Are Harper Conservatives suddenly all that popular in hearts and minds of Canadian people?
Aug 26th, 2009 | By Counterweights Editors | Category: In Brief
Hollywood actor Leslie Neilsen was born in Regina, Sask. His father was a Mountie, and his brother, Erik, was a cabinet minister in the Conservative Canadian federal governments of both Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney.
We still have [Dr.] Frank Bunting hard at work on a deep think-piece about the real prospects of yet another Canadian federal election this fall. But he has just told us that everything has been suddenly blurred by two conflicting opinion polls that came out at the start of this week.
An Ipsos Reid survey, conducted for Canwest newspapers and Global television “put the Conservatives at 39 percent among likely voters, a level that would be close to delivering a majority government, with the Liberals down to 28 percent.” On this reading New Democrats were at 14 percent, the Green Party at 10 percent and the separatist Bloc Quebecois at 8 percent.
At the same time, a Harris-Decima survey for Canadian Press put “the Liberals ahead 32 percent to 31 percent, a result that was in line with most other recent results.” And the reading here had the NDP at 16 percent, the Greens at 11 percent and the Bloc at 9.
There are some technical differences between the two polls: Ipsos Reid’s buoyant Conservative results were based on a survey of 1,001 Canadians between August 18 and 20. The Harris-Decima poll covered 2,000 respondents between August 13 and 23.
Some incurable cynics may find it vaguely suspicious as well that a poll conducted for Canwest newspapers suddenly gave Mr. Harper’s Conservatives surprising results “that would be close to delivering a majority government” (strictly in terms of parliamentary seats of course), just when other press reports were telling us that the Conservatives were “breaking their own taboo by starting to call on Canadians to award them a majority government in the next election.”
In any case, now the ever-cautious Dr. Bunting wants to see a few more polls, before he decides whether or not the federal political landscape has really suddenly shifted all that much! (But of course who knows? Maybe it has?)
Can-west cannot be trusted at the best of times and these are sure not the best of times. And at any rate any poll that is done over the phony could be classified as ‘Phony’ as it rules out the young who use cells only, anyone with call display that does not want to take calls from Unknowns and that leaves a large proportion of those polled in the Blue haired age range and we all know how they tend to vote.
It is a real pity that polls such as these are allowed to influence Canadians at all and an especial shame that those most easily influenced are the least sophisticated among us. And again we know how the least sophisticated among us tend to vote.
One more thing. It should be entirely Illegal IMO to even publish a poll during an election campaign, so we will focus on the issues and not try to align ourselves with the eventual winner in order to share in the spoils.
One Poll only- On Election Day Winner take all.