As I reported yesterday in Australia Gets Own Version of YouGov the Sydney Morning Herald has covered the response from YouGov to criticisms from the the ‘Old Brigade’ – Newspoll and Roy Morgan Research. “It’s a joke. You’re wasting your time even reporting it,” Roy Morgan Research’s executive chairman, Gary Morgan, said. “Online research is growing but you need a cross-section of people. The problem with online surveys is that 70 per cent of people who do online surveys are broadband users so they are skewed to heavy Internet users.”

Yet as Ray Poynter points out in It’s the results not the inputs “YouGov in the UK, and Harris in the US, have a long track record of predicting election results at least as accurately as the conventional polling organisations, but quicker and cheaper. There is no point in old fashioned providers bleating about methodology, in this field the results speak for themselves, and the results favour online.”

The proof will be in the pudding and the upcoming elections and the polls will be fascinating to watch.