After the Reform scandal - does anyone still trust pollsters?
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What was the Reform UK polling scandal and why did it spark an investigation?
This is a global production.
Nigel Farage's former aide, Dan Dukes, went on an all-expenses-paid trip courtesy of the polling company JL Partners.
There's only so much distance that Nigel Farage is able to put between himself and Dan Dukes.
Dukes was asked, what does a reformed government want from a polling company? And he replied, showing that we're winning. Well, if JL partners are up to it, are others up to that sort of thing as well? This will raise questions in people's mind. What polling is for, who it's for and whether we should trust it.
I think there is a little bit of like informal rule bending that we did with our last one. So like, you know, when we published those results, we should have disclosed to the plant first.
That is James Johnson from the polling company JL Partners, and it was taken from a Channel 4 documentary two weeks ago, a scoop in which the pollsters admitting to bending the rules to conceal that the Reform Party were behind the polling that was then splashed all over the newspaper front pages. Reform deny they were involved, but an inquiry is now underway. This is just one company, one pollster. But today we want to look more widely at polling and public trust. Polling is everywhere. How much does it tell us and how much does it decide our own behaviour? Welcome to The News
Agents. The News Agents.
It's John. It's Maitlis. And we're going to start today's episode on the Red Sea Resort of El Cusier. That's nice. December 2025. And the reason we're starting there is that Nigel Farage's former aide, Dan Dukes, went, we now understand from Politico, on an all-expenses-paid trip there, courtesy of the polling company J.L. Partners. This is an internal email that Politico has seen. Now, why did he go? He went to give a talk for the company, which subsequently released opinion polls without then disclosing they were financed by, you now understand, supposed donors to reform. This is part of that channel for verbatim scoop that came out a couple of weeks ago. And what we now learn from that trip, Dukes and Jail Partners, was the extent of the business relationship.
Somebody with knowledge of the trip said that the company took a limousine from the airport to the hotel, also at Jail Partners' expense. And during that trip, Dukes was asked... what do you want? What does a reform government want from a polling company? And he replied, showing that we're winning. We know what subsequently happened to Dukes. He was essentially chucked out of the party. And what Farage has said is that was nothing to do with reform. That trip was nothing to do with us. It was, you know, in a different capacity. Well,
we know that Nigel Farage thinks that Dan Jukes was just a contractor
that was
working for reform when, in fact, he was the de facto chief of staff to Nigel Farage and had been at his right hand for absolutely years. So, I mean, there's only so much distance that Nigel Farage is able to put between himself and Dan Jukes.
But I think one of the secondary questions it asks is not just about Dan Jukes or even reform. But about the polling company at the centre of this story, Jail Partners, which was pretty well established. It was, I think, owned or half owned by a former aide, Theresa May. It had come out of sort of, you know, the political establishment, essentially. There was nothing in what they were doing to suggest that they were taking off members of a party and chauffeuring them by limousine and then saying, what do you want your polling to show? And yet I think inevitably this will raise questions in people's mind about what polling is for, who it's for and whether we should trust it as much as
we quite often do. I think this is such an interesting and controversial area. All through the 2016 presidential election in America, any time there was a poll that was unfavorable to Donald Trump, he would say, this is a fix. They're working for the Democrats. They're against me. Donald Trump has sued polling companies in America for producing polls that he felt were unfavorable.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What was the Reform UK polling scandal and why did it spark an investigation?
0:02–5:46
2
How did the JL Partners trip with Dan Dukes reveal undisclosed funding?
5:46–12:12
3
Why do pollsters need to disclose their clients and how does the British Polling Council enforce this?
12:12–23:30
4
What can the US experience with Trump‑related poll lawsuits teach us about poll credibility?
23:30–29:17
5
How are modern pollsters adapting to the decline of landlines and the rise of online panels?
29:17–35:30
6
What role do focus groups and qualitative research play alongside quantitative polls?
35:30–41:01
7
How accurate are exit polls and why do they matter for public trust in elections?
41:01–41:54
Speakers
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