Opinion polls: from E P Thompson on Psephology to YouGov on pork pies
I’m sceptical about opinion polls, even ones that produce results I approve of.
YouGov are apparently regarded as the most reliable of pollsters, certainly by the BBC and some of the media yet I don’t see much evidence that they produce results that are much more reliable than random.
The outcome of a recent YouGov poll on British foods is here:
It’s bad news for those like scotch eggs and pork pies because they are apparently unpopular which no doubt explains why they are so easily available in supermarkets and street food stalls. Or perhaps the poll is just BS.
Scepticism about opinion polls is not new.
E.P Thompson wrote about psephology in the New Reasoner, Autumn 1959, 60 years ago, in his PEssay on Ephology.
Thompson notes ‘a psephologist is a man employed by the mass media to research into what people think the mass media has told them to think. An ephologist is a man employed by the Observer or BBC to interpret the results of psephology and who makes an eephing good thing out of it’
Meanwhile 60 years on, has anything much changed? Hmmmm
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