapers do at reporting their own polls? (February update)

By Mark Pack | Mon 8th March 2010 - 12:50 pm

This year we’ve tracking each month how good newspapers are at reporting their own political opinion polls. Getting your own story right isn’t perhaps the highest of bars to set newspapers, but on past experience it’s one they often seem to miss. But what’s the actual evidence? Who does best? Who does worst?

In order to provide answers, each time a newspaper publishes a political opinion poll we’re giving the report a score out of 30 based on how accurate the report is and whether it meets the British Polling Council’s own rules for political polling. (For details of the scoring system see here.)

With two months of data now collected, the newspapers are beginning to spread out in the table and some patterns are starting to emerge including, most strikingly, the way in which broadsheet newspapers often do worse than tabloids.

Here are the average scores for each newspaper for January and February:

The Times: 27.5
Sunday Mirror: 25
Guardian: 17.5
Independent: 17.5
The Sun: 12.7
Daily Telegraph: 10
Independent on Sunday: 10
Mail on Sunday: 10
Mirror: 10
Sunday Times: 8.3
Sunday Telegraph: 7.5
Metro: 5

People: data not available

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