Ipsos MORI shortlisted as Pollster of the Year
19 August 2010
Ipsos MORI is pleased to announce that we have been shortlisted as Pollster of the Year for the Public Affairs News 2010 Awards.

Worcester’s Weblog: Polls apart? No, they are not!
7 April 2010
Sir Robert Worcester reminds the media to look at the share - not at the lead.

Public Opinion: Why it is important and how to measure it.
19 June 2009
Sir Robert Worcester on the art of measuring public opinion.

The polls are all over the place...
22 August 2008
The polls are all over the place...or are they? This is the first of a series of monthly Vox Populi blogs which my colleagues at Ipsos MORI have asked me to write reviewing the opinion polls between now and the next election from my experience of nearly 40 years conducting and observing polls and how they are reported.

Election Polls: What Does MORI Do And Why?
18 April 2005
This short note tries to explain in simple terms the main elements of the way MORI conducts its election polling and what those polls mean.

Polling On The Internet
12 July 2002
Since the late 1980s, telephone interviewing has become an increasingly effective way of conducting research among the general public. With telephone ownership rising above 90%, it became possible to interview representative samples of the public; the fast turnaround of results and the opportunity for tight control over the interview process have provided researchers with some real advantages over face-to-face methods.

Britain: One Nation?
25 January 2002
Our poll figures are usually reported giving percentages of the whole British adult population who hold a particular opinion, but it is sometimes instructive to break them down geographically and consider to what extent national opinion is simply an aggregation of different regional opinions.

The Impact of Modern Polling Techniques on Campaigning in the 2001 General Election
1 May 2001
House Magazine 'VOX POP'

Frequently Asked Questions (2): How Does The Voting Intention Question Work?
9 February 2001
Recent correspondence has reminded me that not everybody knows exactly how we set about asking respondents their voting intentions, or how we calculate the figures from their responses.

The Polls In 2000
5 January 2001
An editorial in the Daily Telegraph last month (5 December) suggested that MORI's polls in The Times systematically under-represent Conservative strength, and further that this is because they are conducted face-to-face rather than by telephone. The article cited several arguments in support of its case which were based on factual errors. We wrote to the paper correcting these errors, but it failed to publish our letter. It is not true as they alleged that face-to-face polls tend to find lower Conservative support than telephone polls. Nor is it true that MORI's polls find systematically lower Conservative support than those of the other polling companies. But since some of these misconceptions seem to be widespread, and the Telegraph was only echoing the wishful thinking which seems to be still entrenched in some corners of Conservative Central Office, it is perhaps time for a systematic review of the evidence, taking the whole of the year 2000 as our basis.