Wednesday, October 03, 2007

More Poll Fun

You can't take one individual poll as absolute, but sometimes you can see trends by comparing two polls from the same outfit. The latest Decima offering is interesting, when compared with their last poll, conducted during the by-elections. What is really striking, the numbers in Quebec:
Oct 3

"The overall numbers in that province show the Bloc Quebecois at 31 per cent, the Liberals at 23 per cent, the Tories at 22 per cent, and the NDP at 13 per cent"

Sept 18

"the Bloc Quebecois had slumped to 22 per cent in Quebec, compared with 26 per cent for the Conservatives. The Liberals and the NDP were tied at 16 per cent in the province, just a point ahead of the Green party."

Liberals up in Quebec, Tories down. Bickering sells people :)

Nationally:

Oct 3

"The Conservative 33-31 per cent national lead in the latest Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey falls within the margin of error. The NDP is at 16 per cent and the Green party is at 10"

Sept 18

"Conservatives had 32 per cent support, compared with 29 per cent for the Liberals. That spread is covered by the poll's margin of error, which is 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The poll found the NDP had the support of 17 per cent of respondents nationally, while the Green party had 14 per cent and the Bloc Quebecois five per cent."

I'm not sure we can take the Quebec numbers to heart, it defies logic frankly, but hey, if it irritates the faithful...Too funny.

15 comments:

Red Tory said...

That's interesting. Weird... inexplicable, bizarre... but interesting.

Idealistic Pragmatist said...

The Bloc jumped nine points between the by-elections and now? Um...no.

Woman at Mile 0 said...

Easily could have happened IP...Duceppe has come out for voting against a Con throne speech and taking down the government since the recent by elections. Quite a big change.

bigcitylib said...

I keep saying: Liberal bickering is inside baseball stuff. Not that it isn't bad, its just that as an issue that can move the polling numbers, it isn't that important. On the other hand, the party is still in crap shape organizationally in Quebec.

Anonymous said...

Is the bickering issue being highly over-exagerated?

NDP's Pat Martin has come out stating his disgust that the Conservatives are mass e-mailing the press about Dion's problems.

I find that interesting - the press are listening to Harper on this instead of doing their own investigation? Hmmm....

900ft Jesus said...

"I find that interesting - the press are listening to Harper on this instead of doing their own investigation? Hmmm...."

I've been noticing more and more of that. Reporting from anonymous sources is on the rise as well. Not good, when you have to treat some media sources with the same mistrust we treat politicans.

Anonymous said...

Im very leary over decima polls...run by the cons...they are probably coming out with a poll next week with cons way ahead because of his press conference; if that press conference gets harper votes it wont be from me....the continual smirk/smile on his face as if he is a god looking down on us...he is a smart aleck and a bully who is holding a press conference and smirking at the media just because he wants good coverage in the upcoming election...what a jerk,,signed gramps

Dame said...

Well it just reflects what i said a few days before THERE IS a solid base for Liberal votes and I do expect it to Grow in the case of National election .Quebec cant "VAG THE DOG" forever and the tide against all special interests feeding is started ..
this country Liberal or Left of Center mostly .. people will see through all the Harper's Veils.

Just as in the recent example of the Tory's Lesson /in Ontario / he was trying To win some special groups Votes with this stupid religious schools funding and he was thinking the rest of the population won't notice .....well he was wrong..
Harper is doing all he can to apologize /and giving money to all kinds of special groups to win votes and he hopes the country just shrugs it off??? He is wrong.. it is overdone..
enough is enough..
And he is really doing preciously nothing the real problems Canada is facing now .THE .ENVIRONMENT
can he get away with that?? NOOOOOOOO.

marta

daniel said...

If this poll had been taken, say, a month ago, I'd find it believable; but in the wake of everything that's happened (especially in Quebec), I just can't see these numbers being...well, real.

Didn't a polling company (maybe even Decima) come out with a poll in the wake of Duceppe's PQ leadership flip-flop a few months ago that showed a significant increase for the Bloc, only to have a flood of polls in the following weeks showing a serious decline in Bloc numbers? Maybe it takes time for stuff like this to "sink in" - or, maybe Dion is the teflon man.

I just don't think I could put a lot of stock in this single poll - I mean, if things in Quebec were relatively stable compared to Election 2006 numbers, then wouldn't this trend have at least been marginally expressed in the by-elections? I find it hard to believe that the shake-up in popular opinion reflected in earlier polls and the by-elections just suddenly reverted to their baseline after such a short time (and especially given the events that have transpired in that time).

Steve V said...

I'm not suggesting the poll is correct, in fact it's counter-intuitive.

The Bloc did jump after Duceppe's flip flop on the PQ leadership, which was equally as confounding. As Daniel points out the bump was temporary, but Duceppe has been anything but a shrinking violet in the by-election aftermath.

Snerd Gronk said...

Mile 0: Duceppe has come out for voting against a Con throne speech and taking down the government since the recent by elections. Quite a big change.

SG: In fact ... 'Some Say' ... Duceppe admits to being quite a bloc head, with his pro-Harper policies, before becoming a pure laine anti-Harperite.

Duceppe has been heard by some to say, "Mange la merd, 'Arper" and "No more World According to 'Arper"

As Duceppe attempts to become the 'author' of a new persona, his own 'man at mile zero', as it were, the woman there with him could be right. Things in Quebec could be changing ... one 'decima' point at a time ...

Snerd

ottlib said...

Sometimes a by-election is just a by-election and it does not have any big national importance. Of course you can never tell the difference until well after the fact. Although, that will not stop all of the usual suspects from spinning those results, in the here and now, to suit their short-term political goals.

This poll reflects the trend that we have been witnessing for almost a year so it is not counter-intuitive.

It is only so if you believe people outside of the political blogsphere really care what Mr. Carroll said or that Mr. Dion replaced a bunch of his advisors or that the Liberals lost one of their strongholds.

Most of this just does not matter beyond the chattering classes.

Steve V said...

"This poll reflects the trend that we have been witnessing for almost a year so it is not counter-intuitive."

Generally, a barrage of bad press does have consequence. I'll throw one of your contentions out that you raised before. In the summer, it is normal for the ruling party to do well, because as you've argued, the opposition doesn't get any ink when parliament is out. That is intuitive, based on past experience, just as my above. Yet that didn't happen. We are in a unique dynamic.

ottlib said...

steve:

It is not unique. We have seen this before. Stephen Harper had similar problems when he won the leadership of the Conservative Party. Those problems did not help him in the eyes of Canadians but they did not harm him either. Really, Canadians looked at the troubles of the early days of his leadership and yawned.

The problem is that you are giving the same weight to issues that involve a political party as those that involve the country at large.

Most people do not care about what happens to a political party in between elections, even I would point out, when that party is in government. When Paul Martin was fired as Finance Minister the support for the Liberals did not budge one way for the other. Here was the long-standing schism in the Liberal Party breaking wide open in spectacular fashion and the reaction of Canadians was a collective shrug.

So it is hardly surprising that they would ignore the problems of the Liberal Party when it is in Opposition.

Steve V said...

ottlib

But, when Harper was having problems we saw an inverse relationship with Liberal support. Harper faltered, Liberal support mirrors. What makes this situation unique, nobody seems to move, and you don't see a direct ebb and flow between the Libs and Cons.