Latest polling thread Aug 21 2015

The Liberal media complex is now operatingin full force.

Bruce Anderson of Abacus, National NewsWatch, etc., has never meet a Liberal he doesn't like.  

Comments you will never ever hear from Liberal media complex guy Bruce Anderson.

Norman Spector ‏@nspector4  10h10 hours ago

Norman Spector retweeted Robert Fife

To his credit, he's said this before, citing the precedent of @MichaelleJeanF as his model

Norman Spector added,

Robert Fife @RobertFifeNDP Leader @ThomasMulcair tells CTV Saskatoon he'll give up French citizenship if he is elected PM. #cdnpoli #elect42 3 retweets0 favoritesReplyRetweet 3Favorite More

NorthReport wrote:

Now the Duffy trial is on hold can we expect to see the Cons rebound?

Not if the new headlines are, "Canada's economy enters recession."

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34116189

Some of you are talking about outliers, trending, etc. I think Sean from Ottawa posted a few weeks back that these polls are not scientific, nor necessarily accurate. Some pollsters take raw data, then extrapolate and add their own numbers to the data pool to get a desired result. I don't want to say that this is exactly what he posted, but if polls are not scientific, and there is a pattern of herding where most polls seem to be showing pretty much the same results, is it possible that they have been deliberately manipulated to be like that? Then perhaps the outlier polls are the accurate ones and the others are crap designed to convince the public that the Liberals are doing better than they really are and are a sound choice to vote for rather than the NDP. Just sayin'. Also, the NDP could be blowing the other parties away in Ontario but no pollster will want that shown because that would give the NDP a majority. Must make the other two Bay Street parties look good. How's that for a conspiracy theory!

Poll of Montreal island shows close race between Liberals and NDP.

http://montrealgazette.com/news/national/ndp-in-virtual-tie-with-liberal...

The Liberals are only up amongst English Montrealers according to this poll - from 30 to 49%. Among Francophone they are only up from 17 to 21% but the NDP has gained from 36 to 42% since 2011.

I don't know how well the Liberals will do in Québec but it looks pretty clear that Trudeau will keep his seat in Papineau. The party in general will probably keep their seat count in the province as well.

The big losers will be the Cons and the Bloc.

The Liberals currently have seven seats in all of Quebec. If they come out of the island of Montreal with a net gain of two, where else in the entire province do they gain any seats at all. For the Liberals to end up with juts a dead cat bounce in Quebec from 7 seats to say 10 would be a massive disappointment for them

From what I have seen so far Mainstreet is the most anti-ndp of the pollsters. I still think Papineau is up for grabs.

Preferred PM:

Harper 29,

Mulcair 28,

Trudeau 22.

Harper slides for fourth week in succession - NDP still scores highest on Index - Nanos Weekly Tracking (ending August 28, 2015)

alan smithee wrote:

I respectfully disagree . I think Trudeau losing his seat is a fantasy,much like my fantasy of Harper losing his.

I'd literally be shocked. And the Montréal numbers back up what I think.

Agreed.  It was mildly plausible when the polling narrative was Liberal obliteration, but the Liberals have momentum and its the Libs and the Cons squeezing the NDP.

The anglo factor in Brome-Mississquoi is quite over-rated. Historically there were a lot of anglos in parts of the eastern townships and a lot of Montreals WASPs have cottages there, but according to Statscan the residents of that riding are 82% francophone and only about 15% anglophone and that seat elected the BQ in 1993, 2006 and 2008. In 2011 the NDP took 43% and the Liberals and BQ took 21% each...so I just dont see much hope for the liberals there when they are losing the francophone vote by such a wide margin... and the BQ vote could be suppressed a lot moree this time to the NDP benefit

josh wrote:

NDP internal poll has Duceppe way down in Laurier-St. Marie.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/02/gilles-duceppe-far-behind-ndps-laverdiere...

Great news. Hélène deserves to keep her riding. The link does not work. Do you remember what the poll result was?

Gustave wrote:

josh wrote:

NDP internal poll has Duceppe way down in Laurier-St. Marie.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/02/gilles-duceppe-far-behind-ndps-laverdiere...

Great news. Hélène deserves to keep her riding. The link does not work. Do you remember what the poll result was?

Laverdière is particularly bad news. She was the one dumping on Harper for not breaking diplomatic relations fast enough with Syria, and other such heroic gestures, when she was replacing Dewar (another piece of work) in foreign affairs.

And [url=http://www.ndp.ca/news/ndp-condemns-crackdown-foreign-ngos-egypt]this shameless defence of CIA fronts[/url] is still on the NDP web site.

We've talked amply over the years about her and Dewar. I used to have much more respect for her than I do now.

Luckily, Gilles Duceppe's incomprehensible reluctance, for years, to support Canadian withdrawal from Afghanistan doesn't make him much better, at least on foreign affairs.

Unionist overstates the "CIA-front" line.

But it is true that those agencies (and others) have been sponsored by a US Gov't agency that is mandated to "promote democratic values" in other countries. As such, this work has frequently been described as "doing overtly what the CIA used to do covertly".

