Categories: Andrew Coyne, Capital Read

19 times out of 20

by Andrew Coyne on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:16am - 16 Comments

I dunno. This makes no sense to me:

Halfway through the B.C. election campaign the race for the leadership is tighter than ever.

The BC Liberals and New Democrat parties are separated by just three percentage points, according to a new Angus Reid Strategies/CTV poll.

The online survey of 822 voters found the BC Liberals are holding top spot with 42 per cent, with the opposing NDP not far behind at 39 per cent. The Green Party remains in third place with 13 per cent.

The same poll shows that, by a wide margin, the public thinks the economy is the number one issue. And that, by a margin of three to one – 48% to 16 — they pick the Liberals’ Gordon Campbell as the best person to handle it. Nearly two to one — 40% to 23% — also prefer Campbell as “best premier.” Yet the Liberals are only three points ahead?

Going into the campaign, the Liberals enjoyed a 17-point lead. Nothing much has happened since. The NDP have run a scattershot, unfocused campaign. And suddenly they’re only three points behind?

Colour me skeptical.

Tags: BC, election, Polls

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dan in van

Smacks of a push-pull that was manipulated, whether accidentally or purposely, to ensure that Liberal forces are motivated to vote. It is the only poll in a few years that have shown this kind of narrow margin. But while my theory may sound a little conspiracy-like, in any event I take this with a long tall one.
Critical Reasoning

I never trust online polls like this one. Here’s the justification by CTV/Angus Reid:

Our polls are conducted online, and not over the telephone or through face-to-face interviews. The rationale behind this approach is simple. Canada is now one of the most connected countries in the world, and Internet access has spread to every key demographic group in the country, including seniors and people with below average household incomes.

Conversely, telephone-based research has been greatly affected by declining response rates and the absence of land-lines in the homes of many younger Canadians.

Codswallop! Online polls are only used because they’re cheap. Almost any online poll is more likely to magnify the young, left-leaning “can’t be bothered to vote” demographic at the expense of the older, more conservative demographic who always vote, but only venture online to check email.

Sean Stokholm

From reading the description of the methods, it sounds like they have a self-selected survey (i.e., folks decide to log on and participate), but the pool of respondents is then randomly sampled, which underlies the claim of confidence.

I agree that online polls are both cheaper and disproportionately weighted toward certain demographics. The problem with telephone-based surveys, nowadays, is that there’s the double-whammy of refusals *and* the use of cell phones (both as secondary and primary lines). Even for those companies who have included cell exchanges, I expect they’d be faced with a huge refusal rate on that front (with a land line, you know the person is at home, not driving, shopping, at work, etc…).

I wonder if it has come to the point where the two approaches are more or less equal (with neither being fully satisfactory) – which would justify using the cheaper one. My gut doesn’t lke the idea of a self-selected pool of respondents, but then voting itself is a self-selected behaviour, so it may well be that the loss of some segments is overshadowed by the likelihood of hearing from intended voters.

All of that said, it’s impossible to safeguard against organized participation (one party sends out emails to supporters encouraging them to participate, or even more dishonestly, folks respond multiple times), which is a serious flaw, in my opinion.

madeyoulook

From reading the description of the methods, it sounds like they have a self-selected survey (i.e., folks decide to log on and participate), but the pool of respondents is then randomly sampled, which underlies the claim of confidence.

A random sample of a non-random population is NOT RANDOM. Confidence, shmonfidence.

Sean Stokholm

Agreed. But refusal rates via telephone are so high that it’s getting increasingly tenuous to view that method as random, too. Thankfully, the promise of endless minority parliaments ensures we will receive regular reliable polling data via federal elections.

