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UK Parliament

Professor John Curtice and pollsters face questions on regulation

4 December 2017

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Professor John Curtice, President of the British Polling Council and BBC election night maven, and his BPC Management Committee colleague Simon Atkinson give evidence to the House of Lords Committee on Political Polling and Digital Media.

Witnesses

At 10:15am

  • Professor John Curtice, President, BPC
  • Simon Atkinson, Management Committee Member, BPC

At 11:45am

  • Johnny Heald, Managing Director, ORB International
  • Ben Page, CEO Ipsos Mori
  • Damian Lyons Lowe, Chief Executive, Survation

Areas of discussion

In the first session the Committee ask the witnesses about the BPC's internal inquiry into polling methods used in the 2017 General Election and any emerging conclusions, whether a voluntary regulatory model is still appropriate for the polling industry and whether sensationalist media reporting of poll results is as big a problem as inaccuracies in polls themselves.

In the second session the questions include what lessons polling companies learned from errors in polling around the 2017 General Election, whether the volatility of the current political climate makes polling harder and whether other forms of opinion polls that ask about issues other than voting intention are ever susceptible to manipulation by the organisations that commission them.

Further Information

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