No campaign straight-up lie about Lord Ashcroft indyref poll
Those hep cats over at Project Fear HQ have chosen a GIF, very much the Ryan Gosling of image formats, to present their spin on the independence referendum poll just released by Tory sugar daddy and Viceroy of Belize, Lord Ashcroft:
The No campaign say that while 49% of Scots think independence is the Scottish Government’s priority (though in the hands of their spinners this becomes “Salmond’s priority”), only 3% think it should be.
This is a bit of a busman’s holiday for me, since I’m knackered after spending all day working on another poll for another pollster. But upon looking into the full data tables from the poll (PDF), we find that this goes further than spin. It’s a flat-out lie.
The figures they claim represent what Scots think ought to be the government’s priority exclude every single person who said the Scottish Government does have the right priority.
Is it any wonder they can make it look like respondents reject the priorities of the SNP government when anyone who admitted they didn’t was stripped from their sample?
The figures they give are (roughly; for reasons I cannot understand they don’t all exactly tally with the real numbers) from Ashcroft’s Table 4 on page 9 of the PDF, which is clearly marked “Base: All those not saying that the Scottish Government has the right priority for Scotland”.
And how many people said the Scottish Government has the right priority for Scotland? A handful maybe? No. Thirty-six percent. That’s how many people had to be airbrushed out to give the No campaign the GIF they wanted.
I would ask the No campaign to show us a little more respect, but anyone naive enough to think that’s ever going to happen probably doesn’t deserve it.
By the way, there were a few people who said that independence isn’t the Scottish Government’s priority but should be; 15 in fact. And how many said the priority should be staying in the union? Three. Not three percent, 3 people. Not even enough to earn a percentage figure, it gets a lowly asterisk instead. Don’t expect to see that on a Project Fear GIF anytime soon.
Update, 10:45am Monday 9 September:
Pretty much every paper in the country has repeated this lie, and it turns that that’s not because they’re getting their info from an animated GIF. Lord Ashcroft’s press release also misrepresented his own data in exactly the same way:
@BaffieBox @Telegraph 1 of 2 – Release we were given made no mention of diff base for table 4. Have phoned Ashcroft office for statement
— Simon Johnson (@simon_telegraph) September 9, 2013
…and then ‘clarified’ it this morning, conveniently after the papers had all gone to print carrying the false information released overnight:
@BaffieBox Ashcroft’s office says it has ‘clarified’ base for that question this morning. Thanks v much for pointing this out
— Simon Johnson (@simon_telegraph) September 9, 2013
Whats up this is kinda of off topic but I was wondering
if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML.
I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding knowledge so I
wanted to geet advice from someone with experience.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Hi! I’ve been following your blog for a while now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out
from New Caney Tx! Just wanted to say keep up the good work!
Or they could have produced a simpler graphic –
61% of Scots say the Scottish Government has the wrong main priority.
Zeb – I can’t see how your comment contradicts Gary’s analysis. The Better Together graphic is implying that 41% of everyone polled said the economy should be “Salmond’s” main priority, but even if you accept that it’s valid to shove the “economy” and “create jobs” figures into one (and then add an extra percentage, for some reason), that’s 41% of 61%, which is a far less impressive-sounding 25%. In reality, of course, if those 22% who said “create jobs” had meant “the economy”, I’m sure they would have been perfectly capable of putting “the economy”, so it’s actually just 18% of 61%, which rounds up to 11% of everyone polled. Hmmm, that’s not going to look quite so good on a GIF.
Gary’s got it spot on, hence the conveniently-too-late clarification from Mr Ashcroft.
At the risk of resurrecting an early internet meme from the mid 90’s, this is essentially Project Fear making the case that “All your base are belong to us”.
Stick in there mate. 🙂
Unfortunately you misread the polling data
What the poll actually says is that 49% believes that the Scottish Gov’s main priority is independence, 25% said they don’t know, and the remaining 26% named a very broad spread of priorities (none getting more that 5%)
61% then said they thought the Scottish Gov had the wrong main priority.
Those that answered it had the wrong priority were asked what it should be. 22% said creating jobs and 18% the economy.
Suggest you read the poll data again…..
The very sad bit is that people will believe the headline & not listen to the true story. Makes me wont to weep.
In the words of the unsurpassable Public Enemy
“Base – How Low Can You Go”
There are not nearly enough comments referencing old-school hip hop on this blog and I salute you for addressing that.
I used to work in Survey Analysis and these arguments remind me of the old quote – “There are lies, damn lies and then there are Statistics”.
You can make any set of figures prove anything you want to prove, you just manipulate them.
To be fair to Sarwar, he’s only repeating Ashcroft’s flat-out lie. There’s no mention of “Base: All those not saying that the Scottish Government has the right priority for Scotland”. in the summary document. http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Lord-Ashcroft-Scottish-Political-Attitudes-poll.pdf
…or for that matter George Osborne.
Do you think the Tories genuinely want the ‘No’ campaign to be successful, when they have so much to gain from Scotland no longer having 59 MPs at Westminster (only 1 being Tory)?
I expect to see more campaigning from them over the months ahead which is designed to wind up the Scottish electorate whilst appearing to be supportive of a ‘No’ vote.
Think about it – if you were seeking to influence Scottish swing voters, would you send in Lord Ashcroft?
On twitter, it was pointed out to me that we should consider the possibility that this was idiocy rather than mendacity. As the man said, one should never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
So I’ll be very happy to amend this post to reflect that if the No campaign tell me it was cock-up rather than conspiracy, and if they take down the erroneous GIF.