09.24.2015 05:44 AM

KCCCC Day 53: polls, schmolls

  

  • Look, I’m in the backseat of a crowded Beck taxi, heading to Pearson  and Whitehorse. I don’t have time to do a great big KCCCC thing. Sorry. 
  • So, instead, I give you this snapshot of National Newswatch this morning. It has to be seen to be believed. If any of you can discern a pattern in these entrails, speak your mind. But God knows if I can figure it out. Comment away!

  

61 Comments

  1. Brent Crofts says:

    Sure. The only certainty is that there is no certainty. Or something like that…

  2. MississaugaPeter says:

    The confusion and apparent stalemate only benefits the CONS.

    The longer there is no fear of a CONS majority, the less time for Centre-Left voters to consolidate to prevent Harper from getting re-elected.

    The last week of the campaign will be a barrage of political advertising unlike anything we have ever seen before. And we know who has the most money for this and has most surely already purchased the most television/radio/web spots.

    • Matt says:

      I’m actually shocked we haven’t seen a barrage of advertising from the parties yet. I was expecting that to ramp up after Labor Day.

      The parties might be saving some of their money for the election that may be following this one very, very soon.

      • MississaugaPeter says:

        Any party saving money for the next election (possibly four years away) is run by a bunch of second-rate clowns.

        • Vancouverois says:

          Are you kidding?

          There’s still every reason to believe that this election may well result in an unstable minority government. In which case, the next election will almost certainly happen well before your four-year prediction, and any party that isn’t ready for that financially will be at a disadvantage.

          • MississaugaPeter says:

            I am sure the CONS are hoping for more replies like this and hoping that the second-rate clowns back at the office follow the advice.

            Nothing better for the CONS spending $25M+ in the last week and the opposition parties spending significantly less, just in case there is another election afterwards. Automatic recipe for CONS majority.

      • terence quinn says:

        They get 60% of their legitimate election spending back as a rebate

  3. Maps Onburt says:

    My thought exactly. Polls are serving one purpose this campaign. Drive clicks. In aggregate they show a tight race and maybe a trend but it’s nuts to say one party or another is in the lead when it is within the margin of error to have the first place party in third and the third place party in first. I say, a pox on all this houses. (And this in the face of Ekos’ poll that shows my Conservative party closing in on a majority – which I suspect was put there to fire up the progressive base and get them to coalesce around Trudeau).

  4. Matt says:

    Whileas a CPC voter, I would love to believe the new EKOS – CPC 35.4, Libs 26.3, NDP 24 – I just can’t. One, IT’S EKOS and two, nobody else is showing that kind of lead. Could be a rogue poll, that 1 in 20 that is outside the MOE

    Today’s Nanos still has them all log jammed within 1 point – Libs 32 CPC 31 NDP 31.

    But, a new Mainstreet Research seems to be in the same ballpark as EKOS on Ontarios federal vote intention:

    EKOS
    CPC 37
    Libs 30
    NDP 19

    Mainstreet Research
    CPC 38
    Libs 34
    NDP 18

    TRanslation – Nobody has a freakin clue what’s going to happen.

  5. doconnor says:

    The big story yesterday was that both the Liberals and the NDP now confirmed that they would not support a Conservative government. I don’t think that has ever happened during an election.

  6. Student501 says:

    Why do I have a feeling that many polling firms are going to become irrelevant after this election.

  7. SD says:

    OK, I forgive anyone for not knowing what Auschwitz was. Years ago when I worked as sales clerk at K-mart (yes, K-mart), two ladies came up to me and asked where the health-and-beauty lady was in the store. I told them that I was the health-and-beauty lady. The two ladies looked puzzled. Nevertheless, they asked me where the breast pumps were located in the store. I wasn’t sure, but I suggested the bicycle section. I looked at the two ladies, and I thought to myself that they sure didn’t need any breast pumps. Luckily, I didn’t say this out loud.

    • SD says:

      Note: I ain’t no lady.

    • Vancouverois says:

      I’m less concerned that she didn’t know about Auschwitz (shameful though that may be), and a lot more concerned that in other quotes she expresses the insane belief that capitalism is only marginally better than feudalism and should be destroyed. She has a degree in “social justice and peace studies”, which is a pretty good indicator that she subscribes mindlessly to the most ridiculously extreme left-wing propaganda currently in vogue.

      • Yukon Cornelius says:

        You know, you would think that a degree in peace studies would involve some study of the holocaust and Auschwitz.

        • Vancouverois says:

          Only if it were about actual social justice and promotion of peace. However, it’s pretty clear that such degrees are actually about indoctrination in strident, extreme left-wing dogma.

