YouGov enters election 'close' period

YouGov's official response to the unsuccessful attempt by a party to influence the outcome of our polls

YouGov enters election 'close' period

There have been reports in parts of the blogosphere that certain YouGov members have been attempting to recruit BNP members to the YouGov panel, in order to influence the results of polls and generate revenue for the BNP. Here is YouGov’s response to these reports.

YouGov actively recruits the majority of our panel using a variety of techniques, although self-signup and referrals from other members are also possible. We constantly monitor the profile of new panel members, and track differences in survey results, to ensure that our panel is representative, and to protect the quality and integrity of our data. Moreover, YouGov’s sampling methods ensure that new members who sign themselves up cannot have a statistically significant impact on any YouGov polling results.

As a further test, YouGov has examined the results of the survey conducted after BBC Question Time poll. The survey, of 1314 electors, included 156 who had joined our panel since May 2009. This covers the period when, it is claimed, BNP bloggers advised party members to join our panel. Of these 156, just one respondent said they would vote BNP in a general election. Any attempts to infiltrate YouGov's panel with the aim of increasing the BNP's reported support have plainly failed. We are not surprised: the number and characteristics of people joining the panel since May have been no different from normal.

Nevertheless, to put the issue beyond doubt, and in line with our practice at the last general election, we had already started a "close" period, during which no new self-signups or member referrals to YouGov will be invited to take part in political polls. This "close" period started on September 1 and will last until after the election.

Any panel member who acts, or entices others to act, in a way that seeks to distort our data violates our rules. We apply various techniques to detect such actions and remove offenders from our panel. In practice the impact of this is statistically insignificant; but we consider it vital to take all possible steps to protect the quality and integrity of our data, and so maintain our record as Britain's most accurate survey research agency.

Peter Kellner
YouGov

It's the Christmas BNP fugly contest (with a sexy T-shirt display thrown in)

Click on the image if you can bear to enlarge it

One of our readers made the suggestion several weeks ago that we should have an ugly BNP competition to tie in with the fact that BNP voters are the thickest around. This seemed like an excellent idea, so here they are. After weeks of deliberation by our panel of judges at a secret location somewhere near Lancaster, we've managed to cull the many suggestions down to a mere eleven of the BNP's astonishing collection of grotesques.

Some of them may not look too bad to the untrained eye but we've given them a high rating because they're vile on the inside even if presenting a relatively passable face to the world (rather like the BNP itself, in fact).

We're not posting on Christmas Day (unless something interesting like Nick Griffin and Mark Collett eloping happens) so we've got a couple of days for you to add your votes to the poll over on the top-right of the page. Take a good close look at these creatures of the night, then cast your votes (multiple voting allowed, by the way) and we'll see who the winner is after the nut roast has been digested.

Here they are then, from top-left...

1. Mark Collett: commonly referred to as a rat-faced little bastard (even inside the BNP), Collett is the unrepentant star of Young, Nazi and Proud and Russell Brand's Nazi Boy but has achieved more recent notoriety for trying to smuggle a couple of underage girls into the BNP's conference hotel along with Nick Griffin's pet moron Dave Hannam.
2. Clive Jefferson: he of the dodgy number plates and the look that suggests he's about to haul off and kill someone for tonight's dinner. Is bidding to become the BNP's Head of Security over the disgraced and useless pervert Martin Reynolds.
3. Dicky Barnbrook: the BNP's representative on the London Assembly, Dicky's drunken mishaps and sober stupidities are the delight of anti-fascists everywhere. His latest cock-up is to claim a number of murders in his borough that never actually happened. What a dick.
4. Nik Eriksen: an all-round piece of shit really. It was he who claimed that women were more troubled by bag theft than rape.
5. Lee Barnes: worryingly disturbed legal beagle for the BNP - created a stir both within and without the party when he went too far in attacking the late Rachel Whitear.
6. Mike Ashburner: his main claim to fame is that he's stood for the BNP in Barrow about four hundred times and failed dismally every time. Give it up, Mike, you're only embarrassing yourself.
7. Paul Cromie: Bradford BNP councillor and repeatedly tainted by sleaze allegations, including his giving fivers to 200 pensioners living in sheltered accomodation just before his wife was due to be elected, and slinging around emails containing porn. The Standards Board might have let him off but he's still bloody ugly.
8. Nick Griffin: leader of the BNP, Holocaust-denier, racist and general all-round vile bastard, he deserves to win any contest that disparages or insults him - not that I'm biased, you understand.
9. Lynne Mozar: star of the Sky TV documentary, BNP Wives. Utterly disgusting and probably certifiably insane. Who can forget her lunatic babbling as the programme opened? Not us, so here it is. 'The British National Party is my baby. It's not, not necessarily my family's or my husband's or anyone elses, it's mine. All mine. My own. For me. And I love it...mine. [cackle, cackle] All mine! [more cackling]'. Etc.
10. Linda Cromie: I'm saying nothing...
11. Gnasher: I gather this picture was taking just after a wasp flew into her mouth. Or was it just after she'd eaten a lemon? Whichever, she doesn't look a happy bunny, does she? Not surprising really - she's married to serial loser Mike Ashburner.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot the sexy T-shirt display. Here they are - two fine examples of the master race dressed in their finest (if not their cleanest) outfits. Just be grateful this isn't a wet T-shirt competition and you've been spared the horror of seeing these two showing off all their rippling er, musculature.

It's Christmas. Time to get that washing powder out again, lads.

Okay, vote away, people. And do all have a great Christmas. We've got busy times ahead of us in 2009, so now's the time to relax. Have fun. :-)

And the clear and resounding winner is...Mark Collett (which shouldn't really suprise anybody). Well done Mark, your popularity just shines through.

A well-deserved win and the prize (the book 'Bad Haircuts for Freaks and Pervs' by acclaimed nobody Jonathan Bowden (not to be confused with any other Jonathan Bowden who may or may not be a complete nobody) will be winging its way to you sometime this century (probably).

The complete poll results are posted above. Thank you everyone who voted. :-)