Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

The Turmel referendum

by Aaron Wherry on Thursday, August 11, 2011 9:00am - 8 Comments

Respondents to a Harris/Decima survey seem mostly unmoved by Nycole Turmel’s Bloc Quebecois membership.

The Canadian Press-Harris/Decima survey found that only about 20 per cent of respondents considered it a major issue. Almost half — 46 per cent — said her earlier affiliation with the party isn’t an issue. Just over a quarter of those polled called it a minor issue.

A majority of respondents said they had heard about her Bloc membership — which she ended in January — while 41 per cent said they were unaware.

Tags: Bloc Québécois, Harris-Decima, Nycole Turmel, Quebec, sovereignist, Sovereignty

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Anonymous

They probably should have eliminated the 41% who had not heard or read anything about this issue from the remaining questions. Of course their MOE would have gone up substantially and they’d mainly be talking to the 50+ crowd which doesn’t lean predominantly NDP.
Anonymous

Another example that a lot of people are not demanding much from political leaders. They can say the most outrageous things, claim that can recognize a liberal by their scent, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Luckily, opinions change.

Anonymous

Perhaps true but not sure this poll shows that. 41% hadn’t heard anything about this issue and 46% didn’t think it was an issue. Likely there was a big overlap between these two groups, in which case most people who had heard of the issue felt it was either important or somewhat important.

Anonymous

Likely? Really? Got any evidence for that whatsoever, or are you simply making things up to fit your preconcieved world-view?

Anonymous

Given that, according to those respondents, they would have no idea that Turmel had held a Bloc membership simultaneously with her NDP membership, and held it up to just before running for her MP seat, I think it is likely they would not consider this as important as people who were aware of those facts. Note the question HD asked only referred to being a Bloc member in the past – that could be 20 years in the past for all those 41% of respondents would know since, according to their answer, they only knew what HD told them.

Anonymous

Or perhaps, those who were interested looked into it and decided it wasn’t a big deal, while those who just heard about it were shocked by the sensationalism.

In short, you’ve got no evidence whatsoever.
Anonymous

The proof would be in redoing the poll, putting that information (overlapping memberships up to 6 months ago) into the question and seeing if one obtained the same results or not. From the comments, blogs and articles, those details are what the people speaking out focussed on – hence, my use of the word likely. You may have noticed the quite different reaction to the CPC MP who had a Bloc membership in the 1990′s.

Actually, the fact that 59% had heard about this political issue in the middle of the summer, with no election in sight for years, was, itself, interesting to me. But HDs sample (of only 1000 across Canada) may well be biased toward political news followers.
Anonymous

Or in other words, you’ve got no evidence right now whatsoever and were simply making crap up.

Good to know.