A poll purporting to show that one in five British Muslims had “sympathy for jihadis” was constructed by calling people with “Muslim surnames” in an effort to complete an affordable survey of opinion in the week after the Paris terror attacks.
Survation – the polling company used by the Sun – said it had picked out likely respondents using the help of an academic expert on naming, a method that rival polling companies said did not necessarily amount to a representative sample of the British Muslim population.
The controversial methodology was used to underpin a front-page story in Monday’s edition of the Sun – headlined 1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ sympathy for jihadis – after 19.5% of those surveyed said that they had either a lot or some sympathy with young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria. [The Guardian] Read more
