Once again, ITQ is loath to be the bearer of bad news, but — I mean, seriously, just look at the numbers.
The highlights, courtesy of CBC:
The EKOS poll, commissioned for the CBC and released Thursday, asked which of the following outcomes of the next federal election “would be best”:
- Liberal minority.
- Liberal majority.
- Conservative minority.
- Conservative majority.
- None of the above.
Nationally, 26 per cent of those polled said they wanted a Liberal majority, while 25 per cent called for a Conservative majority. An equal amount — 25 per cent — responded with “none of the above.”
Fifteen per cent of those polled called for a Liberal minority and nine per cent said the best result would be a Conservative minority.
Ekos puts it more starkly:
When asked to choose among the most likely outcomes of the next election – Conservative majority, Conservative minority, Liberal majority or Liberal minority – most say they would like a majority government. The problem is that those people are almost evenly divided between favouring a Conservative majority and those who prefer a Liberal majority. About a quarter of Canadians say they do not like any of these four options. Even fewer opt for either a Liberal or Conservative minority government.
ITQ, however, will be blunter still in her assessment.
No, Canadians, you don’t want a majority government — you want your party — whichever one it happens to be — to win a majority. There’s a difference, and unless and until some of you are willing to switch your vote to one of the other parties — or convince other people to switch to yours — you’re going to keep electing minority governments until the end of time. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you can’t then turn around and gripe about the results. (Well, you can, but it’s just going to make ITQ start to doubt your collective common sense when it comes to recognizing cause and effect.)
Oh, and as for party preference numbers, there is once again almost no movement. The Conservatives are still ahead, but just barely — seriously, it’s like, point three percent — with the Libs up by a similarly virtually imperceptible amount, and the NDP down by about the same.
Anyway, we’ve also got “second choice” results this week, and the Liberals are barely ahead of the NDP when it comes to the next-best-thing option — 22.1 to 19.7, with 14.1% for the Greens, 13.2% for the Conservatives, 4.1% for the Bloc Quebecois — but holding sway over all is, unsurprisingly, “no second choice” at 26.8%., which includes 40.2% of Conservative supporters. Interestingly, the NDP is the second choice of 29% of Bloc Quebecois voters.
A fellow poll junkie suggests that for Conservatives, these are actually pretty good results — their vote is “rock solid” when compared to the other parties, which raises an interesting question — interesting, at least, to ITQ, who has never totally gotten the concept of “second choice” surveys: When answering the question, what scenario is the respondent imagining? Does having a second choice mean that you are fairly sure you’ll be voting NDP, for instance, but are still open to being persuaded to go Green instead? Or is it more of a, well, if the candidate of my party of choice is tossed from the ballot after an unfortunate Facebook photo-related incident that happens after the nomination period closes, I guess I’d vote for this other party instead, just this once?
Anyway, as always, over to you, commenters.
