The Sun once again has not failed to show which party it pitches its tent with. It’s no gain mentioning the party’s name; that would only amount to mindless repetition of what is obvious. This time around, this paper has slammed its readers with a bold claim that a hung Parliament would be a disaster for Britain. Not yet satisfied, it goes further to proclaimĀ David Cameron as leaving “his opponents reelingā in the second election debate. These are not statements of opinion, but one of claim, and must, of course, be reconciled with reality.
A quick check by us, however, reveals that these claims are not anywhere close to having a semblance of reality. They are at best in the imagination of their manufacturers – the Sun news.
Starting with the second claim they made, from the online polls conducted by this same paper, it’s evident that Nick Clegg is the one who got the lion’s share of the votes, and not David Cameron. Their readers, for the second time, have made their position known – that Clegg’s Liberal Democrats is less feared by them than other parties. The final figures of the polls are reproduced as follows:
Nick Clegg got 46.3% of the total votes
David Cameron came a distant second with 36.6% of the total votes
Gordon Brown came third with 14.2%
While votes representing 1.6% and 1.4%Ā show voters who went for “no clear winner” and “I didnāt watch the debate” respectively.
From these votes, it’s difficult to reconcile the claim that David Cameron “Left his opponents reeling” made by the Sun with the reality which of course is that Clegg won the debate comfortably and that the readers once again have defied the Sun and its owner’s bullying to accept what the majority of them do not want.
Coming to the first claim made by the same paper, the result rather shows that their reader’s position on the question “Would a hung parliament be bad for Britain? is divided. From what we have from the polls, 50. 6% of voters agreed that a hung parliament would be bad for Britain. 46.2% disagreed while the rest of the votes showed those who are undecided. What, however, is surprising at the whole business is how the Sun hurriedly closed the form once the “yes” votes managed to gain 50% shares of the votes
These are the votes from their readers which show they did defy the claims made by this paper. These votes are credible, as they are not easy to manipulate. The voters must go through a proper sign-up process with email verification and provide personal demographic information. Despite all efforts to muffle their readers’ voices and push their view to the popular narrative, the readers have continued to defy them with their voting pattern.
We may also need to recall that this state of affairs forced Independent to call out the Sun sometime in February.
