Should we trust the polls?

Radical with Amol Rajan

BBC

Society & Culture

4.5 • 919 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There’s a week to go before votes are counted and barely a day goes by in the campaign without a new poll.

So are the Conservatives really on course for an election "wipe out"? Are Labour set for a so called ‘supermajority’? Where did the term ‘supermajority’ even come from and should we be sceptical about poll findings?

Amol and Nick are joined by the doyenne of polling, psephologist Prof Sir John Curtice, to interrogate the numbers and the algorithms that generate them.

And they assess how the smaller parties’ campaigns are stacking up.

Plus – moment of the week – find out why Nick has been swimming with seals.

Episodes of The Today Podcast land twice a week during the election campaign – and watch out for bonus episodes. Subscribe on BBC Sounds to get Amol and Nick's take on the biggest stories of the week, with insights from behind the scenes at the UK's most influential radio news programme. If you would like a question answering, get in touch by sending us a message or voice note via WhatsApp to +44 330 123 4346 or email us Today@bbc.co.uk

The Today Podcast is hosted by Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson, both presenters of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the UK’s most influential radio news programme. Amol was the BBC’s media editor for six years and is the former editor of the Independent, he’s also the current presenter of University Challenge. Nick has presented the Today programme since 2015, he was the BBC’s political editor for ten years before that and also previously worked as ITV’s political editor.

You can listen to the latest episode of The Today Podcast anytime on your smart speaker by saying “Alexa, Ask BBC Sounds for The Today Podcast.”

The senior producer is Tom Smithard, the researcher and digital producer is Joe Wilkinson, the producers are Hazel Morgan and Nadia Gyane. The editor is Louisa Lewis. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths. Technical production from Jonny Hall.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:04.8	Well, ever since Grant Shaps dropped the S-bomb one morning in week three of this campaign,
0:10.0	a lot of people, parties, media, public, have been framing this election, have they not, Nick,
0:16.6	through a very particular prison?
0:17.7	Yeah, S-bom, super majority.
0:24.1	A phrase that frankly wasn't used in Britain throughout most of my adult lifetime, but is being used now, and it's having a big
0:29.3	effect. The idea being, a little bit doesn't just have a landslide, which is the L word that we
0:34.3	used to use, but it wins so big that it's supersized. Yeah, it's a super majority.
0:41.3	Yeah. And one of the things that we're going to try and do on this podcast that we think we can do
0:44.6	really well and maybe that you won't get so much of elsewhere is explain why people read the
0:49.4	stories that they read, explain the editorial judgments we come to, the ethics of being in the media.
0:55.3	And one of the things we should interrogate today is whether or not all of us have been reading
0:59.7	too much into polling. That with the best will in the world often has an opaque methodology
1:05.2	and, frankly, as a history of getting things wrong.
1:08.0	One thing it has undoubtedly done is cement a narrative, the kind of
1:13.2	doom narrative for the Conservatives. Now, lots of dooby things have happened launching the election
1:19.7	in the rain, D-Day, now this gambling scandal on the date of an early election. But if it hadn't been for the polls showing no movement
1:29.6	towards the Conservatives and then movement but downwards for the Conservatives, it seems to be
1:35.1	some of the narrative, which is, look, how badly it's going, that sort of tone, would not have
1:41.1	crept in to the questions and interviews, to the way stories are written, to the things that people say.
1:47.7	We've been trying our best to introduce you to Britain's top pollsters on this podcast.
1:52.2	We've had James Kalingosurian. We've had Kelly Beaver.
	...

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