Market Research

The BBC censor political poll findings. They say they don't, but their journalists and editors complain privately they do, and the evidence is there, from the Today programme to What the Papers Say to the news broadcasts. They've thrown the baby out with the bath water, and ignore the only systematic and objective measure of British public opinion, and replace it with vox pops, phone-in ('voodoo') polls, interviews with party spokesmen and their own spin.

The election is approaching, and we are frequently being asked a similar series of questions — or, occasionally, discovering that some have an alarming misunderstanding about what we do. So, with apologies to those of our readers to whom this is already obvious, let us begin at the beginning.