POLLSTERS must declare their clients and should be more tightly regulated to avoid skewing elections, peers say.
The Lords Select Committee on Political Polling and Digital Media says journalists should be trained in how to interpret poll data and monitors need greater oversight due to “polling failures” before recent votes.
Calling for the sector to “get its house in order”, committee chair Lord Lipsey said the data influences the narrative around elections, adding: “Voters have a right to know who paid for polls. The Electoral Commission should have a role in monitoring all voting intention polls published during an election campaign, and publishing their funding sources.”
He also stated: “Too often minor changes in the main parties’ standing, often within the margin of error, are reported by a breathless media as indicating a real change in the real world, and even as indicating which party might end up forming the government.”
The committee also wants online campaign ads to bear the mark of who published and paid for them.
Lipsey said: “While much of our evidence came before the current row with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, it was clear to us that some activity on digital media poses a significant risk to politics and democracy in the UK. More needs to be done to better understand that threat and educate the population to spot ‘fake news’ and baseless propaganda online.
“One concrete step that the government can take now is to require all online campaign communications to carry an imprint to say who published it, as is the case for the printed material, and give the Electoral Commission the power to police and enforce that rule.
“Taken together, a lack of transparency and sometimes inaccurate polls, and the murky world of online political communications, pose an insidious threat to our political system.”
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