Thread by @anthonyjwells

This story in the Times surprised me - a claim that support for nationalising water had fallen to 27%
thetimes.co.uk/article/suppor…

Nationalisation tends to be fairly popular. A genuine drop from 83% to 27% would be very surprising indeed so, it's fair to say I was a tad suspicious.

Let's start with the 2017 result. That was from this Populus poll for the Legartum Institute. It may not be the greatest of questions (it really should have a don't know!), but it's straightforward and not leading
populus.co.uk/poll/public-op…

And here are the results from the ComRes poll, conducted (as you may have guessed, though it really *should* have been made clear in the news reports) on behalf of the Water industry.
comresglobal.com/wp-content/upl…

If you really wanted to see if support for nationalising water had risen or fallen, you'd repeat the same question - otherwise changes may be down to question wording. This poll did not do that, so the comparison isn't really valid.

The closest question on the survey is this one, which found 49% of people supported nationalisation of the water industry, 33% of people were opposed. Far less than 83%, but still a majority in favour.

But... hold on...so where does the claim that only 27% of people support water nationalisation come from?

This came from a second question, which was pre-empted by a sentence claiming nationalisation "would reduce the value of nearly 6 million people's pensions which are invested in water companies, including both private and public sector workers' pensions"

So what we've got here is a poll that actually showed more people *support* nationalisation of water, unless the question is pre-empted by leading information, reported as if it showed people were opposed.

Again, a plea to journalists - do not take claims from press releases about what polls show as necessarily valid, ask to see the actual questions asked to check you aren't being bullshitted.

(I should add, I couldn't find much other pick up of this story... I hope that a sign that lots of other journalists got it, did their due diligence, and filed it in the bin)

Quick update. The Times have added clarification to the story to say that it was commissioned by WaterUK. An improvement, but at it's core, the story is still claiming that people oppose the policy when actually the poll found they supported it.

Incidentally, here is how ComRes present the poll on their own site:

No reference to the other question that showed support, and no mention that of the fact the question was actually would you support/oppose **if it damaged 6 million people's pensions**

comresglobal.com/polls/water-uk…