During the Green Party conference this week leader Caroline Lucas promised the party would get a historic breakthrough at the forthcoming general election.
The Green Party has a number of constituencies in their sights, but the one at the forefront is Lucas’ own Brighton Pavilion, which they hold a healthy lead in, according to polls. However, The Argus today raised eyebrows with a poll they’d commissioned, which was conducted by Kindle Research. The survey asked 1000 people from Brighton and Hove (not just within Brighton Pavilion) if the general election was held tomorrow who would they vote for. The results had 26% voting with Labour, 16% with the Conservatives and just 5% electing to vote Green.
However, this fascinating blog post describes the poll as ‘bizarre’ and ‘suspicious’ and explains in some detail how the results appear to have been manipulated to suit an agenda. The post also questions why The Argus commissioned the poll and what the relationship is between Kindle Research founder Paul Hutchings and Brighton’s daily newspaper.
Caroline Lucas has also questioned the poll with a blog post titled ‘Green Party sounds “serious health warning” on “substandard and misleading” voter poll’. Read the post here.
The respected Brighton Political Blogger has also had his say on the subject on his blog, describing the poll as ‘misleading’.
The poll has also created quite a storm in Brighton’s Twittersphere. See here for example.