Political Polling Problems

With Presidential Election fever rising in the USA, the debate about political polling is also heating up. There's a great interview over at EconTalk this week with Doug Rivers, a leading US commentator on opinion poll methodologies. He tells us that 30 out of 30 polls before the recent New Hampshire primary said Obama was going to win: but Clinton took it.

It's a great introduction to the ongoing debate about sampling methods, and telephone versus internet. For a debate that's slightly closer to home, check out a recent issue of the BBC's More or Less programme about the election for London's Lord Mayor.

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we?

Earlier this month it looked like Google would be forced to hand over the personal information and viewing history of every person who has ever watched a video on the YouTube (that probably includes you) as part of a billion-dollar court case in the US.

However, Viacom and other litigants have ‘backed off’ their original demand for all users' viewing histories. It’s a significant deal in maintaining our privacy on the internet, but we bet the researchers at Viacom are gutted…now that would have been an interesting data set!

Shop 'til You Save

Irish consumers aren't sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. Even as consumer confidence plunges new depths, a large number of consumers have decided not to get sad but to get even instead. Findings from our latest survey for the National Consumer Agency show that:

- 30% of grocery shoppers have changed their shopping behaviour since the start of the year

- 26% are buying cheaper versions of products (such as own brand) to cut spending

- 26% are spreading their spending across multiple supermarkets and discounters like Aldi & Lidl to get more for their money.

And that's only the first half of 2008: with consumer concerns about the economy going the way they're going we can expect to see the other 70% of grocery shoppers changing their behaviour too some time soon.