Farage Rages as Savanta Defend Not Prompting for Reform
Nigel Farage has written to the head of the British Polling Council claiming some leading pollsters are effectively suppressing Reform UK in their surveys. While some pollsters are recording Reform as high as 18%, neck and neck with the Tories’ support, others see Reform UK much further behind at around 12%. Farage tweeted that Savanta and Opinium refuse to prompt for Reform UK when they ask voters who they will back. They list the other main parties but voters much choose ‘other’ before getting the opportunity to choose Reform.
Farage accused these pollsters of wanting to “suppress” his party, demanding: “It must stop”.
Savanta's Political Research Director, Chris Hopkins, has come out swinging about their voting intention research methods:
“Savanta is an independent and well-established polling company that purely seeks to accurately measure public opinion, not promote or suppress one party over another, and any implication otherwise is entirely false.
We are confident in our figures as they stand and won’t be bullied into making methodological changes by politicians, simply because they don’t like our results. We were the most accurate polling company from the last London & West Midlands mayoral elections, with an average error across both of zero percentage points when it came to Reform UK’s performance.
As such, if Nigel Farage and Richard Tice would like to commission Savanta to get an accurate assessment of their party’s current performance, they are welcome to.
For context, at Savanta, we currently include smaller, UK-wide parties such as the Greens and Reform UK under a sub-prompt, based on their recent electoral performances. We do this for accuracy, because we believe this prevents the artificial over-inflation of smaller parties in national opinion polling. Such over-inflation may then in turn artificially suppress the support of the larger, more established parties.
We have been openly and transparently doing this for years and it isn’t aimed at one party. Currently the Green Party and Reform UK are included in our sub-prompt. The SNP and Plaid Cymru are included in the main prompt, but only shown to Scottish and Welsh respondents, respectively. There is electoral evidence to include the Liberal Democrats in our main prompt from their recent general, local and by-election results, that does not exist for Reform UK.
Other British Polling Council members will have their own legitimate methods, many of whom share in great detail how they have come to their results.
Now candidates have been finalised, many pollsters move to a ballot prompt method, where respondents see all of the candidates standing in their constituency in one place, including smaller parties and independents. Savanta has done this in the past, and intends to do so again, as we have long planned."
It is arguable either way, neither pollster wants to get the result wrong so suppression is not really their goal. The last paragraph suggests Savanta are now going to change their method. Farage will be pleased with that.
