Monday, August 24, 2009

Rigging polls

There’s been plenty of comment about Paul Flynn’s claim that Plaid Cymru bloggers rigged the Total Politics ‘best Welsh blogs’ poll, where six of the top ten were Plaid.

As Menaiblog points out, I only wish someone had told me beforehand.

A different type of poll is under question in this week’s Glamorgan Gem, though.

The Gem suspended their online poll about whether or not the Labour Party in the Vale of Glamorgan should have an all-women shortlist for their general election candidate, citing voting irregularities when the results changed massively after they published their initial findings.

As a former tutor in social science methodology, I’m not sure that anyone should take too much notice of open access online polls, as even at best they can only ever be indicative rather than being truly representative.

But, if the Gem are right, then that looks rather more like someone trying to rig a ballot than the easier to explain results from the Total Politics poll.

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