YouGov ‘vindicated' after Johnson crowned mayor

UK-- YouGov president Peter Kellner admitted to being “relieved” today after Boris Johnson beat Ken Livingstone to become the new mayor of London. Kellner had, after all, threatened to resign if Livingstone won the election last Thursday, saying: “Either Ken or I will be out of a job by Friday.”

Kellner staked his job on YouGov's accuracy and the online pollster was the only company to consistently predict a Johnson victory throughout the campaign.

The Conservative Party candidate won the election by 53% to 47% – just as YouGov's final election poll had predicted – and Kellner said that both he and the company felt “vindicated”.

Throughout the campaign, Livingstone had attacked YouGov's methodology as “flawed”, believing instead the “conventional” telephone polls which put the two candidates neck-and-neck, or Livingstone slightly ahead.

His campaign team even went so far as to lodge a complaint with the Market Research Standards Board – although at press time it was not known whether the complaint will still be pursued.

A number of bloggers and political commentators pitched the election not just as a battle between Johnson and Livingstone, but as a showdown between YouGov's online techniques and the telephone systems at Ipsos Mori, which predicted a Livingstone win in several polls.

Ben Page, chairman of the Ipsos Mori Social Research Institute and managing director of public affairs for Ipsos Mori, told Research the company was reviewing its political polling methodology.

“Why were the phone polls wrong? We are trying to find an explanation,” he said.

Author: James Verrinder