Derek Pearce

Heh. Where can I online-vote that Unicorns are the prettiest of all the fabled creatures? Actually I bet that you’d get a better than 19 out of 20 result for that, so it’s a bad example. What was the methodology of survey even if online? If people had the option of clicking one party or another from a public site and meandering off, then the NDP will be over-represented by zealots who did their quick-click duty and then went web-surfing elsewhere, while those who cared stayed to answer more in depth questions will more accurately reflect the public opinion of Campbell.

http://www.savedarfur.org Sophia Geffros

Bah. It’s pegasus, I tell you! Pegasus!

http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com bigcitylib

A response to the speeding scandal, which arrived plop in the middle of the polling period?

As for AR’s online polls, I’ve complained alot about them but during the last Federal they did as well as (maybe better than) anyone else’s.

Douglass

I found the speeding scandal to be a not so subtle reminder of the Premier’s past mis deeds. Something I dont think the electorate has entirely forgotten.

catherine

These results are only a small shift from the last Angus Reid poll (done in March which put the Liberals at 43 and NDP at 37) and the small shifts could be fluctuations in small numbers (MOE) or due to the speeding scandals.
Mike G

Well, no one ever accused British Columbians of being sensible.

Here’s the thing, though: I would contribute to those statistics. I think Gordon Campbell is probably a better administrator than Carole James. I am not entirely happy with either platform; the economy is certainly the biggest challenge ahead, but I don’t actually think that the provincial government can do much about it. I’m very unhappy with a lot of the things that the Liberal government here has done over its current tenure, I think there’s been a lot of hamhandedness and ignorance on their part, and I think a bit of shakeup could be good for them. On top of that, my local MLA, Shane SImpson (NDP, Vancouver-Hastings) seems to be just fine and I see no need to boot him.

But of course I could spout personal anecdotes until I’m blue in the face and it won’t explain statistics. I really do think that Carole James hasn’t really appealed to voters, though, and people seem pretty tired of Campbell but yet admit that he’s a relatively solid Premier. At the kickoff of the campaign, both the Vancouver Sun and Georgia Straight writers seemed equally unimpressed by both parties. The Straight, as is their wont, leaned slightly NDP, but with heavy reservations, especially on the topic of carbon tax repeal. Basically, two mediocre candidates, two mediocre platforms, Campbell has the edge on incumbency but also the negative of various crap hanging over him from said incumbency.

As to what’s happened from then on, I’m not sure. I don’t really find very many people who are excited about the election, and I haven’t been following it as closely as perhaps I should.

I am, however, excited about the STV vote, been talking about it quite a bit with people, and I see tons of signs out for it — I think it’s got a great chance. The actual matter of who gets to run the province seems secondary. Strangely.
Anon

Angus Reid.

Online poll.
Dale

The 17 point lead poll is a Mustel poll. This company was started by a current MLA for the Liberals. If any poll has a tendency to bias it is that one.
The A. Reid poll is very close to Robbins Reasearch poll wich uses telephone polling. You can complain about one but it is backed up by the other. The BC election will be won or lost in each riding. Liberals are strong is some but the NDP are equally strong in others. Who ever gets the vote out will win.
http://skinnydips.blogspot.com Skinny Dipper

The NDP with 39% voter support is leading the BC Liberal Party with 42% based on the antiquated First-Past-the-Post voting system. For fairer representation, voter for BC-STV in the referendum.

http://www.stv.ca
http://crawlacrosstheocean.blogspot.com/ Declan

Libs won by 4% last election. Seems pretty plausible to me that things haven’t changed much since then. I guess we’ll see soon enough.
jimmy connors

i think angus reid has a harder time predicting provincial elections with his web panel. maybe it’s not big enough or maybe he hasn’t evenly seeked out subscribers and members. he blew the alberta election badly and didn’t do so great in the ontario election either. i think he did ok in others, but i’m more aware of these two. so, let’s see how he does in BC. he’s here, i think. he’s in the tyee a lot. maybe his bc panel is big enough? or, maybe it’s mainly urban and greater van, and doesn’t have enough people from the interior and north? we’ll see. i think in BC it is harder to read our minds than in the other provinces.