How To Read An Opinion Poll (Revisited)

In today's first of two from him, Peter Hitchens writes:

Many months ago I wrote an entry on this subject which I think can still be Googled. I'd just like to make a small comment on today's IPSOS MORI poll. This is the third major poll in a row to show the Tory lead (already pretty feeble) shrinking - in this case to five per cent. There can now be no doubt that this is actually happening, and that the earlier polls showing such a trend were not rogues. Much of the polling also took place after the 'bullying' allegations against Mr Brown, which voters presumably regard as irrelevant, as I do.

Where does this interesting news appear in the loyally Conservative-supporting newspaper which expensively commissioned it? I will tell you. It is on Page Two (known in the trade as the Elephant's Graveyard, the place where good stories go to die). It lacks the exciting, attention-getting coloured bar or pie charts which so often decorate poll stories, and has a strange headline 'Labour could still win most seats', which isn't really the point of it. In fact I entirely missed it when I hunted through the paper for it on my early-morning train, though I had heard it mentioned on the radio. I at first thought the BBC had got the wrong paper.

I keep telling you. Polls are intended, by those who commission them, to influence opinion, not to measure it.

I wonder if you can guess what might have propelled this poll on to Page One of the newspaper concerned? That page, today, is rightly much taken up with the latest horrible child murder. But there is space for other stories - and the other prominent spots are occupied by articles on back pain and watering the lawn.

Much more important than the coming election, eh?