Monday, October 27, 2008

Who owns the pollsters?

I got curious about who owns the pollsters.

Colmar-Brunton is owned by Millward-Brown. They appear to be based in the UK, but it's not obvious from their web site. I'm inferring this from their global media contact being based there.

Millward-Brown is owned by WPP. WPP appear to be a marketing and communications conglomerate with a widely dispersed shareholder base about 95% of which are institutional investors. Only four organisations hold more than 3% of shares in WPP and none hold more than 5%.

As a coincidence, it appears that last week WPP was in the final stages of acquiring TNS, the pollster who works with 3 News on their polls.

I`ll have to look into Roy Morgan and Digipoll tomorrow.
Posted by Steve Withers at 12:20 AM
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousNovember 18, 2008 6:43 AM

    Good question. Check out the INL, Fairfax and CNN. The lines to power are often obscured by subsidiary corps, making it difficult to trace back, but I would be willing to bet that our pollsters are owned by the same people?? who control our media.

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