Asked how his firm got the Brandon-Souris by-election wrong by THIRTY PERCENTAGE POINTS, here’s the whopper offered up by Forum’s president:

“I know people are going to say ‘Oh, your polls wrong, you don’t know what you’re doing,’” said Bozinoff. “But in my mind, the Liberals kind of dropped the ball and the Tories just, you know, beat them at their ground game and got their supporters out.”

Really? Seriously? Actually, Lorne, that’s a pile of horseshit.  Your “poll” was ostensibly measuring voter intention – not Get Out The Vote strength.  There’s a difference.  Even my dog Roxy could figure that one out.

This steaming turd of a quote has sufficiently motivated me to write an entire column about how Forum got it so wrong (as they have many times before).  Here are some of the questions I intend to ask them:

• That poll would have the effect of suppressing Liberal vote in Brandon-Souris.  Did the Conservative Party, or any related entity, in any way subsidize that poll?
• Do you give your polls to the media because you are aware that no media organizations will pay for them? Are you giving them away because someone else, whose identity you do not disclose, has paid for them?
• The methodology you use, IVR (a.k.a. robo-polling), has been condemned by many reputable pollsters.  Why do you keep using it?
• In metropolitan centres, where huge numbers of citizens no longer have land lines, how do you ensure you are reaching people who will give you a representative sample, and the right results?
• You predicted a B.C. NDP majority, a Wildrose majority and a Parti Quebecois majority, among others.  Why will you not apologize for those errors?

There are lots of other questions, and I suspect my friends Wright and Bricker have a few.  Feel free to add yours in comments, so I can send them to Forum sometime today.

Thanks.

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…and aren’t we all.

“I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor.”

His views on the ordination of women and birth control are fully retrograde. But the rest of it? How can you not admire a Pope who writes like this:

“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills…

“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”

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Not sure what I mean? Take a look at this chart that I found over at Maclean’s:

That chart shows, rather dramatically, that Trudeau’s Liberals gained vote everywhere. Everyone else lost vote. And, in Brandon-Souris, of course, my friend Rolf Dinsdale wiped out the 55-point advantage the Cons had in 2011 – and came within less than 400 votes of making history.  Rolf should be proud of himself; I know I’m proud of him.

The Reformatories will say that by-elections don’t ever go well for governments, that the status quo (two Liberal seats, two Conservative seats) is fine by them, blah blah blah. But the reality is this: they came within a whisker of losing a seat they’ve held for most of the last Century. And their share of the vote has plummeted across the board.

Mulcair will also make the status quo argument, and will say that his candidate did very well in a Liberal stronghold (which is one of the reasons why I opposed Freeland, and the way in which she came to be the Liberal candidate). But the reality for is this: Jack Layton he is not. The Orange crush? It may be orange, but it ain’t crushing anyone.

Trudeau won big, last night. He won the gold and the silver. The Liberal Party of Canada, as some of us have been saying for a long time, is back.

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Even if he loses, Rolf Dinsdale is a winner.

Full disclosure, first part: The deadline for this column was well before all the votes were counted in Rolf’s Brandon-Souris riding in Manitoba on Monday. So my friend might win, or not.

Disclosure, second part: Rolf is, indeed, one of my best friends.

Now, to Canada’s political chattering classes, Rolf is a marvel. He’s the guy who erased the 60-point lead the Conservatives had in 2011’s general election.

He’s the wunderkind who turned Brandon-Souris Liberal red after it had been Tory blue for most of the past century.

But to me — and to his past and future bandmates Davey Snot, Bjorn von Flapjack, Rayman and Steve Deceive — he was our buddy and lead guitarist in our punk rock band.

He was a great guitarist, too. We did gigs for fun and raised money for Haiti relief, juvenile diabetes, G20 protesters, Russian political prisoners and food banks. The last song we recorded together was called Mayor On Crack, and we’re giving the proceeds to addiction counselling. (It’s on iTunes, folks!)

Punk rocker, political sensation and a good guy, too. A winner.

Our band bears the acronym SFH. You might have heard about this already because the Conservatives — in white-knuckle panic about losing the riding they arrogantly assumed would always be theirs — littered the riding with smears against Rolf.

