A little post-script to that Migrationwatch poll

There were a few oddities about the Migrationwatch poll that appeared yesterday asking people their opinions of a 70 million population, a reduction in net immigration, and their views on Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

One other oddity stood out, but I wanted to check it out with YouGov first. Click this to see a bigger version of the results, as presented on the Migrationwatch site:
It seemed very strange that the voting intentions of the sample were missing. Or had they been deleted on purpose?

Well YouGov have the full results on their website, with those voting intentions in place. Of the 1956 people surveyed, 653 were listed as Conservative, 383 as Labour and 279 as Lib Dem, with 641 others.

The poll results showed that the Conservative voters were far more concerned than the other two groups. 90% of the Conservative group were worried or very worried about the 70 million mark, compared with 75% Labour and 76% Lib Dem.

I can't claim to be an expert on weighted/unweighted samples, but the fact Migrationwatch appears to have deleted these numbers suggests they were trying to hide something. But if the sample was favouring Conservative respondents - a third of the sample - it is hardly surprising how the results turned out.

And that's true about one thing - the survey respondents were asked about their newspaper of choice and 42% of them chose the Mail, Express, Sun and Star. That may well reflect the popularity of those papers, but it might just reflect what happens when people get force-fed endless negative tabloid stories about immigration.