  8. Al in Cranbrook says:

    Think about this…

    People are getting a pretty hefty dose, whether in newsprint, on air, or even more so on the Internet, of a helluva lot of chaos going on in this world. Europe is in crisis, both economically and with the refugees. Before this is over, it’s probable that the EU will collapse…certainly there is pressure building in Britain to pull out. China’s economy is faltering. Price of oil is shaking the hell out of our economy. America is experiencing one big political cluster-unowhat. And then there’s ISIS and its unspeakable brutalities being thrown at us every day.

    Since 2008 Harper has been a veritable rock of steadiness through a seemingly endless barrage of problems, none of which originated here in Canada. And it continues.

    End of the day, he’s the one who has been there, done that, has the bruises to show for it, and knows of what he speaks. He is respected world wide for it all, too. He has become a leader among leaders, an international statesman, and it shows.

    One does not have to ponder Mulcair or Trudeau for very long to realize that neither of them measure up…even remotely so.

    And now the polls are finally coming around to reflecting this reality.

    In the electorate’s mind, the role of Prime Minister is damn serious business…especially given the state of the world we are witness to every day.

    • Kelly says:

      LOL. No offence Al but here’s another perspective…one held by a MAJORITY of Canadians…

      Harper is a phoney who only ever worked as a politician and lobbyist before becoming PM. He is not taken seriously on the world stage (read the foreign press, sometime. You won’t find him mentioned. At all. He’s a nobody.) He talks tough at home when Russia could take us out in 2 minutes — with conventional weapons. (Word has it when Steve glared at Putin and told him to “get out of Ukraine” Vlad was actually yawning and looking at his watch). He’s botched the F-35 deal. He’s now botched a deal with France for second hand ships. He helped make a mess of Libya. He botched Keystone. He’s botched the refugee file. He lost the war in Afghanistan, now he’s losing the war against ISIS at the same time he’s nickeling and diming vets. He’s made it unsafe for Canadians to wear a maple leaf on their backpack. The economy is stalled and brittle, with a hollowed out manufacturing sector and an oil industry with nothing left to show for itself in the wake of low oil prices. Meanwhile Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland have REAL economies at a similar latitude with a similar climate and our eating our lunch on the innovation and productivity file. (At least Alberta has a responsible government now with the nuggies to emulate Norway instead of Sara Palin’s Alaska.) Half of Harper’s cabinet has quit on him. He hired criminals as advisors and spokesmen and he keeps his hair in the fridge at night. Now he’s hired a documented bigot from Australia in a desperate attempt to revive a stalled campaign. In short, a pretender. And a social misfit, to boot.

      Personally I hope Trudeau wins because that would be the sweetest justice…to see Stephen Harper taken down by the offspring of our Greatest ever PM. The PM who gave us the Charter — the only thing protecting us from conservative barbarism. But I’d settle for Mulcair, too. He’s tougher. He will dig up the dirt and likely find that the PMO ordered CSIS to put mind control drugs in the Cranbrook water supply. I could be wrong on that last point, but I doubt it.

      • Lance says:

        LOL You don’t need to drink the kool-aid; your immune system produces it.

      • jason says:

        yup. a world class nobody, who lost our seat on the security council, playing domestic politics with international issues, a complete embarrassment.

      • Al in Cranbrook says:

        I hope for your sake HDS doesn’t finally tip you over the edge, bud. What a load of stupid nonsense!

      • BillBC says:

        Harper Derangement Syndrome in its purest form…you win the HDS trophy, my friend.

        Where to begin?

        Well, “Word has it when Steve glared at Putin and told him to “get out of Ukraine” Vlad was actually yawning and looking at his watch).”

        LOL You think that when La Dauphine shakes his glossy locks at him that Putin will quail in his boots? Or when Mr. Let the UN Handle These Sticky Problems glares at him? Please…

    • tom paine says:

      re Isis

      in 1959 China butchered 1.5 million Tibetans with the same tactics as Isis (they both love the sharp blades as weapons of choice) and beheaded or burned many monks and destroyed 6000 structures all for not toeing the company line but they make our smartphones which you prolly have so shove your confirmation bias where the sun don’t shine.

    • Derek Pearce says:

      “Perhaps it was inevitable. Conservatives everywhere have been campaigning for years on the proposition that they are the strongest and bravest. But, for that to matter, there must be a counter-threat, something that requires a real man like Stephen Harper in office, not a wet academic like Stéphane Dion or a mincing toff like Michael Ignatieff.

      So they talk up the threat. It used to be the commies. Now it’s the terrorists. And the drug dealers. And the brown people. And the reckless spenders. And the environmental activists. And the census takers. Everyone and everything. They’ve spent so long warning us to be constantly afraid, they’ve internalized it. They have literally frightened themselves.”

