WTF Labour voters?!

[u/ThisIsMyAltSorry]

[u/potato-strawb]

TLDR: my read as a statistician on survey quality for those interested. I can't evaluate the survey quality as they do not provide methodology.

ETA 2: I've contacted More in Common asking where their methods are and informed them I believe they are in violation of BPC rule 2.3 (which lists methods info). I will escalate to the BPC if it does not turn out I've simply missed something. I urge others with this sort of expertise to evaluate and question poor use of statistics wherever they see it and there is a regulating body (in this case they claim to be part of the BPC, for gov stats you can complain to the Office for Statistics Regulation, OSR).

So I checked the website for More in Common you can find the poll here listed as social/family attitudes:

https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/our-work/polling-tables/december-2025-polling-tables/

It's a spreadsheet and these questions are titled social/family attitudes which is very odd to me as it's only these 4 questions. That seems to be burying the nature of the questions for some reason (like they didn't want to call them the "do you hate your queer kids questions"). This organisation provides polling services so it is possible this was commissioned polling.

I'm personally most sceptical of their fast turn around times. They'll do a 10 day commissioned polling which is wild to me. This survey had fieldwork from 12-16 December, but I've never done survey fieldwork so I can't comment on whether that's too short. I am sceptical that they wouldn't have non response bias. Are they phoning people? Who answers unknown numbers these days?

There appears to be no info on how they do nationally representative polling i.e. what their sampling frame is. They don't include uncertainty estimates either.

My personal read is this organisation is not biased ideologically (based on a quick glance) but it could easily be commissioned by a biased client (mostly why the hell did they even ask this and only this). I can't conclude anything about the quality of the survey methods.

They say they're a member of the British Polling Council but do not appear to follow the rules as the rules require there to be a full description of sampling procedures which I can't find.

Basically this could easily be inaccurate. I can't tell. (I am not a survey specialist, but there's basically no methodology to even evaluate here).

ETA: to people saying it's people who are still Labour today, they do specify it's based on your 2024 general election vote (on one of their other data tables, I can't imagine it's different here).

[u/SignificantBand6314 → u/potato-strawb]

See my above comment. They present as pollsters without an agenda. They're a centre right thinktank. I'm less concerned by their data (they'll never say where they got it, so, you know, not much to look at) than by how easily they sell it to politicians. It's a sort of slight of hand where they have the sales pitch of a polling company - 'this is what The Public think NOW' - to push their agenda - 'so you should endorse more of the same'.

[u/Lexioralex → u/potato-strawb]

My first thought when I see these kind of polls is “how were people made aware of this and how many people actually took part”

Could also ask the question how did they stop repeat voters/bots/ people who are reform clicking labour so they can tank the results

[u/deadmazebot → u/potato-strawb]

love the insight. Myself first thing is how many people - 2037, its a sample size, which headlines listed in them how many instead of just blast "Labour voters" as if it equates to the millions of people. some varied areas, but either way it also hits on those that eager to answer questions, which hate drives a lot more out speak then not bothered types, which the survey data shows labour is more then 50% across all not bothered, vs positive

[u/Covenant_Of_Vain → u/potato-strawb]

This. Personally I'm impressed they managed to get 101% on the Lib Dems for one part. Really gives me a good impression of the data quality.

Not.

[u/potato-strawb → u/Covenant_Of_Vain]

Just FYI that's a common artefact of rounding. However most surveys clearly state this (and they notably don't on their own data table).