Channel 4 won't release poll data, sticks by Chief Exec's claims
Welcome to the 147th edition of The Week in Polls (TWIP) which looks at what Channel 4’s press office told me after last week’s edition. Would they release the poll data details? Would they be able to justify their Chief Executive’s speech? Read on to find out what they said - including how part of Channel 4’s case rests on a one percentage point difference between generations in Bulgaria.
Then it is a summary of the latest national voting intention polls and a round-up of party leader ratings, followed by, for paid-for subscribers, 10 insights from the last week’s polling and analysis.
This week, those ten include whether the polling shows that Labour has political space to be less timid over relations with the EU.
But first, an apology and a doff of the hat to More in Common. Last week I highlighted them as an example of how pollsters sometimes publish graphs that reveal for the first time older data points for which no data tables are available. I gave two data points on a More in Common graph as an example. I was wrong about one of the two points (the data regarding Nigel Farage had been published, but I had looked on the UK rather than the global tab in the published crosstabs), and for the other point, the data was promptly published by Luke Tryl.
Last week I also linked to a message from Bobby Duffy but mistakenly called him Ben Page. Apologies for that mix-up (and as I do with such slips, I have corrected the website version.)
Finally, Alex Farber, the journalist from The Times, who wrote the newspaper piece I mentioned has been in touch to point out very reasonably that, unlike the Channel 4 Chief Executive's speech, his piece did not use language about support for authoritarianism increasing.
And with that, on with the show…
Want to know more about political polling? Get my book Polling UnPacked: the history, uses and abuses of political opinion polling.
Channel 4 declines to release poll data
I very nearly did not write last week’s piece about Channel 4, GenZ and what happens when you fact check the speech from Alex Mahon, C4’s CEO’s, thinking it was time to break the run of stories about problems in coverage of polling. Next week, I promise I will turn to a new subject. But as last week’s post was the most shared and most viewed edition of this newsletter so far, I thought I’d give Channel 4’s Press Office a chance to respond.
I asked them two simple things: first, would they release the full poll data by publishing the crosstabs, and second, did they still stand by the specific claim from the CEO’s speech that I had dug into? I pointed out that footnoted sources in her speech did not appear to justify the claim about increasing support for authoritarianism.
On the first point, they did provide some more information about the poll, but no, they have twice passed on my request that they publish the data.
Or in the parlance of tabloid headline writers, as suggested to me by ChatGPT:
FOUR-GEDDIT! C4 Chief’s Poll Claims Questioned - But She Won’t Show Us The Data!
Oddly, the Channel 4 response also made the poll seem more mysterious, as the press team told me that, “Craft are an insight agency and we have described them as such. We never described or positioned them as a polling company”. When I asked them if this was meant to imply that someone other than Craft did the quantitative polling in the Craft report, and if so who, they did not (at time of writing) respond.
Channel 4’s position therefore seems to be either that they published poll data but did not use a polling company, or that they published poll data and will not say who the polling company was. Which is all a bit odd.
The press team’s reply to me did provide close to the exact wording of one question, but judging by the figures in the Craft report, more than one question was asked. And anway, they did not provide the breakdowns you would usually see in a set of crosstabs.
On then to my second question, about whether they stood by Alex Mahon’s speech where she said, “There is clear evidence of democratic disengagement and an increasing shift towards authoritarianism already.”
Last week, I pointed out that the sources in the footnote to this part of the speech do not appear to back up the claim of an “increasing” shift. As I concluded after looking through their proffered sources:
So what does that give us to backup the claim that there is “ clear evidence” of “an increasing shift towards authoritarianism”? One data sources that says yes, one that says no, one data source that says nothing and one that says both yes and no.
What did the press team have to say on this?
They did not say that Alex Mahon had misspoke or wish to clarify her words. Rather they stuck to the wording, and provided me with five pieces of evidence.
Of those five, two were repeats of what was in that troublesome footnote. Of the other three, one is from Royal Holloway and about satisfaction with democracy at a single point in time. Not only is there no trend data to justify talk of “increasing” but also dissatisfaction with democracy is not the same as support for “authoritarianism”. Being a supporter of PR, for example, I am dissatisfied with democracy given the use of first past the post for so many elections. That does not make me warm to authoritarianism.
Next from Channel 4 was a Newsweek report about polling in the US. As well as being data about another country it again is a one-off data point without trends over time. (Although the commentary in the story does get into that, it is about the US and the only data presented is that free standing poll.)
