Monday, April 16, 2007

Curiouser and Curiouser

Over the last few days, The Scotsman has been running an online poll to ask readers whether they think Jack McConnell or Alex Salmond would make the best First Minister. It had been chugging along fairly slowly since it started, with Salmond enjoying a consistent 84%-16% margin over McConnell, albeit with fewer than 2,000 votes cast.

You can probably imagine my surprise then to find out this afternoon that McConnell had turned things round. From a position of trailing heavily, McConnell now led Salmond by 70%-30%, an achievement which had seen nearly 8,000 votes piled on in just in a matter of hours!

It seems that I'm not the only one to be surprised by this Lazarus-type comeback. So, where has this sudden rush of votes come from? Has Jack perhaps learned how to use the internet at last?

3 comments:

Kevin Williamson said...

I was wondering how that happened! Guess somebody at Brit Hoose has got sore fingers from excess voting.

Iain said...

That's nothing ...look at Tartan Hero's story on the suppressed Herald poll.

Richard Thomson said...

Given the general dodginess of the first MRUK poll, I'm not inclined to give this one too much credence either. That said, the Herald has serious questions to answer as to why there aws such a splash with the first poll yet they are keeping schtum on this one?

Compare and contrast with 1999, when The Herald under Harry Reid maintained a scrupulous independence, despite Gordon Brown's representatives on earth threatening to get advertising withdrawn. Today's Herald is an apology for a 'quality' newspaper.