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“Uxbridge residents stick by Boris Johnson despite Partygate report.”
How many doom-scrollers read this tweet from BBC Politics and didn’t bother clicking on the link?
Me, for one.
You might reasonably conclude the BBC had commissioned some polling, particularly ahead of a crucial by-election.
Wrong.
It turns out the link takes you to a write-up of a glorified vox pop, speaking to the grand total of…just let me get my calculator out here…6 people. (And one of those is actually “shaking with anger” at his contempt for the former PM.)
As polling expert Dr Will Jennings observes, “Vox pops are not a reliable tool for ascertaining voting intentions. Just think about the unrepresentativeness of who you might find to interview on a high street on a weekday. Pollsters were grappling with methodological challenges of where interviews are conducted 70 years ago.”
I hate vox pops anyway. I hated them as a producer and I hate them now. But to grandly state that “Uxbridge residents stick by Boris Johnson” after speaking to the 6 people who could be bothered to stop and talk to the reporter is unforgivable.
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