OPINION13 September 2011

Boris Johnson and the questionable questionnaire

London Mayor Boris Johnson has embarked on a bit of election campaigning under the guise of a survey.

The questionnaire posted on the Back Boris 2012 site (which came to our attention via RS Consulting on Twitter) is pretty shameless stuff – with each question preceded by a sentence detailing something wonderful Johnson has done, like this:

“Did you know overall crime has fallen by nearly 9% since Boris Johnson became Mayor. But more needs to be done to make Londeners feel safe. Which area of crime do you think needs more attention?”

this:

“Boris Johnson has frozen the Mayor’s share of Council Tax for three years, this is a 10% cut in real terms. It rose by 153% under Ken Livingstone. What do you think the Mayor of London should do to help with the cost of living?”

and this:

“Boris Johnson stopped the production of Ken Livingston’s [sic] propoganda [sic] sheet ‘The Londoner’ which cost London tax payers £3.1m per year. Do you support this cost saving decision?”

It’s hard to know what Johnson’s team are aiming for with this survey. By recruiting participants through his own site, they’re obviously targeting people who are already sympathetic to Johnson anyway – in fact, the last question is about whether you’d be willing to help out with the campaign.

If they just want to be seen to be asking people what they think, or to drum up a bit of pro-Johnson fervour, perhaps a survey like this is enough.

But if they’re genuinely using it to get pointers on what issues to focus on in their election campaign, then they really should have taken some advice from professionals first.

And if they’re using it to generate statistics that they can quote in press releases and the like, then we suspect this won’t be the last time we’ll be blogging about it here.

@RESEARCH LIVE

1 Comment

13 years ago

It would be a real shame if this excellent piece of work were ruined by people posting obtuse and 'funny' remarks

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