Lords Polling Committee to take evidence on political betting and fact checking
The House of Lords Committee on Political Polling and Digital Media will next week take evidence from bookmakers and fact checking websites as it focuses on the impact of opinion polls on political betting and voters, as well as the prospects for social media analysis to provide an alternative to traditional polling.
The evidence sessions will start at 10:45am on Tuesday 17 October in Committee Room 2 of the House of Lords. Giving evidence to the Committee will be:
10:45
- Will Moy, Director, Full Fact
- Professor Helen Margetts, Director, Oxford Internet Institution
11:45
- Mike Smithson, Founder and Editor, Politicalbetting.com
- Matthew Shaddick, Head of Political Betting, Ladbrokes
In the first session the Committee will ask about the role of fact checking organisations during election campaigns. The session will also focus on the role of social media in elections and the relationship between misleading information and polling data and whether media misreporting of polls is more significant than errors in polling methods themselves.
In the second session the Committee will ask the witnesses about the relationship between political betting and opinion polls, why betting markets and polls sometimes diverge in what they suggest about upcoming elections and whether the reporting of opinion polls influences voter behaviour.
