KCCCC Day 50: four weeks to get engaged! Or, not.

— 09.21.2015 07:50 AM

 

  • It’s Day 50 – and there’s only four weeks to go!  Listening to CBC Radio this morning on the way to work, a few of the hosts were saying that people are “engaged” in this election campaign.  They didn’t seem to have any data to back up that contention – just, anecdotally, people are “engaged.”
  • Are they really? I’m not saying they’re not, and nor am I saying that they are.  I honestly don’t know – and neither, it seems, does anyone else.
  • The most-recent debate suggests to me that few folks are tuned in to this thing.  The commentariat were highly excitable about it all – Old Stock Canadians! Trudeau’s yelling! Mulcair made a reefer joke! – but was anyone else? Well, at least one poll suggests that the debate didn’t move the needle at all, as seen here.  Which may mean that no leader won or lost.  Or, it may mean that just 300,000 people were watching it online – a figure that is regularly exceeded by the Smosh YouTube kids. (And the debate before that? No better.)  Carville likes to say if it didn’t happen on TV, it didn’t happen.  But what if it happened on TV, and no one watched? Then it still didn’t happen.
  • The pollsters are as confused about “engagement” as anyone else.  They are currently washing their dirty laundry in public, but when they’re not doing that, they are saying little that is definitive about engagement – perhaps because, logically, it’s impossible to ask folks who aren’t engaged why they aren’t engaged.  Because they’re not, um, engaged enough to talk to a pollster about engagement.  But the overall trends aren’t good.
  • The punditocracy, me included, all thought everyone’s attention would be riveted after Labour Day.  We didn’t know that, we just thought that.  To this point, I’ve seen little empirical evidence that we were right – that first post-Labour Day debate should have had some kind of an effect (in my view, hurting Trudeau and helping Mulcair).  But it didn’t. Nada.
  • Bottom line? The bottom line is that there isn’t one.  This continues to be the Seinfeld-ian Election About Nothing™.  There’s been no shocking development, there’s been no excitement, there’s been no big shift, there’s been no change at all, in fact.  It’s just been…nothing.  And that suggests, to me, that folks still aren’t engaged.  And that – just maybe – they will continue to stay that way for the next four weeks.
  • Here’s a photo that neatly summarizes what I think is going on.  It’s all-Canadian, eh?

riot (1)


Comments (74)

KCCCC Day 49: can you spot the theme?

— 09.20.2015 08:53 AM

  

  • Look, I couldn’t tell you how the election is going turn out. I’ve long suspected the CPC would pull it off, as seen here, but only a crazy person would say they know. 
  • But there’s a trend, a feeling, out there. That the Liberals are doing well, but not well enough to win government. That the NDP have stalled and, in some places, are slipping. And that Harper has a rock-solid base who vote for him no matter what, and that there are more Harper supporters out there than the (obviously flawed) polls are reporting. 
  • Others feel likewise, apparently. As you can see here and here and here from today, and here and even here from previous days. 
  • In a race this tight, some things matter and some things don’t. What doesn’t matter are national horserace polls and punditry about same. What matters is GOTV, organization and E-day. 
  • The Cons have been stronger with those sorts of things for a decade. They still are. And that’s why, after a decade in power – with scandals and recessions and controversies on his watch – it is simply amazing that Stepehen Harper is still in the race, let alone tied with the other two guys. 
  • The reason for that is the core vote. Harper has always had a core vote that is big enough to win at least a minority – and the other two haven’t. Their voters, as we have seen, are highly promiscuous. They flit back-and-forth. And that suits Stephen Harper just fine. His vote is bigger than they say. And it isn’t going anywhere between now and E-day. 

Comments (92)

KCCCC Day 48: old stock

— 09.19.2015 09:31 AM

  

  • What is “old stock” anyway? Well, when I was a teenager in Calgary, it was this. You’d drink it to get wasted faster. 
  • Before that, in Quebec, it was something you heard all the time. I’d hear older Anglo friends of my folks saying it about themselves. When you hear francophones calling themselves “pure laine,” which they still do about a million times a day, that’s what they mean.  Old stock. 
  • Is it racist? Was Harper wrong to say it? In Quebec, it sure ain’t. It’s part of the lingo. Everyone says it, so perhaps folks in the rest of Canada are saying seven million Québécois are racist. To me, then, it isn’t racist – and you might say I know a little about real racism – it’s just one of those sayings that we probably shouldn’t use anymore, mainly because it isn’t very accurate. After all, the only folks really entitled to call themselves “old stock” are these guys.
  • So, in closing, a message to Justin Trudeau. Apparently you are super upset Stephen Harper said that. But I’d recommend you stop being being so wound up about it – because, as you know, there was another politician who used the phrase long before Stephen Harper did, as seen in paragraph five. Namely, um, you.

Comments (37)

KCCCC Day 47: when a newspaper runs a TV debate

— 09.18.2015 08:31 AM

  • This is going to be a long post, because I’ve decided to embed some of my tweets from last night.  I will do two or three on each protagonist – the leaders, the moderator, the format, the pundits, and the aftermath.  Got a comment at the end of it? Make it!

THE GLOBE’S DEBATE

TOM MULCAIR

 

STEPHEN HARPER

JUSTIN TRUDEAU

THE RESULT AND OTHER STUFF


Comments (51)

CTV came up with a poll, so I did too

— 09.17.2015 06:19 PM

Apparently intent on repeating that little mid-campaign incident back in 2008 – you know the one, it led to Senator Mike Duffy – CTV is back at it again.

They’ve aggressively publicized a poll, mere hours before a crucial debate, saying that Justin Trudeau is way, way behind in his home riding of Papineau.

Now, you may have noticed that I don’t really linger by the phone, waiting for Justin Trudeau to call. We’re not close. There’s a reason for that.

But he – and, more particularly, CTV’s viewers – deserve better than this “poll,” this heap of horseshit, that was

[Wait for it.]

PAID FOR BY THE NDP.

That isn’t the only problem with the poll. Here are a couple others, which you can check out yourself in the poll’s “methodology.”  Specifically, check out the weighting.

  • Look at what percentage voted Liberal in 2011, versus the number of people who voted NDP in 2011 in this sample.
  • If the poll was done properly, they would have sampled 28 per cent 2011 New Democrats as opposed to the 38 per cent they included in this sample.
  • Similarly, they would have included somewhere near 38 per cent 2011 Liberal voters, as opposed to the 14 per cent that they put in the sample here.
  • If anything, this poll shows that NDP voters are coming over to the Liberal column, not vice versa.

Anyway.

I think it’s appalling that CTV (who I like) has done this to Trudeau (who I, well, you know).  It’s appalling that viewers and voters have been let down in this way.

So my dog, Roxy, has commissioned a poll, too.  Here it is.  Vote early, vote often.

[polldaddy poll=9083296]


Comments (27)