Polls, polls, and more polls
CanWest, Angus Reid, and Decima.
And everyone's got their own comments on them, from dismissing methodology to boxing comparisons, to blunt analysis, to faint hope, to basic warnings about what we should strive towards.
Overall, we do have to be worried about this. We can do comparisons with how Martin was before the last election, but Harper's more competant than Martin was. And we can complain about whether online surveys are truly representative until the cows come home, but unless if you actually know how they "randomly" select the participants, it's all hopeful thinking. These are professional polling firms, so I'm pretty sure they're doing what they can to get the most representative sample they can.
So what do we have to do? How can we beat Harper? Well, for one, we need to move off being only about the environment, since I think it's obvious now that being a one-trick pony about that isn't working. People get distracted too much, and we couldn't even hold steady when these polls were taken during all of Al Gore's lead up to the Oscars. If it's looking like we'll do well with the environment, Harper's smart enough to pick something new to distract us with.
Really, we need to be careful overall. We all hope that Harper will fumble at something, but we have to realize we're not dealing with the incompetent leaders of the past. We won't even be able to play the old, "but look how good our economy is now!" card that we had in our back pocket before. The reality is that it's not an easy trip, and Dion really needs to work hard to get the trust back.
So what do I suggest? We beat Harper with his own game. He started the election campaign with negative ads, so we should respond by talking policy with people. Make people feel like we've got a plan for the future. Put out some new ideas for renewing the party, or even, as Scott and Greg keep harping about, proportional representation. This will get people talking, and bring the Liberal party to be a party about ideas and one that believes in something, not just the stale shell of a party that I have a feeling lots of Canadians have seen us to be the past few years.
6 comments:
your faint hope link isnt working.. (or at least it looks like you've meant a link to be there).
Fixed now. Stupid typo.
I guess you can sample the ocean, a river many times and still talk about random, but how do you do it more than once with a bathtub where you do not change the water. The poll companies find people do not want to be bothered by them between 5 and 7 pm, they want to have dinner and some peace in their own homes. So here go the pollsters setting up their bathtubs which is what their online paid people who have-computers- and -will -answer are in fact.
Now just why in hell should anyone make any effort at all to assist these buggers who are determined to stick their heads into our private lives.
Well, you run the same problems with any poll. Some people don't want to be called, some don't want to do the internet survey.
And you can still get a semi-representative sample, since I may sign up really interested in political polls, but will still gets lots of polls about what stores I go to, and other will get the reverse.
And anyways, the whole point of polls is to let a small sample of people represent a big sample of people. People who sign up to take these polls should, in theory, change opinions and moods just as much as people not in the polls, and that's mostly what's being testing.
Nice to see by the way, that Greg and I are considered to be "harping" on PR :)
I don't like the suggestion though that somehow PR is an idea we need to look at because nothing else is working - I look at it as being the right democratic reform thing to do.
All of the polls have consistently shown one thing during the last year.
36%, 36% a year ago, 36% today, 36% a year fron now. 64% of Canadians, did not want, do not want and will not want big Steve as their PM.
They will not make the mistake of having him back as PM next time.
Adios Steve, it's been a slice.
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