      Excellent article by Scott Gilmore in Macleans: http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-conservatives-the-party-for-the-manly-man-hardly/

      • Matt says:

        Communists didn’t have plans to blow up the financial district. Communists didn’t kill two soldiers on Canadian soil. Communists didn’t have plans to blow up a Via train.

        Islamic inspired terrorists did. They are a threat. Just because you choose not to see doesn’t mean it’s not there.

        • Derek Pearce says:

          Of course I know that threat is there. But*I*refuse*to*live*in*fear*, and I certainly won’t let that affect my vote. This is a matter for the police– which the police effectively disrupted and brought convictions to even before the passage of C-51. The Harperites truly have frightened themselves.

  9. harvey bushell says:

    “in the backseat of a crowded Beck taxi”

    So *you’re* the one that’s going to put the Union Pearson Xpress out of business.

    But seriously and I guess off topic I said ages ago that the express makes no sense. Two people can take a cab from home to the airport for the same cost as shlepping to the airport via UP Express with heavy luggage (and maybe kids) in tow, not to mention getting to Union station by TTC first (how many blocks away from the TTC is the average Toronto resident?). Also keeping in mind doing that in winter or bad weather and when you get to the airport the express only goes to one terminal so if you want to get to the other one you have to transfer to another train yet again.

    That’s totally ridiculous. Until they drop the price by at least 75% it will never be used by anyone but solo, ultralight traveling biz execs and a few Pearson employees.

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/pearson-airport-express-trains-90-per-cent-empty-metrolinx-reveals/article26500231/

    • Mark says:

      No UberX for Warren?

      • harvey bushell says:

        Heh. Yeah, I thought of the UBER thing too after I made the post. I’m not sure exactly how much an UBER ride would cost to the airport from downtown but it would be cheaper than a cab and is even more incentive to not use UPX.

        In the Globe and mail article Del Duca suggests that ridership will double by the one year anniversary. Well, the current trend is down, not up and I see no reason that will reverse and even if by some miracle doubling does occur that’s still pitifully low numbers.

  10. Maps Onburt says:

    Always wanted to go to Whitehorse… but it’s easier to convince my warm blooded wife to get to some place hot! Enjoy your trip!

    • Yukon Cornelius says:

      I moved here in ’92 and for the 1st year had a grin plastered all over my face. 23 years later, it’s changed a lot – pretty urban now in a lot of ways and the winters are starting to get a little long! That said, the Yukon is a beautiful place and well worth a visit. Come in June for a summer visit and March if you want to experience the best of our winter.

  11. Vancouverois says:

    Correction: today is KCCC Day 53, not 52, isn’t it?

  12. SF Thomas says:

    The Ekos poll is probably an anomaly, the results are too far from the rest of the pollsters and there isn’t an issue big enough to boost the Conservatives to that extent right now. The Mainstreet Ontario poll has fairly plausible results and the riding polls look plausible at least.

  13. Lyndon Dunkley says:

    Has anyone ever seen a race or even gender based poll in Canada?

    I ask only because I find the contrast between Canadian and US polling very curious as it is the very rare poll-based article down south which doesn’t discuss how HRC is doing with white women, how Trump or Bush is doing with Latinos or Bernie Sanders is doing with Blacks (I always assume there is no south or east Asians in America). I prefer the Canadian method as I believe it is indicative of the greater racial harmony we have in Canada and sometimes think the US method contributes in some way to the increase in the American view that “race relations are getting worse”.

    Is there a simpler explanation for why “we don’t poll that way” in Canada? Too expensive? The numbers aren’t significant? We’re too polite to ask? Is it done internally but not released publicly?

  14. Bluegreenblogger says:

    lol, yes, the irony was not lost on me when I opened the same page for my daily fix. What we can make of it is that the contest is very close, and every pollster is betting on their own ‘secret sauce’ to massage their numbers closer to what they expect would be an electoral result. Needless to say, the results are, shall we say, underwhelming.

  15. RogerX says:

    Bon voyage….. and enjoy the longer daylight in the land of the midnight sun, or dusk when I was there in July, many years ago.

    Your daughter’s return to her aboriginal roots will be a deeply emotional experience. Help her through her feelings.

  16. Jack D says:

    I’d prefer to look at it this a different way.

