Sunday 15 February 2009

Distorting The Figures

This morning I was watching Sky News and they were reporting the results of the ComRes and YouGov polls produced for the Independent On Sunday and Sunday Times newspapers, showing a fall in support for Labour.

What struck me were the graphics they used (I have captured them below) which distorted the party shares, a casual glance at them and you would think Labour were just behind the Conservatives with the Liberal Democrats way behind, the same graphics being used for both results.




However if you draw the graphics using the appropriate ratios (which I did) then the picture looks much worse for Labour and the Liberals.



Surely this sort of 'distortion' breaks some rule?

(Update, it has been pointed out the Sky graphics approximate to the second graph I created, this would suggest they created the graphics for the YouGov poll and then simply changed the figures on screen for the ComRes results which were the worst for Labour - why not the other way around?)

3 comments:

Mark Wilson said...

Sky News? And you expect accuracy?

Looks to me like they just did the graphic for the second set of figures (looks close), then simply changed the numbers for the first.

Y'know. 'cos they're just lazy bastards.

Mind you, I bet it had a cracking WHOOSH sound when it came on though.

Andrew Garratt said...

Yes I had spotted the graphics looking sort of correct for the YouGov results - so suspect your right about them being lazy.

Can't remember if they had a 'WHOOSH' sound

Surprised they even mentioned the polls anyway considering the paternity battle developing in Sussex!

Matt Buxton said...

I have the correct graph here, actually.

http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com/images/SkyNews2.jpg