Apolitical Staples

I agree it’s good to see a poll that seems to indicate a more reasonable level of support for the Greens than, say, the last Strategic Council poll, which actually had them ahead of the NDP.

However, much as I generally respect SES, I have a bit of a problem when I compare Nik’s Quebec numbers to the recent CROP and Leger polls. They were done with much larger samples obviously, but both showed considerably stronger Conservative numbers and considerably weaker Liberal numbers in la belle province.

You hear a lot about how the CPC has been unable to make a breakthrough, etc., etc. No one seems to want to talk about the fact that Harper has the CPC firmly entrenched in the mid 30’s. That’s the real news out of all these polls. The mid 30’s - the CPC, for God’s sakes. That’s not CPC ground. High 20’s is CPC land. “Extreme” “right wing” marginality is CPC territory. Right?

I agree with jad. Knowing that the Bloc is 9% nationally tells us nothing. Including the Bloc in a Canada-wide poll serves to distort the ROC numbers. Plus the SES poll has so few Quebeckers in its sample (what is it +/- 6.9%?) that it is not reliable compared to CROP or Leger polls of Quebec alone.

There are two separate “elections” going on - Quebec and ROC. We need separate polling. SES should do ROC-sans-Quebec polls (i.e no Bloc numbers - didn’t SC do this during the 05/06 electon?) and let CROP or Leger do the Quebec- only polls. That way we’ll have a better idea of what the trends really are.

The big story so far is the dual narrative of Bloc decline and Liberal cratering in Quebec. Harper, the guy from Alberta, is changing history by making CPC the permanent francophone federalist party in Quebec. Talk about “transformational” leadership!

Either that or Mulroney’s wearing out his welcome as the greenest prime minister? That is, if he ever was welcome at all.

Similar to what orval said, but with more local detail needed…. knowing recent provincial and by-election results, Quebec needs to be split up between Montreal Island and the rest of Quebec, and the same for Ontario between Toronto and outside. He also continues to lump everything west of Ontario as just “west” as if there’s no difference between the provinces. As much as I think SES is the most accurate of the bunch, they really need to increase their sample size to reflect the reality that the regions need to be broken down further to be useful.

Harper’s doing just fine.

The question for analysis is, do people park their votes between elections with the government, or with the centre (Liberal) option? My vague recollections of nation-wide polls leading up to 1988, and Ontario polls leading up to 1999 (re-elections with majorities for right-wing governments), is that majorities are won on the campaign trail.

Both times he’s fought nation-wide, Harper’s done significantly better on election day than he was polling at the start of the campaign.

But hey, if the Tories hold firm in the polls at levels marginally above the Liberals (i.e. leads less than 8%), then we probably will make it to September 2009.