"Cam winning battle for mums" says News of the World. Figures show the opposite.

The News of the World's despair over the election was obvious from every line of its coverage yesterday - nowhere more so than the page that gave five times more space to an informal poll of mums (showing Cameron in the lead) than to its own scientific opinion poll (showing him not doing so well).

The only problem is, the mums' poll they are trumpeting actually shows the complete opposite of the headline ...

Here's the story from yesterday, headlined "Cam winning battle for mums":

DAVID Cameron is winning the ferocious battle to woo Britain’s mothers — who hold the key to election victory.

The Tories have stormed into a whopping 10 point lead over Labour in a poll of 4,000 mums by parenting website Netmums.

An impressive 33.7 per cent plan to vote Tory, compared to 24.1 per cent Labour and 15.8 per cent Lib Dem.

We've seen these numbers before somewhere ...

But here's a Guardian story from 4 April about a, er, Netmums poll of 3,000 mothers:

The results saw 34% saying they intended to vote Tory, 24% who intended to vote Labour and 16% for the Liberal Democrats.

So, no change in the percentages for any of the parties in two weeks.

Which either means the figures haven't shifted - so Cam isn't storming anywhere but just treading water - or the News of the World has recycled a two-week old news story from the Guardian as current news. Surely not.

Actually, we saw them even before that ...

But to makes things worse, it turns out that the figures for the Tories haven't actually changed in three months.

Here are the results for the Netmums survey for January:

• Conservative 34%
• Labour 18%
• Lib Dem 16%

No change for the %s for the Conservatives and Lib Dems ... (The Sun reported those figures, so it's not as if the News of the World didn't know about them). 

What the figures really show

The actual conclusion is that, in these Netmums polls:

• The Conservative vote hasn't shifted from January to early April to now.
• The Lib Dem vote hasn't shifted from January to early April to now.
• The Labour Party has increased its share from 16% in early January to 24% now.

And none of this matters anyway, as these polls aren't representative of anyone.

Fortunately the NOTW's readers feel the same way about it trying to persuade us that unscientific online polls are in any way meaningful - and about it drawing idiotic conclusions that have no basis in the numbers. Here's a reader's comment from yesterday's story:

"If these figures are repeated across the country, Mr Cameron will clinch victory in many of the key marginals that will decide the outcome of the election."

But they won't be because this isn't a proper opinion poll. It is a totally unrepresentative sample. You really must try harder. Real opinion polls show Cameron is on the slide.

You are just clutching at straws as Cameron goes down the pan. And you know it.

And shame on Netmums for letting the NoTW publish this story - and even tweeting about it - when they must have known all this.