My work here is done...

I used to occassionally link to awful newspaper reports of polling and give out the coverted UKPR prize for atrocious newspaper reporting of polls. I'm happy to report today that I can link to a journalist dealing properly with polling evidence, and actually going back to the archives and seeing what the polls did show. Hats off to Peter Hoskin at the Spectator for answering the question of whether Charles and Diana' wedding in 1981 actually gave the government a boost in the polls by digging out the MORI voting intention polls at the time and seeing what actually happened. The answer is, incidentally, that no, the royal wedding had no obvious impact on voting intentions at all.

For the record, the Gallup polls from 1981 show the same absence of any royal wedding boost.