You’d have a hard time working out from this report in today’s Sunday Express that it’s the Liberal Democrats who are in second place in the latest Angus Reid poll the newspaper has commissioned.
If you try really hard you can just about work out that it’s likely that is the case (given the poll share figure given for Labour) but then there’s the talk of the Conservatives being “12 points ahead”. True, they are 12 points ahead of Labour, but no mention is made of the much smaller lead over the Lib Dems (6 points).
And a boring, boring pedant would add that the “surging” in the piece is all about changes that are within the usual margins of error.
It’s almost as if the newspaper doesn’t want its readers to know how well the Lib Dems are doing … Banish that cynical thought right away.



9 Comments
Interesting the Polls seem all over the place at the moment. I’d love to see how the polling organisations are pulling together their figures because they can’t seem to agree where the Lib Dems are in the Poll’s. It seems to range from anywhere between 25% to 32%. It’s all very odd.
Also Nick Clegg is appearing in some seats where I really wouldn’t have dreamed they cold succeed I wonder what that tells us.
Angus Reid produces abnormally low Labour scores so not sure why a newspaper commissions polls from them…oh yes I do, because it fits their editorial line! silly me…Similarly this Lib Dem second place business is probably dead now, why bother using Angus Reid to claim you’re still second?
>>>Interesting the Polls seem all over the place at the moment. I’d love to see how the polling organisations are pulling together their figures because they can’t seem to agree where the Lib Dems are in the Poll’s. It seems to range from anywhere between 25% to 32%. It’s all very odd.
Possibly suggests wild swings on a seat by seat basis?
>>>Also Nick Clegg is appearing in some seats where I really wouldn’t have dreamed they cold succeed I wonder what that tells us.
Here’s hoping!
This report in the Express might not say what the figure is for the Liberal Democrats, but what figure do they give the Tories then? Do you take the one figure they give, 23 per cent for Labour, and add on 12 per cent, as they say they have a 12 per cent lead over Labour, and work it the sum for yourself? The only figure I can see is the 23 per cent for Labour…but then it was a good lunch, and Michael Caine in the background is a bit distracting.
Not surprising of course. The right-wing press, having first ridiculed, then tired to discredit and scandalise a resurgent Lib Dem party, has now moved to stage three: write the Lib Dems out of the picture altogether.
Imagine how poorly the Conservatives would be doing without 80% of the press and half the TV media behind them. We should really be proud of getting any support at all given the state of the game.
I do wish people would stop calling the Express a “newspaper”…
Good reporting guys, stripping the Tory pain off the press wall is exposing all sorts of things underneath right now. The media have organised a big surge for Cameron on the back of very little indeed last week, and have almost changed the dynamic. Keep exposing this fluff for what it is…
Interestingly, though, polls show Labour doing very badly in Scotland, with gains to SNP and Lib Dems. The SNP will not enter into any formal coalition (and would be a difficult partner if they did), instead is MPs will vote on a bill by bill basis. This looks likely to scupper the chances of a Labour government, certainly one that could last a parliament. Therefore it appears to me increasingly likely that the next government will be Conservative, quite possibly with a quickie election in the autumn or spring.
I know we are in the final days of one general election, but I do think we should be thinking of raising a war coffer for the next fight…