    For a few weeks now we’ve been seeing a statistically tied race nationally for all three parties, yet the regional numbers are telling us a very interesting story. This, I think, deserves some consideration. Regional trends are better indicators of what is playing out on the ground. Of course we can think that the numbers for all three parties show us its split down the middle, however, if we take Ontario into consideration the NDP has slipped into a distant 3rd. If we look towards the prairies, the numbers are generally strong for the Conservatives and we are seeing a fair bit of momentum for NDP. In Manitoba however, the Liberals seem to be dominating in the city of Winnipeg and the NDP are faltering a bit with the NDP barely making a ripple. Even if we consider Quebec we see that the NDP has been atop for months, yet now we’re hearing that the NDP is slipping pretty quick. Let’s not forget BC; its now shaping up to be more competitive and the NDP has lost its lead in that province as well.

    So, yes, we can look at polls and dismiss them as being irrelevant, but in the larger picture of things I think there has been a pretty consistent and telling pattern taking place for the last few weeks and its telling us that while the Conservatives are still very much holding on –the NDP is losing the battle for the “change” vote.

  17. Mark says:

    Mulcair’s orange wave will hit a breakwall at the first french debate, with the whole brouhaha about niquabs, ISIS, and Syrian refugees (all distractions, but all important signals in Quebec).

    Ontario will come down to Liberals vs. Cons, with NDP getting squeezed out.

    Predict CPC with a tiny majority, and Liberals in a fairly strong second. There I said it.

  18. Bluegreenblogger says:

    The major polling firms generally have a few nuggets of useful information, amongst the horse race dross. The most useful info is just how many undecided voters there are, and, if reported, what their intentions or leanings are. There have been a number of decent sample sized polls published at the local Riding level. Leadnow’s ‘close race’ polling by Environics has decent sample sizes, and Forum, Mainstreet, and a few others have published riding level polls for different spots, (like the Papineau BS poll, and the following larger sample sized poll.) Even at that level there ar eissues. For example, I live in Etobicoke-Lakeshore (the riding that Ignatiief lost last time out). Forum just published a local poll sampled on Sep 18 showing Jamie Maloney (Lib) has 41% support, followed by Trottier (CPC) at 33%. Leadnow published their Environics poll of EL yesterday. The sample size was comparable, the dates were Sep 18-19, yet Environics calls it a tight race with 40% for Maloney and 38% for Trottier. That is outside the MOE, so one, the other, or both these polls are pooched. Or not…. Maybe, just maybe people have taken to lying to polling companies? I have always lied to canvassers. I tell the CPC I am their man, and they spend another $10 trying to get me out to vote, and mailing me literature about the nasty fundamentalist Islamist terrorists in our midst.

    • Matt says:

      Uh, yeah.

      An Environics poll done for leadnow is equivalent to the recent Papineau poll that was done by Crop for the NDP

    • !o! says:

      It’s not necessarily that the Etobicoke Lakeshore poll was pooched–

      You can get the results you reported within any poll that has a margin of error greater than 2.5%– e.g. the ‘real’ support for Trottier is 35.5%, an MOE of 2.5 could give 33 – 38%

  19. Joe says:

    I don’t put much faith in any poll however my gut tells me that the Liberals and the NDP have done themselves in with their silly bidding war and open door policy. Jr the clueless wants to boost the spending by $10 billion without balancing the budget or using a calculator while Tommy the commie wants to boost spending by $14 billion and balance the books next year. In the mean time Harper the sensible says he doesn’t want to boost spending because he just BALANCED the budget!

    • Kelly says:

      Well if you call selling GM shares for a $2-billion loss for some quick cash to pretend to balance the budget 1 time, then yeah Harper balanced the budget. Next year there will be a deficit again, to go with his 8 other deficits. Phoney majority. Phoney economist. Phoney balanced budget. Phoney conservatives. Oh yeah….and phoney hair.

      • Lyndon Dunkley says:

        I’ve seen this talking point a few times but from what I can tell, GM stock is down at least $5 since he sold it. Are you personally investing every spare dollar at $29?

      • Joe says:

        Oh you are referring to the deficits the NDP and Liberals insisted on or else they would force another election. What ever floats your boat. You could always vote for the trust fund kid who can’t run a calculator or a guy who refinanced his house 11 times/ Your choice

  20. Larry C says:

    Little surprised that EKOS had the CPC on top……….. I say this as the Ekos Pres. is non other than Liberal donator Frank Graves….the same guy who praises culture wars within Canada. Rural vs. urban; old vs. young ; rich vs. poor; and my favourite Conservative vs. Progressive……is it just me but why does the left say progressive and not liberal? Ashamed perhaps?

    • Matt says:

      And because EKOS polled the Harper Conservatives just about 6 points lower than they got on election night in 2011.

      Ekos had them at 33.9 in their final poll, they got 39.6 on election night.

  21. bobbie says:

    Do I see a trend? Yes. Harper trending.

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