Leave.EU ask British Polling Council to investigate CBI/YouGov poll [UPDATED]

has asked the British Polling Council to investigate a YouGov poll commissioned by the EU-funded CBI in 2013 over claims that it was deliberately biased and contravened the BPC's guidelines.

It is alleged that YouGov only polled big business, excluding the small businesses that make up the vast majority of companies in the UK. It is also alleged that YouGov allowed the CBI to choose which businesses it wanted polling, allowing them to ensure that the results were favourable to their long-held pro-EU agenda. The poll - unsurprisingly in light of these allegations - found that 8 out of 10 businesses want to stay in the EU.

Guido has a copy of an email that Nick Moon from the British Polling Council accidentally sent to Dominic Cummings from the Leave.EU campaign. I'm going to stick my neck out and predict that the BPC is going to find that while YouGov made some errors, the survey result was sound. Scouts honour.

From: Moon, Nick (GfK)
Date: Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 2:50 PM
Subject: RE: Complaint to the British Polling Council
To: Dominic Cummings, John Curtice
Cc: Simon Atkinson

Bugger – at first glance the odious Cummings might be onto something.

Survey looks pretty dodgy but luckily we don’t need to rule on that. But my initial thought is that YouGov did not give as much info as they should have

nick