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Leading Questions - Yes Prime Minister

LimeXd · 1.6M views · 2012-01-15 · 2:17

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Overview

A clip from Yes Prime Minister in which Sir Humphrey shows how leading questions can make a survey support or oppose national service. It is a short satirical scene.

On Hacker News

HN commenters bring it up whenever a poll or survey result looks suspect, as the classic illustration of biased question framing.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2012–2025

Topics

Satire & parodyFilm & TV clipsData science & statistics
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What people said

graemep · 2024-11 · Recommendation

Polls may or may not be carried out in a neutral way. A good many are deliberately biased, even more have known flaws that are glossed over. A humorous take on this I love (from the 80s BBC comedy Yes Minister, which is often scarily realistic): [VIDEO]

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roenxi · 2023-02 · Recommendation

This is probably a good time to recall that polling in politics can be highly misleading . I recall an excellent segment on Yes, Minister that explains it [0, 1]. We really need to know the other questions they were being asked at the time to see if they were primed in some way. A near majority being uncomfortable with white people would be outrageous, but Americans are usually pretty tolerant so it is likely that Rasmussen is playing games here. [0] [VIDEO] [1] [LINK] - For people who like text, search for "Have another opinion poll done"

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Jalad · 2022-03 · Recommendation

Link for the curious: [VIDEO] Starts at about 1:00. One of my favorite shows Edit: updated link, thanks @dvngnt_

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Sources

Video by LimeXd, played through YouTube.

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