YouGov, formerly known as PollingPoint in the United States, is an international internet-based market research firm launched in the UK in May 2000 by Stephan Shakespeare, now Chief Executive Officer, and Nadhim Zahawi. In 2005 the company opened an office in the Middle East, YouGovSiraj, and in 2007 it further expanded by acquiring market research firms in the USA (YouGov Polimetrix), Germany (YouGov Psychonomics) and Scandinavia (YouGov Zapera), which are now part of the YouGov Group.[1] YouGov is a member of the British Polling Council.
YouGov's Chairman since April 2007 is Roger Parry, replacing political commentator Peter Kellner who now serves as President of the company.[2] When YouGov floated for £18million in April 2005, Kellner owned 6% of the company.[3]
YouGov's former CEO Nadhim Zahawi resigned from the board to stand in the 2010 General Election and is now a Conservative Party MP for Stratford Upon Avon. The current CEO, Stephan Shakespeare, stood in the 1997 general election as the Conservative candidate for Colchester.
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YouGov's methodology is to obtain responses from an invited group of Internet users, and then to weight these responses in line with demographic information. It draws these demographically-representative samples from a panel of about 350,000 people in the UK.[4]
As YouGov's online methods use no field-force, its costs are lower than some face-to-face or telephone methods. In the UK, YouGov media clients include The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Economist and Sky News.
Panel members, volunteer members of the public, are credited with 50 points for each survey they complete which typically take around 20 minutes to complete (up to 100 points for more time consuming ones). They are sent a cheque worth £50 when 5000 points are accrued. Also, surveys are offered to individual participants infrequently (typically two to four per month, meaning it can take several years to accumulate the £50 minimum earnings required for a payout, although some 'in demand' demographic groups are likely to receive survey invites more often). In addition there is a monthly prize survey, the completion of which enters the member into a prize draw, users can also spend some or all of their points as an individual entry into this prize draw.[5]
YouGov has contended that its opinion polls in recent UK elections, e.g. the 2001 general election, have been consistently more accurate than traditional opinion pollsters who repeatedly over-estimated the Labour vote.
This pattern was repeated during the 2005 general election campaign, when most traditional polls reported Labour's support in the range from 38 to 41%, compared with the 36% it achieved on polling day. In contrast, YouGov's nine polls during the final three weeks of the campaign all showed Labour on 36 or 37%, although NOP (published in The Independent) gave the most accurate forecast in their final poll in 2005.
Critics argue that, as not all of the public have access to the Internet, its samples cannot accurately reflect the views of the population as a whole.[6] YouGov counters that they have a representative panel and they are able to weight their polls/surveys appropriately to reflect the national audience that they are aiming to poll.
It is a function of their internet panel approach that YouGov isn't able to pick up turnout factors to the same degree as other pollsters and they exclude it from their methods. However, traditional polls use widely differing methods to take account of turnout, and these produce equally varied corrections to the raw data. No consensus has emerged as to what, if any, correction has greatest validity.
Four weeks before the 2008 London mayoral elections, a YouGov poll placed Boris Johnson 13 points ahead of the incumbent Ken Livingstone. Livingstone's campaign team branded the poll "fundamentally flawed", arguing that it failed to take account of London's larger ethnic minority population compared to the rest of the country, and saying that it would complain to the Market Research Council of Great Britain.[7] Ipsos MORI and ICM polls put the candidates neck-and-neck.[8] A subsequent poll was derided by Livingstone as "a transparent attempt by the Evening Standard/YouGov to give Boris Johnson a more credible lead".[9] However, Livingstone never made the official complaint that had been announced to the media, and in the event, YouGov's final poll showing Johnson in the lead by six percentage points was the only accurate prediction.[10]
YouGov also makes predictions about the outcomes of popular culture events based on their internet surveys. This work is usually commissioned by newspapers who publish the results immediately prior to the events. This has included predictions about the winner of the 2001/2 UK Pop Idol contest, and the last three X-Factor winners. In each case, the YouGov prediction has been correct. The first of these, which saw YouGov predict victory for Will Young, gave YouGov its first major media attention having been the only research organisation to get this one right.[11] For the most recent X-Factor contest, YouGov correctly placed the final 4 contestants in order.[12]
In 2010, the company launched YouGov SixthSense which provides market intelligence reports.[13]
Starting in 2006 YouGov began expanding outside the UK with acquisitions in Europe and the United States.[14] In 2006 YouGov acquired Dubai based Siraj, for $1.2 million, plus eventual earn outs of $600,000. In 2007 they added Palo Alto, CA based US research firm Polimetrix for approximately $17 million, Scandinavia's Zapera for $8 million and German Psychonomics for $20 million. In 2009 and 2010 they expanded US Operations with two acquisitions. First buying Princeton, NJ research firm Clear Horizons for $600,000 plus an earn out of $2.7 million. Then in 2010 Connecticut researchers Harrison Group for $6 million with a $7 million earnout.