Polling Council condemns anti-hunting poll

The British Polling council has investigated a poll conducted by anti-hunting organisations and found that they broke the rules designed to ensure that opinion polls are honestly and transparently conducted.

The poll was conducted by IPSOS - MORI for the League Against Cruel Sports and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

This poll was been the subject of an investigation by the British Polling Council which found that MORI broke the ‘Objects and Rules’ of the Council, which exist to ensure that polling is fair and open.

The partial results were published on 17 February 2008. British Polling Council rules state that full details of published research must be published on the research company’s website within 48 hours of details being released. Details of the poll were in fact only released on the MORI website on 29 February, 12 days after the publication of the press release.

When MORI were contacted by the Countryside Alliance. Only then was it revealed that the poll question included an explicit comparison between ‘fox hunting’, 'badger baiting' and ‘dog fighting’. As Baroness Hale said in her judgment in the Hunting Act case in the House of Lords: “It [hunting] cannot be compared with bear-baiting or cock-fighting.”

No member of the public reading, or viewing, the resulting media coverage could be expected to know that the research involved comparing hunting to indefensible activities like dog fighting.

This is not an isolated incident. MORI have used this question, or a very similar one, on several occasions and the question asked has never been included in the press releases issued by the commissioning organisations.

Comments

Anonymous said…
It doesn't matter how you phrase the question, the overwhelming majority of people in this country are opposed to hunting. End of story, get used to it.
9:40 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
And that makes it OK to put out misleading polling data and break the rules laid down by the polling council to try to make such exercises fair and honest?

For most of my political lifetime, opinion polls showed that the overwhelming majority of people in this country supported the restoration of the death penalty.

Did you ever quote those polls at those who didn't want to bring back hanging, say "End of story, get used to it" ?

And would you have seriously expected that to be the end of the discussion?
11:23 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

Image
I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more