It’s a strange turn of events when Conservative supporters start to find themselves questioning the latest polls results in such usually left-wing media as the CBC and the Star, that show the possibility of a Conservative majority.
But that is exactly the very ironic situation in which many of my readers and I find ourselves at the present time.
Of course, that would suggest that polling companies might skew their results to support the strategy of the MSM outlet that commissioned them, and we certainly don’t want to go there.
However, Liblogger Steve’s readers at Far and Wide are puzzling out the high CPC numbers in Ontario from the recent Environics poll as well. So it’s not just us.
My gut feeling is that media who commission polls are less likely to flaunt the results if it doesn’t support their bias. So the polling results may end up on page 3 rather than as the headlines if it will hurt their favourite party.
This may seem counter-intuitive if you’re pushing the fear-factor, but the theory has always been the the idea of a Conservative majority is supposed to be ’scary’. I recall a Liberal strategist on MDL a few days ago saying that this would be one of their memes going into this campaign – Do you really want a Conservative majority?
In any case, I humbly submit these offerings which should help provide a bit of balance in the ‘Majority’ speculation:
Dion, like Clark, not to be underestimated – Globe.
Ivison – Harper is not just being modest (Post).
And finally, the brilliant Chuckercanuk dispels all the rumours. And yes, Nik will have the truth.
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Update: Liblog strategy – How to avoid a full on Dion disaster (The Maple Three).
And a great discussion is going on at Sandy’s – Beware polls claiming Conservative majority!
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Saturday Update: The Stop-a-majority strategy is front and centre at National Newswatch. See this Globe article (of course).
Aside from the fact that Chuckercanuk has proven that the opposition parties have nothing to fear, can someone please tell me what would be so awful if it actually happened?
Perhaps something would actually get done in a timely fashion instead of all this bickering and grandstanding. The Ontario Liberal government has been running the province with two successive majorities and things are going great, right?
O.K. Maybe that was a bad example.
