The YouGov staffer responsible for selecting the 100 “undecided” voters for Tuesday night’s third and final Queensland election debate between Steven Miles and David Crisafulli has been sacked.

The veteran staffer was escorted from the polling company’s offices yesterday – to the jeers and slow handclaps of colleagues – after those undecided voters gave the debate to Premier Miles, albeit by a small margin, with more than 20 per cent staying undecided.

The Bug understands that senior management at The Courier-Mail and Sky LNPNews Australia, who cohosted the event at Brisbane’s Lang Park, both demanded of YouGov executives that “heads need to roll” over the selection of the 100 who decided the debate winner.

The Courier-Mail editor Chris Jones is understand to have been livid at the debate result, having to axe a 800 point splash, MILES BEHIND, lauding Crisafulli’s debate mastery and apparently yelling at his senior editorial people: “With youth crime rampant and everything else having also gone pearshaped under this out-of-touch, out-of-time, useless government, that vote should have gone powerfully David’s way if those 100 voters had been selected properly as is normally the case!”

Although rival network, Nine Entertainment Co., had nothing to do with the debate, its format and audience selection, it confirmed Jones had every reason to be livid.

“We sent YouGov a list of names we thought would be perfect for that debate audience, all members of the Voice for Victims community group,” a spokesperson for Nine News Queensland, the group’s patron, told us.

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