Anybody who's ever discussed politics with me knows that I set no store by the pseudo-science of opinion polling. The growth of this egregiously parasitical activity answers the media's obsession with prediction and anticipation, itself a reaction to the decline of the printed press as a source of overnight news. It matters little if the forecasting of sports events or culture awards proliferates and either drains the results of excitement or makes the misguided forecasters look fools. But pollsters have got elections badly wrong in Britain – in 1970, 1983, 1992 and 2015 – and in the States – Bob Worcester himself "called" the 2004 election for John Kerry. This is noxious because, as polling day approaches, it manipulates the electorate and affects the results.
YouGov, the polling organisation set up by the political journalist Peter Kellner, is now saying that Jeremy Corbyn is on course to win the Labour leadership on the first ballot. That's a very dangerous finding and I fear it will have a bad effect on the general behaviour of the Labour Party, both among those who (like Alastair Campbell) have started the ABC movement (Anyone But Corbyn) and among those who plan to vote only for Corbyn and may find their ballot papers discounted if they just put an X by his name. Corbyn's team need to work up to the wire to give their candidate the best chance. Over-confidence now could prove fatal.
Like all opinion pollsters, YouGov supply their paymasters with what they want, including the massaged results that they want. Kellner, remember, was the pollster who asked voters whether they thought Ed Miliband was "weird", a vilely loaded question and, it seemed to me, a good example of pot, kettle and black (see above). But this finding and others that re-enforce it set up a highly damaging possibility. If now Corbyn fails to become Labour leader there will be thousands of Labour supporters who smell a very big fix and the consequences of that could be very far-reaching.
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