And you wonder why fewer and fewer folks trust a word they read in the deadwood press, especially the loathsome Daily Mail. It is only one week since I picked it up HERE on its 100% fake ISIS news from Syria. Now it is making things up again and once more it appears to be at the behest of Tory Central Office. The headline screams " Tory lead is slashed in half after tax U-turn: Bombshell Mail on Sunday poll shows May plummeting by 11 points ...denting hopes of a landslide." Bollocks.
As it happens two other polls out today show the Tory lead increasing. A ComRes poll has figures of CON 50%(+4), LAB 25%(nc), LDEM 11%(nc), UKIP 7%(-2), GRN 3%(-1). ComRes has never shown any party at 50% before. UKIP looks to be dead in the water and some of its remaining votes will probably drift to the Tories to make sure of Brexit.
YouGov‘s Sunday Times poll has topline figures for Great Britain of CON 48%(nc), LAB 25%(+1), LDEM 12%(nc), UKIP 5%(-2) – changes are from the YouGov/Times poll in the week. Again one story here is that UKIP is continuing to fall, 5% is the lowest YouGov has shown the fruitcakes attracting for five years.
And so to the Mail. It uses a Survation poll. Its figures are CON 40%, LAB 29%, LDEM 11%, UKIP 11%. The way that the Mail contrives to show the Tory lead collapsing from 21% to 11% in just four days is by comparing not Survation with Survation but Survation with a ComRes poll. This is insanity. Different pollsters use different methods and so it really is comparing apples with pears. That high UKIP showing looks all wrong and the idea that Labour has gained 4 points in 4 days and the Tories lost six just beggars belief.
The last Survation polls was several months ago and the change if one compares apples with apples since then is Conservatives up two, Labour unchanged, the Lib Dems up one and UKIP down two. that looks a bit more like it.
So why run a clearly misleading headline? Simple. The Tories biggest fear is that its supporters think the election is in the bag and don't turn out. Since one assumes that anyone still voting Labour is highly committed ( they should be committed) they will vote and a bad differential turnout split could cost Mrs May a raft of marginals. Central office could have written this article. It probably did.
Yes, Mrs May's belief that spending taxpayers cash on girl bands in Ethiopia and Jew killers from Gaza while withdrawing the triple lock on pensions and threatening to put up taxes is an insult to all core Tory values. She has not started the campaign brilliantly but then when you are up against Jeremy Corbyn you probably don't have to. Anything can happen over the next seven weeks but one thing we do know is that the Daily Mail has again printed fake news.