Palmer busts colleagues for their polling bias
Monday night’s Alberta election surprise brought an unusual morning-after observation by Vaughn Palmer. The Vancouver Sun legislature columnist joined CKNW’s Philip Till to discuss journalists’ use of polls in British Columbia.
According to Palmer, journalists in the province are ignoring opinion polls that do not support their own personal biases. Referring to the governing Liberals and their rivals for the far right vote, the B.C. Conservatives, Palmer said:
“We’ve had some polls that said the two of them are tied, but we’ve had a poll recently, which didn’t get a lot of reporting, that said, no, no; the NDP is surely ahead, the Liberals second, the Conservatives third.”
What’s this, a poll that journalists ignored because it didn’t reinforce their own bias? Astonishing! The poll in question showed clearly that the Conservatives were firmly in third place. But that wasn’t the story the press gallery wanted to tell in advance of the by-elections last week, so in time-honoured herd fashion they collectively and conveniently ignored it. It would have been just another day in paradise had the by-elections confirmed that the B.C. Conservatives could not do better than third place.
Palmer offered some simple advice for his colleagues:
“You know, report the polls, verify, and report all the polls evenly too. Don’t favour the poll that says what you think’s going to happen and ignore all the others if they say something else.”
Uh-huh.
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