It is as if the support by Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe for the Liberal-led coalition encouraged some Bloc and NDP voters to trust the Liberals and jump to them in December.
Rather hard to believe.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
A Particularly Useless Poll
A sample of only 600? The horse-race question mixed in with a bunch of procedural stuff about how Iggy was chosen and material re the late, unlamented coalition? And yet the Libs are at 30% because:
It is as if the support by Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe for the Liberal-led coalition encouraged some Bloc and NDP voters to trust the Liberals and jump to them in December.
Rather hard to believe.
It is as if the support by Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe for the Liberal-led coalition encouraged some Bloc and NDP voters to trust the Liberals and jump to them in December.
Rather hard to believe.
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8 comments:
I've said this before, but you can't ask coalition questions, then horserace questions, because it's almost a "lead". This poll, like every poll, tells us that Canadians hate the coalition (it also shows their lack of sophistication in understanding just what the hell is going on). I buy those numbers, and I also buy the hesitations about the Liberal process, particularly with the way the question is asked- would you prefer democracy or elitism? Wow, what a shocker.
We won't get a good read on the horserace until we get past this coalition idea, because one isn't about to express concern about the coalition, then later endorse the party endorsing the coalition. Only one recent poll was wise enough to simply ask horserace questions, and on that score, the race is much, much tighter. I suspect that poll is the best gauge of where we are, unless of course the coalition comes to fruition. Attitudes could change I suppose, but much of that will be dependent on the budget, it will have to be very obnoxious to rally support behind this idea.
The only number that strikes me in this poll, is the Liberal score in Quebec (margin of error must be large). Libs at 42%, Bloc 28%, Cons 16%. Dare to dream :)
Anyways, let the Cons get all damp at these polls, it's mostly mirage.
Oh it's a COMPAS poll. There's a reason COMPAS has always been the pollster of the National Post - what they conduct are basically push polls designed to get a specific response irrespective of actual public opinion. For instance, reading COMPAS polls one would have thought that the Ernie Eves' promise to give tax credits for private school tuition was wildly popular. Of course, the COMPAS poll in question skewed the results by using loaded questions that referred to private schools as "independent schools", public schools as "government run schools" and asked if the respondent thought parents who sent their kids to (good) independent schools rather than (evil) government schools should get "tax relief".
Yeah, Compas, right. Wake me up when you hear something from a real pollster.
Also done exclusively for Canadian Business.
These types of polls are conducted to grab headlines but they provide little insight on voting intention. Imagine how low support for the Conservatives would be if, instead of leading up to the voting intention question with questions about the coalition and the way Michael Ignatieff was installed as Liberal leader, the questions were about Harper's unprecedented and constitution bending decision to prorogue Parliament to avoid being defeated on the Fall Economic Statement after he miscalculated the mood of Parliament, despite being elected only a few weeks earlier with a minority mandate? The it would be the Liberals with and handsome lead.
Firebrand, Compas no longer polls for the National Post. I'd like to think it's because the NP got an attack of integrity, but more likely it's because they couldn't pay their bill.
I know this poll is flawed and what not, but it's sort of the strange the way it mirrors all the other poll findings on the coalition, even the regional breakdowns. Is Decima a biased outfit too, what of AR and EKOS?
Steve, it means that if you rub peoples faces in the notion of a coalition before you ask the horserace question, you will get similar results as other pollsters who did the same thing.
None of the Opposition Parties can run on the Coalition. Our NDP brothers will realize this soon enough.
You can't run on the Coalition but the Coalition is going to affect the Liberals and NDP negatively in an election anyways. This foolish idea should have been killed already. Instead, it will linger on into January to do more damage to the Libs and Dippers. I must say, that's a good start to 2009. :)
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