The third piece of evidence, from the Institute for Global Analytics is again a one-off data point without a time series showing trends over time. And it is a poll of Bulgarians.1
The report has this conclusion: “the youngest Bulgarian adults are not distinguished by significantly more progressive and democratic political stances, further displaying socially conservative views”.2 This does not appear to be particularly helpful for Channel 4’s case.
Particularly as the report also concludes that, “Russia and China are least likely to be seen as Bulgaria’s main strategic partners among the youngest age group … By comparison, the oldest generation (65+) are most likely to designate those two authoritarian states as partners for Bulgaria”. Moreover, “The youngest age groups (18-24 and 25-34-year-olds) are additionally the least likely to think that the West is a threat to national identity and values.”
To be fair, the report also says that, “respondents from the 18-24 age group are most likely to agree – compared to all other age groups, that having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections is good for Bulgaria”.
But what is the gap between 18-24 year olds and the 65+?3
One single percentage point.
A one percentage point between young and old Bulgarians is not the best of bases from which to conclude that support for authoritarianism is on the rise in the UK.
Finally, we have a slightly curious comment from Channel 4’s press team: “Our data is a snapshot, so it shows levels of support for authoritarianism increasing between generations”.
There are two problems with this. As I covered last week, there is high quality data saying the opposite (that Gen Z shows less rather than more support for authoritarianism).
But even if support is higher among the younger generation that does not mean - to quote Alex Mahon’s speech - that there is “an increasing shift towards authoritarianism”. If Gen Z’s support is lower than the previous generation’s support was at the same age (and some of the data cited in C4’s own footnote which I dug into last week says it is), then in fact the data shows an increasing shift away, not towards.
To argue otherwise would be like arguing that if unemployment is higher among young people then it is ok to say that unemployment is rising.
Where does that leave us all?
First, with an appreciation of the benefits of the transparency that exists in the UK around mainstream political polling (i.e. voting intentions, leader ratings and closely allied questions). For all the ways it could be improved, data is made available in a way that Channel 4 has declined to do.
Second, even over a speech, a press release, a footnote and two emails to me, Channel 4 has not manage to show to any reasonable degree of certainty that Alex Mahon’s attention-grabbing claim about increasing support for authoritarianism is correct. It might be true, and the exact opposite might be true too. If anything, the evidence tilts towards the opposite of what she said being true.
Which leaves us with a bigger problem than simply the Chief Exec’s speech. Because the coverage generated by Channel 4’s report has a widespread theme of ‘there’s a problem with Gen Z’s views of democracy’ (such as - to show how wide this has travelled - in David Mitchell’s piece for The Guardian).
The evidence, however, could - and most likely should - instead be read to say ‘there was a problem with previous generations attitudes towards democracy but good news, things are heading in the right direction and Gen Z is turning out better than Millennials have’.4
If only Channel 4 had decided to live up to their own advertising:
Voting intentions and leadership ratings
Here are the latest national general election voting intention polls, sorted by fieldwork dates.
The picture with many pollsters now is that Labour, Reform and Conservative are sufficiently closely clustered that trying with confidence to tell the difference between their support levels gets beyond the level of accuracy it is sensible to expect from voting intention polls. Though that three parties are clustered this way rather than just two itself gives us a big picture of note.
For a different way of looking at voting intentions:
Next, a summary of the the leadership ratings, sorted by name of pollster. Although Ed Davey is often omitted from coverage of these ratings, he continues to be the top performer across them all:
For more details, and updates during the week as each new poll comes out, see my regularly updated tables here and follow The Week in Polls on Bluesky.
For the historic figures, including Parliamentary by-election polls, see PollBase.
Catch-up: the previous two editions
My privacy policy and related legal information is available here. Links to purchase books online are usually affiliate links which pay a commission for each sale. For content from YouGov the copyright information is: “YouGov Plc, 2018, © All rights reserved”.5
Quotes from people’s social media messages sometimes include small edits for punctuation and other clarity.
Please note that if you are subscribed to other email lists of mine, unsubscribing from this list will not automatically remove you from the other lists. If you wish to be removed from all lists, simply hit reply and let me know.
How bad is the polling for Labour? and other polling news
The following 10 findings from the most recent polls and analysis are for paying subscribers only, but you can sign up for a free trial to read them straight away.
Stephen Fisher, one of the big brains behind both exit polls and national vote
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Week in Polls to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.