The BBC’s response seems to boil down to “we aim to reflect voices in the UK proportionally to current voting intention”.
I don’t think that should be their goal, though. I want them to aggressively hold anyone with, or who wants power, to account. Then, when complaints inevitably come from the right, they could justifiably say “our goal is to aggressively challenge everyone equally”, and point to examples of them holding the other parties to account too.
I think Private Eye is an example of this done well - they look for corruption or hypocrisy, and wherever they can find it, they challenge it.
Was the BBC ever like that? - much more aggressive and towards anyone in power? - or am I just looking back with rose tinted glasses?
we aim to reflect voices in the UK proportionally to current voting intention
Was there a national poll that I don’t recall? Because the last one I was aware of, a majority of people voted Labour, and the BBC have never, ever been pro-labour. Maybe they’re claiming that tons of people intended to vote for Farage and co but couldn’t figure out how ballots work, which is remotely credible, but it would take some serious research to back that up so I don’t think that’s it.
How on earth are they claiming to know people’s voting intentions in the first place, let alone the rather groundbreaking idea that the election was wrong.
This has a worrying air of the Trump style, post-truth ‘any official, scientific, pro-equality and / or leftie information is fake news’ that we saw before trump was elected. I remember being amazed that a public figure could so blatantly, confidently lie about important constitutional processes and not be arrested for - Idk but if fraud, libel, aiding and abetting, misrepresentation etc are crimes, then misleading an entire country to disenfranchise them and mis-sell a political position must be quite serious.
We are all legally obliged to pay the BBC if we want to watch live news. That is quasi-governmental, and hella powerful. If I want to watch live TV in this country and don’t want to pay to fund a corporation that’s flagrantly misrepresenting the existence/ validity of an actual national election, I kinda feel there should be more recourse than ‘Dear Sir / Madam, we have received your complaint and will take it on board if and when we ever have the slightest reason to’.
The BBC are telling the world that most people in the UK ‘intend’ to vote for Farage. That is not just untrue, or biased, or impossible for them to know. It’s such an absurd claim that I think the scariest part is the fact that they are getting away with it.
Reform lead 12 councils, and have 881 councillors. Historically, it was the biggest party in the European Parliament after the 2019 election. It’s wishful thinking to carry on as if they’re a negligible factor.
Repeat something enough and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. First it was “Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable”, now it’s “Nigel Farage is on course to be the next Prime Minister”. Same thing.
Nigel Farage as PM is more of a historical inevitability at this point unless something really big happens, but the media is absolutely complicit.
kagis
Ah. I hadn’t realized that Reform’s polling was nearly that high.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
Fun thought experiment: have you ever met anyone who has replied to opinion polls?
I asked my dear 80 year old mother that a while ago, she hadn’t. I haven’t.
They are generally conducted by phone, cold calling landlines, or by someone going door to door with a clipboard.
Many unofficial (but still very influencial, including gov.uk) polls are online, and users have to complete hundreds of them to get a nominal payment, £5 I believe.
Now imagine the sort of person who answers their ringing landline/ door and says ‘why yes, stranger, yes I do have 10 minutes to discuss my voting intentions’, and you have the entire ‘over 40 years old’ demographic represented in these results.
Imagine someone who has actively sought out survey websites and sits though at least 100, over 6 months or so, for a tiny amount of pocket money - or even weirder, someone who just decided to do it anyway - and you have the entire ‘under 40 years old’ demographic in these results.
And now, thinking of those door-answerers and survey-clickers, imagine how colourful and exciting their lives must be, and then ask yourself what possible incentive they have to tell the truth when absolutely nobody will ever know if they liven up the tedium slightly by claiming to be a 45 year old self made millionaire with 12 lovely children all planning to vote Jedi in the next election.
And that is why opinion polls always come out way, way more fringe than the reality ever is. Because normal people do not answer them unless they have a strong opinion or an incentive, and those with an incentive generally have no incentive to be honest.
(For reference, I’m not dunking on people who have done these things. I spent about a year answering yougov surveys until it dawned on me that it worked out at less than 5p an hour. If you’re bored or just want to contribute to the national knowledge pool, awesome, but you probably already know you’re not exactly an average voter)
Maybe. But if you look at the local elections from May:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yg467m8mjo
…Reform got 31% of the votes cast. The chart of polls is pretty close, and actually slightly underrates them for May 2025. Now, maybe voting in the general election and local elections have different groups of people show up. I know that here in the US, that’s a factor for midterm elections. That could affect outcomes in the general election. But…my guess is that the chart probably is at least in the neighborhood of being representative of their support in society. Or, maybe more accurately, of their support among those who go to vote.
