A senior Labour peer has accused polling companies of
becoming "corrupted" by money from newspapers who want to influence
the outcome of the general election in May.
Lord Foulkes, who was a Labour MP from 1979 until 2005, said
polls were increasingly "being manipulated at the behest of people with
money, whether they be the media or individuals, as part of the political
process". He has also called for there to be a ban on the publication of
opinion polls in the weeks leading up to election day.
One of Britain's leading pollsters has dismissed Foulkes'
criticism of the industry as "frankly offensive" and said the idea of
banning polls in the run-up to polling day was "bad for democracy".
On Wednesday Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft published a
constituency survey of sixteen seats in Scotland. It suggested Labour will be
annihilated in Scotland come May - with the SNP on course to snatch all but one
of the seats examined.
If the result is repeated on election day, Labour's shadow
foreign secretary Douglas Alexander and Lib Deb chief secretary to the Treasury
would both be kicked out of parliament.
As election day draws closer, the number of polls
commissioned by newspapers and other groups is likely to substantially
increase.
On Thursday, Survation published a constituency poll that
suggested Nick Clegg would lose his Sheffield Hallam seat to Labour on 7 May.
The Lib Dem leader responded that the survey was "utter, utter
bilge".
Foulkes, who has also served as a MSP the Scottish
parliament, told The Huffington Post, in the wake of the polls: "What is
clear now is the media in particular, but others as well, are demanding instant
polling, determining when it should be done and how it should be done. The the
academic rigour that ought to be carried out isn't being carried out."
He said polling firms were "making millions" and
accused the companies of failing to employ the "academic rigour" that
they used to. "The whole thing did seem to me to be effectively
corrupted," Foulkes said of polling firms methodology.
And he accused Ashcroft of deliberately conducting polling
in Scottish seats that had a high 'Yes' vote in the recent independence
referendum, in an attempt to create an anti-Labour narrative.
"He [Ashcroft] chooses the ones that will be worse for
the Labour Party. I'm not against constituency polling," Foulkes said.
"But they are being carried out at the whim of one man, instead of
choosing a sample of constituencies around Scotland and doing them properly in
each constituency. He can determine the methodology of the poll and choose the
constituencies that he thinks will help the bandwagon [against Labour]."
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