There have been some shenanigans from all sides concerning the latest poll run by GB News on rejoining the European Union. This weekend, the broadcaster asked the public about their feelings on Brexit and the current state of the nation.
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GB News poll on rejoining EU goes awry
Respondents were asked if the UK should rejoin the EU, almost eight years after the referendum result. However, there was a rather serious catch: The poll was hidden behind a paywall, encouraging only paying readers to participate.
Author Edwin Hayward then decided to level the playing field. Tweeting to his large pro-EU following, he shared a link to the poll which bypassed the paywall, and asked social media users to make their feelings known.
The post was picked up by a number of influential accounts – including an official prompt from a Liberal Democrat Councillor:
Paywall poll descends into chaos
This changed the sentiment dramatically. The overwhelming majority of votes have since gone to rejoin, with over 90% of people visiting the poll opting for a route back into the EU at time of publishing.
It’s not the result GB News were looking for – but they’ve also moved the goalposts.
Though the survey is still live, the channel took a screenshot of the results before they were opened up to the wider public, and only featured those figures in their most recent article on the matter. At that point, 64% had chosen to ‘stay out’ of the EU.
As the self-professed home of free speech, it perhaps comes as a surprise that GB News essentially made this a poll a ‘members only’ affair, and then published results that aligned in their favour. Some even wondered if this was another matter for OFCOM…