Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters have been busy hailing his success after a new poll put him 24 points ahead in the Labour leadership election.
The YouGov survey was released on Tuesday night, and showed Corbyn looking set to increase his mandate from Labour members up to 62%, while rival Owen Smith languished on 38%.
Naturally, fans of the leader pointed to the poll’s findings to rebut criticism that he is “unelectable”, claiming they were proof of his popularity.
But members of Corbyn’s fanbase were accused of performing a spectacular volte-face for rallying around the YouGov poll mere days after pouring scorn on similar surveys.
Some regularly allege that surveys reporting Corbyn’s low level of popularity are “propaganda”, “spin” or “biased”.
But given the championing of today’s news as proof by Corbyn fans of his success, some questioned why there was such fervent belief in the figures.
Rachel Garrick, the founder of a local Momenutm branch who recently resigned from the pro-Corbyn pressure group, branded the survey “Schrödinger’s Poll”.
Election analyst Mike Smithson also pointed out that the poll was conducted by the same company which, just three days earlier, said Theresa May had a 21% lead over Corbyn on who would make the best prime minister.
The same poll that was accused by Corbyn fans of being “lies”.
Speculation about YouGov’s impartial reporting of data was taken even further, when pro-Corbyn campaigner Aaron Bastani questioned why the pollster had taken time to extrapolate, condense and publish their survey’s results.
Leaving others to wonder how Corbyn fans would treat YouGov survey results in the future given their hailing of today’s findings.