99% of polls are rubbish
Today's Express declares that 99% of readers want to get out of Europe!
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "But wait, Britain is in Europe anyway, what do they mean out of Europe? Oh, leaving the EU. This kind of witless buffoonery makes my brain hurt a bit, it's a bit early to think about it on a Friday morning", and of course you're right. But I wonder if the DAILY EXPRESS CRUSADE marks a bit of a paradigm shift - not just unpleasant about Muslims and foreign people, but actively wanting to court the Ukip/Tory right vote as well.
Is it true that 99% of YOU want to get out of Europe? Well, no, of course not. You may remember the Daily Star poll which found 98% of its readers feared Britain was becoming a Muslim state. Genuinely becoming a Muslim state. These things are self-selecting; it's only the people who agree with the daftness in the first place who go that extra yard to pick up the phone and vote, creating a nice little revenue stream out of impotent rage. You know that and I know that; the Express pretends it doesn't know that so makes out that it's 99% of YOU who are demanding the withdrawal from Europe, when they know it's just a few angry people with a telephone and a sense of furious injustice. Who's going to bother to vote no?
I wonder whether all this is counterproductive, though, for these papers. The Star says 98% of its readers fear Britain is becoming a Muslim state - what about all those readers who don't, but are being told that's what their papers stands for? And what of the people ambivalent towards the EU or even in favour, who will be left bemused by the apparent landslide for the EXPRESS CRUSADE? Do they think to themselves they'd better start getting another paper? Maybe not, but I think it's clear the Express and Star are aiming low as they try to cling on to readers. It looks like fear is the key. Fear about Muslims, fear about Europe, fear about anything 'foreign'. It's going to get worse.
No related posts.
Buy my book, it’s great
Switch site
Donate
Recent Posts
Most Commented On
Recent Comments
- Eddie on A day with the Daily Mail
- Eddie on A day with the Daily Mail
- Eddie on Peter Hitchens depresses me. But I won’t kill him.
- Emily on Update
- Angela Webb on This isn’t a flounce
About Me
Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
If you're struggling to read the site please use the drop down box below to increase the text size.
November 26th, 2010 - 09:58
Never ceases to wind me up when papers like this publish polls declaring 99% of YOU, meaning ME are in favour of this and that somesuch cockwaffle. Still, you have to give the DE marks for ambition if nothing else. Ninety nine percent? I mean, even Uncle Joe Stalin in his heyday etc…
November 26th, 2010 - 10:06
If YouGov or any other reputable body found one of their poll results returning a 99% answer in one direction or the other, they would probably hold an investigation to find out if the question was inappropriately worded, or someone was playing silly buggers. What they would not do is gleefully run it because it fitted their prejudices.
November 26th, 2010 - 10:25
Anyone see Nigel Farage on QT last night – “we should follow the lead of the Daily Express”.
Er, no, we shouldn’t. Ever.
November 26th, 2010 - 10:51
This is simply because 99% of Express readers are dickheads. But I bet they won’t publish that headline.
November 26th, 2010 - 11:27
I did the foundation module for the OU MA in Social Sciences a few years ago, part of which involved studying polling methods and methodology. And believe me, when you’ve done THAT, newspaper polls look like someone getting their times tables wrong and then claiming to be Stephen Hawking’s personal tutor.
November 26th, 2010 - 11:52
You might be interested in ‘real’ results? In the UK, an EU survey in June 2010 found the following.
Question – “Membership of the EU is, in your opinion:”
A good thing – 29%
Neither good nor bad – 31%
A bad thing – 33%
Don’t know – 7%
The UK is alone in Europe with this particular attitude.
You might find this website interesting to browse, Anton: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/cf/index_en.cfm
Good luck – or buona fortuna as we say here.
November 26th, 2010 - 17:29
Peter,
I don’t know. France, Germany and Belgium are catching us up in wondering whether we benefit. But the UK has long thought itself far superior to the EU.
How much of that is driven by the press? I don’t know. But I could speculate…
November 26th, 2010 - 13:47
This reminds me of a few years ago when The Sun trumpeted on their front page a poll saying that 97% of people wanted a return to capital punishment – and then you noted that this was a poll in which about 3,000 people responded so considering the paper’s circulation figures it should really have read ’99% of Sun readers couldn’t give two shits about the issue at hand’.
November 26th, 2010 - 13:56
When I saw that headline this morning I did a big ‘Mehehehehe’ laugh a la Boycie. Interesting comparisons between Express and Star. Hard to say which is the worst read…Oh, but then the Star does have pictures of jugs in it…
November 26th, 2010 - 15:45
If we’re ‘getting out of Europe’ can we have a say on where we’re going next?
I’ve always fancied South America myself.
November 26th, 2010 - 17:30
Considering that not even 99% of the commentators on the article want out of the EU this has got to be one of the stupidest “polls” I’ve ever seen.
They are really shooting themselves in the foot mind you, because at this rate, in 5 years time their target readership will either be so brain dead that they lack the basic motor functions required to pick up a paper, or so xenophobic that they won’t trust any information that doesn’t come from the voices inside their head.
November 26th, 2010 - 23:09
“99% of you say: get us out of Europe” should be read as “99% of people gullible enough to read the Daily Obsess, and with enough time and money to burn to phone in to a pointless poll, still rather like the idea of invading France.”
November 27th, 2010 - 20:40
I suppose if they asked ‘would you mind getting out of the EU if it meant your food would shoot up in price, you’d have to pay a fortune for health insurance on holiday, your kids wouldn’t be able to study for a year in France without paying £10,000, oh, and you wouldn’t be able to buy any of that nice property on the cheap… and, ummm, next time you get a German/Dutch/Spanish partner they’d have to spend a year applying for visas before they could live here’ the answer might be a teeny bit different… with of course a PS added for ‘plus you lot wouldn’t be able to flit over there, work for a few months and flit back without a shitload of bureaucracy hence there’d be far less comments from Twat Jones, Expat, Spain and his ilk’…
November 28th, 2010 - 21:32
I always find it really ironic that a paper so ready to scream Jihad is happy to go on a crusade. I know there are multiple meanings of Jihad, just as there are crusade. They have annual street-cleaning Jihad in Iran apparently. Of course if you were to bring up the fact that Crusade could be read as ‘holy war of invasion to be waged upon the unbelieving infidels’, Dirty Des would be quick to remind us that the word has changed meaning with time…whilst failing to recognise that same fact with Jihad. Purely on a semantic level.
December 3rd, 2010 - 09:40
On a different blog (unfortunately I can’t remember whic one right now), the writer described the exact same mental picture I had the moment I read that headline; a couple of massive tugboats pulling Britain farther into the Atlantic.