The BBC very obviously feels deeply embarrassed at having fallen (eagerly) for the pre-election opinion polls, nearly all of which showed Labour and the Conservatives to be neck-and-neck for at least the past six weeks. [Only one (suppressed by either the pollster or the Daily Mirror, presumably assuming it to be a rogue poll) predicted the actual result - a Conservative majority.]
Andrew Marr sounded particularly aggrieved about the polls during BBC One's election night coverage, and returned to the theme during his paper review this morning, fervently urging his journalistic "comrades" (as he called them) to pay much less attention to the polls in 2020. (A striking televisual moment).
Andrew Marr sounded particularly aggrieved about the polls during BBC One's election night coverage, and returned to the theme during his paper review this morning, fervently urging his journalistic "comrades" (as he called them) to pay much less attention to the polls in 2020. (A striking televisual moment).
There's been a lot of discussion about the failure of the polls to predict the extent of the Conservatives' victory over Labour, but I think Janet Daley at the Sunday Telegraph hits the nail most squarely on the head.
She argues that ordinary voters have been "browbeaten" by the Left into being reluctant to share their real views - and being a blogger about BBC bias I'd, naturally, pin a fair amount of that brow-beating onto the BBC.
She argues that ordinary voters have been "browbeaten" by the Left into being reluctant to share their real views - and being a blogger about BBC bias I'd, naturally, pin a fair amount of that brow-beating onto the BBC.
Time to confess to something I've only previously confessed to Sue (as I'm somewhat ashamed of about it myself, but as I'm among friends...):
I've been canvassed twice in the past year - not by polling companies, but directly by the Labour Party. The Conservative-held constituency of Morecambe and Lunesdale was one of Labour's top targets in 2015, so they were really after my vote. On both occasions I said I'd be voting Labour - even though I've never had the slightest intention of voting Labour. I felt embarrassed to say otherwise. (Plus they were so nice that I didn't want to spoil their day by saying I'm a right-winger who would sooner chuck himself into a pit of pissed-off, Owen Jones-admiring cobras than vote for Ed Miliband). Only afterwards did I cheer myself up (as I hate lying, and came out in a profuse sweat whilst doing so) by dreaming that I might possibly be throwing an amusing spanner into Labour's calculations - and, thus, their chances of winning - by my absurdly, toe-curdlingly dishonest answers.
I was a very shy Tory there, wasn't I?
Now, the Lord Ashcroft polls showed a growing lead for Labour's Amina (peace be upon her) in Morecambe throughout the election, so it wasn't just the Labour Party's polling. Her lead (peace be upon it) grew from around 4% to 6% in the final week of the campaign. (I wasn't keen on her as I'd read her Twitter feed, bashing Israel and being less than robust on free speech after 'Charlie Hebdo'). The Tory MP for Morecambe, David Morris (a hairdresser who used to play in Rick Astley's backing group), therefore, looked like permatanned toast. Morecambe's talismanic Eric Morecambe statue appeared to be about to wave goodbye to Mr Morris, singing 'Never Gonna Give You Up' ever-so-sarcastically, and instead to take up the classic Morecambe and Wise tune 'Bring me BDS against the Zionist Entity'.
And yet, come election day, David Morris triumphed in Morecambe - and did so by over 4%. He actually boosted his majority. I got my automatic rifle out, ran out into the potholed streets and cried 'Allahu Akbar', firing happily into the air (accidentally killing dozens of Morecambe Bay's beautiful oyster catchers in the process). The Eric Morecambe statue sang 'Bring Me Sunshine (and a Permatan)' to Mr Morris's delight, and I joined in, ululating loudly.
And that makes me think that one heck of a lot of Morecambe folk (other than me) were, as Dead Ringers put it, completely lying their arses off to the pollsters.
Shy Tories...and shy Kippers...must be legion (or at least plentiful enough to flummox the pollsters and the commentariat).
BBC Question Time audiences are said, by right-wing panelists like James Delingpole, Janet Daley, Nigel Farage and Toby Young, to contain plenty of right-wingers, but we rarely seem to hear from them. Does the Left brow-beat them into silence? Probably.
BBC Question Time audiences are said, by right-wing panelists like James Delingpole, Janet Daley, Nigel Farage and Toby Young, to contain plenty of right-wingers, but we rarely seem to hear from them. Does the Left brow-beat them into silence? Probably.
And the same phenomenon may also account, in a different context, for the total failure of the polls prior to the Scottish referendum, to get anywhere near predicting the near 11% margin of defeat for pro-independence supporters.
Some pro-union supporters obviously felt brow-beaten by their...er, how shall we put this?...er...extremely passionate pro-independence opponents into keeping their true feelings hidden too. (The fact that around 50% of Scots didn't vote for the SNP in the general election is something else that should be borne in mind here. We're probably hearing much less from them too #shyScottishunionists).
Now, where does the BBC (by a very, very long chalk, the UK's most dominant media outlet) come into all of this?
Well, if you've been reading this blog (and blogs like News-watch and Biased BBC), you'll already know the answer to that question.
No media outlet in the UK - Murdoch-owned or otherwise - comes within a country parsec of the BBC's reach on the British public, news-wise. And it has a pronounced left-liberal bias on a whole range of subject (though not necessarily on everything).
This is a TV and radio broadcaster, after all, that, it emerged in the course of the largely-pro-BBC, BBC-funded Prebble report, really did censor phone-in callers who expressed strong reservations about immigration (on Radio 4's Any Answers), because they felt such opinions might cause offense. (I'm still surprised that this admission hasn't been raised merry hell about by anti-BBC bias campaigners - as Sir John Major might have put it. It seems quite extraordinarily damning to me).
Such a broadcaster has hardly encouraged 'shy Tories' and 'shy Kippers' and 'shy anything that doesn't meet with the BBC/Left's approval people' to speak their minds without fear of being shamed by the BBC/Left. If it had, we'd have seen Question Times like the one from Leeds in the last week of the election far more often, wouldn't we?
Some pro-union supporters obviously felt brow-beaten by their...er, how shall we put this?...er...extremely passionate pro-independence opponents into keeping their true feelings hidden too. (The fact that around 50% of Scots didn't vote for the SNP in the general election is something else that should be borne in mind here. We're probably hearing much less from them too #shyScottishunionists).
Now, where does the BBC (by a very, very long chalk, the UK's most dominant media outlet) come into all of this?
Well, if you've been reading this blog (and blogs like News-watch and Biased BBC), you'll already know the answer to that question.
No media outlet in the UK - Murdoch-owned or otherwise - comes within a country parsec of the BBC's reach on the British public, news-wise. And it has a pronounced left-liberal bias on a whole range of subject (though not necessarily on everything).
This is a TV and radio broadcaster, after all, that, it emerged in the course of the largely-pro-BBC, BBC-funded Prebble report, really did censor phone-in callers who expressed strong reservations about immigration (on Radio 4's Any Answers), because they felt such opinions might cause offense. (I'm still surprised that this admission hasn't been raised merry hell about by anti-BBC bias campaigners - as Sir John Major might have put it. It seems quite extraordinarily damning to me).
Such a broadcaster has hardly encouraged 'shy Tories' and 'shy Kippers' and 'shy anything that doesn't meet with the BBC/Left's approval people' to speak their minds without fear of being shamed by the BBC/Left. If it had, we'd have seen Question Times like the one from Leeds in the last week of the election far more often, wouldn't we?
