Lies, Damned Lies…

And statistics.

Further to the comments here, I am drawn to something I’d noticed and mentally dismissed earlier in the week.

The majority of older voters, Conservative supporters and men are now backing the campaign to stay in the EU following a collapse in support for Brexit, a new exclusivepoll for the Telegraph shows.

The poll finds that the Remain campaign now has a 13-point lead with just one month until the referendum.

The latest ORB poll puts Remain on 55 per cent and Leave trailing on 42 per cent, among people who definitely intend to vote.

Given that this poll was out of step with the rest, which show a much closer margin, I’d dismissed it as an anomaly.

Seems I was right to do so.

In a remarkable piece of ‘content for sale’ this morning, the Daily Telegraph leads with a story about the Brexiteers ‘falling behind by 13 points’ – with men and older older people switching to the Remainder herd. As a former member of the Market Research Society (MRS), The Slog deconstructs this piece of naked propaganda clearly orchestrated by ‘Sir’ Lynton Crosby.

>The “news” that the Remaindeers are shown as opening up a 13% lead in the Brexit referendum will probably make for a good day on the FTSE: more “favourable” polls in recent days have seen Sterling back at 1.29 to the euro. If that trend sticks until polling day in a month’s time, we can expect the rate to be back up at 1.35 within weeks, if not days. So strong is the case for Remain, allegedly, our currency will strengthen against the disaster of a currency that is running the eurozone ragged. There’s no logic to any of it.

The only problem for the Remaindeers is that the analysis of the ORB study is totally misleading.

There’s a surprise. A sample of 800 is so small as to be insignificant, especially when they try to break down the figures. So, risible bullshit, then.

My own expectation is that remain will win by a small margin, not least because the status-quo is hard to overcome. But a sudden jump of 3 points? Nah.

4 Comments

  1. Perhaps we should allow such lies to proliferate – it might make those wanting out to redouble their efforts, and ensure that they vote, while the remainers might sink into a complacent stupor, and consider their effort to vote is not needed.

    I wish.

  2. Perhaps they’ve already started collating the postal votes for
    ‘re-adjustment’.

  3. Bet you that if Leave does win by a small margin, Cameron will rule it inconclusive and demand another vote – something he told Farage was ‘pie in the sky’ when the argument was the other way around

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