Page 38 - Bloomberg Businessweek July 2018

Bloomberg Businessweek July 2, 2018

Shakespeare said the price had nothing to do with his firm’s Breaking News
public polling. “We try to get a fair price for our data’s superior Percentage of news stories about Brexit on the night of the referendum*
quality, volume, and detail,” he said. He declined to say how Stories referring to Nigel Farage Stories indicating Farage had conceded
much YouGov charged Sky for the broadcast poll, but people Stories citing YouGov’s Sky News poll
on both sides of the transaction said it was free. 30%
Damian Lyons-Lowe, a former hedge fund salesman, started
Survation in 2010, in part to gauge the public’s support for con-
testants on Simon Cowell’s X Factor so he could wager on the Polls close
outcome, according to two people familiar with Survation’s
business. The company got its big break in political polling 20
when it was hired by Farage and UKIP after its surveys showed
more support for the anti-Europe party than those of more
established pollsters.
The organizations grew so close that Survation once based
its phone operators in UKIP headquarters, according to a 10
knowledgeable source, and Lyons-Lowe became a friend and
key adviser to Farage. “He is a genius—flawed, but a genius,”
Farage said of Lyons-Lowe in an interview with Bloomberg,
declining to elaborate.
On June 23, the day of the EU referendum, Farage and 0
his team gathered at the London home of a UKIP adviser. 6/23/16, 9 p.m.** 6/24/16, 1 a.m.
Their actions that day have been retold in two books, The
Bad Boys of Brexit and All Out War: The Full Story of How
Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class. The published accounts and research provider, including in respect of referendums and
differ, but both say that Farage had learned the results of an other elections where innovative methodologies are required.
unidentified financial- services exit poll well before the polls We work regularly for a wide variety of newspapers, private 41
closed at 10 p.m. These accounts also say that Farage learned clients, and political parties. Survation Ltd. does not comment
the results before giving his concession statement to Sky at on any confidential client work.”
roughly 9:40 p.m., which the network then aired within sec- Farage said his statement to Sky was “a terrible mistake,”
onds of the polls closing at 10 p.m. but he also asserted that he didn’t give the network’s reporter a
Farage, who hadn’t detailed since that night what he learned true concession. “It was an acceptance that we might not win,
or how he knew it, told Bloomberg that the only external exit- but it was hardly, but it was not how—they overegged it. They
poll results he received on June 23 were Survation’s—and that overegged it. But that’s journalism,” he said.
Lyons-Lowe gave them to him. “He got it right,” Farage said of He could not explain, however, why he gave a second con-
Lyons-Lowe. “And whoever, whichever clientele, whichever cession about 70 minutes after the Sky broadcast, which not
City hedge funds paid him that day, did very well out of it.” only echoed his earlier statement but was also more ada-
*AS AGGREGATED BY THE BLOOMBERG TERMINAL **BRITISH SUMMER TIME. DATA: COMPILED BY BLOOMBERG
Farage repeatedly told Bloomberg that he learned the mant. Farage made the second concession in an interview
results from Lyons-Lowe’s poll only “minutes after” Sky put with the Press Association, a U.K. news cooperative. Its report
his market-moving statement on the air just past 10 p.m.— says: “Mr. Farage told the Press Association: ‘I don’t know,
not before. “That would have been, that would have been—for but I think Remain will edge it, yes. The massive increase
he and I to have spoken ahead of that 10 o’clock—would have in voter registration will be the reason for that.’ Asked if he
been wrong at every level. Wrong for me, wrong for him, just was just experiencing election-night jitters, the UKIP leader
would have been wrong,” Farage said. After saying he heard replied: ‘It is a calm and rational feeling. If I am wrong, I
the results from Lyons-Lowe, Farage then changed his story, would be thrilled. But it is what we have seen out and about,
saying they came not from Lyons-Lowe personally, but from and what I know from some of my friends in the financial
someone affiliated with Survation’s operation. In a subsequent markets who have done some big polling.’” Bloomberg sent
telephone interview, Farage again changed his story to say a series of headlines based on that interview to its more than
he had indeed spoken by phone with Lyons-Lowe. He said 300,000 financial clients around the world.
Lyons-Lowe intimated that the U.K. had voted for Leave, but Farage rejected the idea that his concessions were aimed
he didn’t share specific data. Farage also said that, at the time, at moving the markets for anyone. But he also laughed
he didn’t believe what Lyons-Lowe had told him, and that about helping to push the pound higher ahead of its crash.
another contact, whom he declined to identify, mentioned “Yeah, and a good thing—good thing,” he told Bloomberg,
other polling showing Remain would win. adding that those “who trade short-term markets and lose
In response to questions, Lyons-Lowe released a statement: money shouldn’t complain, because that’s the game. That’s
“Survation Ltd. has established itself as a leading opinion poll the game.”