Member-only story
Total False Recall
No, a recent Opinium poll was not based a 10 point Conservative lead in 2017.
It has been claimed that a recent Opinium poll suggested there was a 10 point Conservative lead in 2017, meaning their sample was not representative.
It did not. This article also discusses the problem of false recall.
What the poll said
Opinium conducted a survey of 2,003 UK adults, on 20th — 22nd November 2019. This poll was part of Opinium’s regular survey series for The Observer. The central vote intention estimates were the Conservatives with 47%, Labour on 28%, and the Liberal Democrats on 12%.
In a post shared on tax campaigner Richard Murphy’s blog (written by a contributor), it was claimed that this Opinium poll was “wrong”. In that poll, one question (Q:V005a) asks:
And thinking back to the UK general election in June 2017 , which, if any, of the following parties did you vote for?
46% of respondents selected Conservative, and 36% ticked Labour. Since this is a 10 points lead — when the actual result was a 2.4 point Conservative lead — is “over represented by 7.6%”. Consequently, the author writes the poll is a “magic trick”, “balls” and “wrong”. The co-founder of Novara Media also posted similar criticisms.