He was in a punk rock band! With naughty lyrics and a naughty name! He wore a bowler hat onstage!

The smears didn’t work. Everyone laughed at them. They laughed, too, at the news the Cons had shipped in their campaign primus inter pares, Jenni Byrne, to keep Brandon-Souris in the Conservative fold. Byrne will now slink back to Ottawa, having been humiliated by — ha!— a punk rocker.

Now, in fairness, Rolf did not become a big winner all on his own.

For starters, Rolf’s surname didn’t hurt. His dad was the legendary Walter Dinsdale — a true Progressive Conservative who held the riding for decades and was a senior federal cabinet minister.

His dad won the Distinguished Flying Cross for killing many Nazis during the war. (We did a song about that.)

The surname of the Liberal leader didn’t hurt, either. Justin Trudeau attracted lots of support because older folks remember his dad with genuine affection. And a lot of younger folks support him because Justin is more youthful and positive than his opponents.

Other beneficial factors: The Conservatives made a five-alarm calamity of their candidate nomination process, thereby enraging plenty of local Tories.

The Senate scandal assisted Rolf, too — that sordid, fetid mess has now fully ensnared Stephen Harper with suspicions the prime minister knew a lot more than he claimed to know.

All of these factors, and more, helped my buddy Rolf. We talked about it over the weekend.

“Along with being a dad, this is the greatest thing I have ever done,” he said, exhausted. “Even if I lose, what an honour this has been.”

He won’t lose. The votes weren’t in as of this writing, but I’m going out on a limb for my friend. Along with being a punk rocker, Rolf Dinsdale is also this:

A winner.

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…I think it’s really good, and I say so in today’s Hill Times:

“…Liberal pundit Warren Kinsella, president of Daisy Consulting Group, said in politics, pictures matter more than words, and that in the first seven to 10 seconds of any ad, most people are just looking at the picture. In the new Liberal ad, Mr. Kinsella said the shorter-haired Mr. Trudeau looks “prime ministerial.”

 “That’s important because the Conservative advertising has all been designed to depict him as not prime ministerial; as kind of this beautiful airhead and that’s what they’re aiming at, and the Liberals obviously are aware of that and are pushing in the opposite direction,” said Mr. Kinsella…

Mr. Kinsella said the Liberal ad is “much better than some of the previous efforts,” like a YouTube video put out last May showing Mr. Trudeau in a green t-shirt and yellow shorts, thanking donors for contributions, which Mr. Kinsella said made him look “like a guy who should be landscaping your backyard, not the Prime Minister of Canada.”

“The background, and the way he speaks and the way he moves, he just looks like a Prime Minister, and that’s the objective of these things…he was compelling visually without being hokey, or bargain-basement, like some of the Conservative ads,” he said.

Mr. Kinsella said both parties’ ads reflect the fact that, even among people who like Mr. Trudeau, “there are concerns about his youthfulness and about his judgement.”

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…being besties!  How nice! Relevant: this and this and this.  Oh, and this: Tory would consort with a guy who suggests he has no “integrity”? Like, wow.

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Oh my God, the little rich boy from Yale has an agent! He’s all grown up!

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From tomorrow’s column:

…to Canada’s political chattering classes, Rolf is a marvel: he’s the guy who erased the 60-point lead the Conservatives had in 2011’s general election. He’s the wunderkind who turned Brandon-Souris Liberal red, after it had been Tory blue for most of the past Century.

But to me – and to his past and future bandmates Davey Snot, Bjorn von Flapjack, Rayman, and Steve Deceive – he was our buddy, and lead guitarist in our punk rock band. He was a great guitarist, too. We did gigs for fun, and raised money for Haiti relief, juvenile diabetes, G20 protestors, Russian political prisoners and food banks. The last song we recorded together was called ‘Mayor On Crack,’ and we’re giving the proceeds to addiction counseling. (It’s on iTunes, folks!)

Punk rocker, political sensation, and a good guy, too. A winner.

Rolf, Davey and me singing the virtues of liberal causes, and raising funds for G20 protestors. Go, RB, go!

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…and another political truism, in 140 characters or less.

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Right here.

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