Thursday, August 27, 2015

On The Theory Of The "Sleeping Electorate"

From ONW's Susanna Kelly:

Most people take two, perhaps three weeks vacation a year.

That means that for all the other summer weeks, they're back at work, starting the day as usual by listening to newscasts in their car during commutes, spending lots of time on their computers and Internet-rigged up (CHANGE) devices and chatting around the water cooler - just like they do the rest of the year.

On top of that, even if they are at the cottage, many of those same cottages have now been equipped with the Internet.

And there are fewer and fewer people who live in rural Canada, making their living by working the soil in relative isolation.

So the idea that many people haven't heard of, or heard much of, the Duffy trial is pretty unlikely.

It was the lead story on Internet, television and radio newscasts as well as on newspapers' front pages for many days.

And even if, as is the case with many in the electorate, they only remember the headlines, those very headlines have been very damaging.

I'm about half-ready to buy this.  Today's Forum poll suggest's that the Duffy trial has had a major negative effect on CPC numbers, though these are supposed to be the dog days.  But of course that's only Forum.  There will, however, be an EKOS poll tomorrow and Frank Graves is hinting at some pretty interesting results:


So there you have it.

3 comments:

Gayle said...

The question is whether the Duffy effect will last.

Imagine if Trudeau had voted against C51, and Harper used that as his excuse to call the election early. He would have bombarded us with "soft on terror" ads and could have been sitting through the Duffy scandal with a comfortable majority government to protect him.

Northern PoV said...

Gayle: "Imagine if Trudeau had voted against C51, and Harper used that as his excuse to call the election early. "

The actual vote came too late for that. What I think you mean (and I agree) is that if there had been significant and vocal opposition to C51 last Jan/Feb then Harper would have pulled-off your scenario.
I recall that Mulcair waffled on C51 at first - then hardened his position as the polls changed and as he got hammered by the rest of the NDP.
So we avoided the phony-terror election because of the behavior of both opposition parties. But Trudeau and the Libs played their cards poorly.
They've should have made positive noises at first and then voted against it. (Or at least have Trudeau cast a lone "pro" vote and let the caucus abstain as in "We will give the gov't the benefit of the doubt when it comes to security, but this gov't only gets the barest of support" and use that media spotlight to say "we will pass our proposed oversight and sunset clauses as soon as we take office")

Support the party of your choice - then on Oct. 19 vote strategically ABC.

Gale said...

New Ipsos out as well, the race is still mostly tied but still with some interesting results. The Liberals are a point ahead of the Conservatives and the CPC is losing a bit of steam. There was a Leger poll with a similar result about a week ago as well. Might be a bit of a longshot at this point but we could actually end up seeing an NDP government with a Liberal official opposition.