But I am not aware of any actual CIA-links between these agencies and their back funder.

Do people assume that every Canadian agency that gets funding from the Canadian Gov't is an agent of CSIS? Just saying ...

sherpa-finn wrote:

Unionist overstates the "CIA-front" line.

But it is true that those agencies (and others) have been sponsored by a US Gov't agency that is mandated to "promote democratic values" in other countries. As such, this work has frequently been described as "doing overtly what the CIA used to do covertly".

But I am not aware of any actual CIA-links between these agencies and their back funder.

Do people assume that every Canadian agency that gets funding from the Canadian Gov't is an agent of CSIS? Just saying ...

my great uncle and aunt were CIA spies according to my mom. they worked for a well known international educational agency. she says some cousins still do. i don't think CSIS is in the same league as the CIA. but then i don't know if the CIA is as everywhere as i've been raised to believe.

 i've no probs with them throwing out whomever they want. i would say i don't know how foreign relations decisions are decided.

'democracy building' is today's term for spys i guess.

Precisely, my dear Watson, precisely!  

What do the Liberals’ stand for?

Depends on the day

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

In 2006, after catering to the Liberals’ troglodyte wing for years and doing all he could to delay equal marriage, Martin had the epiphany that gays could only be saved if the notwithstanding clause was removed from the Charter of Rights.

• Every now and then, a ubiquitous nature documentary shows a great school of fish make a turn. With pin-point precision, thousands of them change direction completely and then zoom off in unison as if nothing could be more natural.

It makes you wonder, what’s the collective noun — school of fish, parade of lions, etc. — for Liberals? I nominate a crusade. And try as you might to be angry, it’s a marvel to watch one set off, as we have seen recently.

Andrew Coyne: Spend all that money, Mr. Trudeau? Why and on what?

Let’s get the politics out of the way first. Is Justin Trudeau’s plan to double federal spending on infrastructure and run deficits of $10-billion annually for the next three years, as a Winnipeg Sun headline had it, “POLITICAL SUICIDE”? Not likely.

If deficits were the political hemlock they’re made out to be, Kathleen Wynne, whose political philosophy Trudeau seems to have closely copied, would not be in power. For that matter, neither would Stephen Harper. Both made a policy choice to run large deficits, and both were subsequently re-elected. A taboo is only a taboo until it isn’t.

But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. No, it won’t “wreck” the economy, as the Conservatives would have you believe — any more than it will it “kick start” the economy, to use verb the Liberals might prefer. Government policies, as a rule, simply don’t have that kind of transformative effect, for good or ill — certainly not in the mild doses the Liberals have in mind, i.e., deficits of one-half of one per cent of gross domestic product.

Continue reading…

Always, a crusade starts with the same syrupy faux-gravitas. The kind of seriousness with which you imagine a character in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four declaring that, no, the war is against Eurasia and always has been. So it is hearing Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau on deficits, morphing from being “the party of balanced budgets” to seeing Conservative Leader Stephen Harper as a heartless beast for still supporting them.

Toronto Star columnist Tom Walkom lauded him, calling it brave to challenge the deficit hysteria. But he soft-peddled the larger point: namely, that Liberals, Paul Martin chief among them but also Trudeau since, fostered and then propagated the hysterics, budget after budget, election after election. Including, incredibly, during this election, meaning core values can chameleon into their opposite in mere days.

This is more callous than brave, made all the more so by instantly demonizing those with whom Liberals agreed only days before; as an example, the absurdity that the NDP is now on “the far right,” as Martin claimed. Nor was it a clumsy slip of the tongue, either. It mirrors how Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne ran from the left in Ontario’s last election. Naturally, after winning a progressive mandate, her big surprise was the shock privatization of the power system.

Related

• Paul Martin dubs Harper ‘king of deficits’ as Liberals ramp up attacks on Tories’ economic record
• John Ivison: Justin Trudeau faced with persuading voters that debt and deficits are not dirty words

Incidentally, it’s a privatization reckless enough that it made former Ontario premier Mike Harris, destroyer of all that’s good and holy, say no. And which Liberals, with typical solemnity, once warned against. Anyway.

Onto crusades at work, a hit list of are-you-a-real-Canadian litmus tests that Liberals can’t resist applying. In 2008, for example, fresh out of office after 13 do-nothing years watching emissions soar, Stéphane Dion, with no hint of irony, made climate change the great crusade.

In 2006, after catering to the Liberals’ troglodyte wing for years and doing all he could to delay equal marriage, Martin had the epiphany that gays could only be saved if the notwithstanding clause was removed from the Charter of Rights. He then summoned his inner Churchill and implored Harper to join that vital fight.

During the 1980s and ’90s, John Turner and Jean Chrétien fought Tory free trade agreements. Canada’s very sovereignty was so imperilled in one election, the Liberals ran campaign ads showing the border being erased. In government, they merrily embraced the very kind deals they so articulately denounced and then proceeded to expand their worst qualities.

And who can forget Pierre Trudeau deriding the Tories in the ’70s for wanting wage and price controls to fight inflation? An idea so batty, after mercilessly mocking it on the hustings, he immediately enacted it after being re-elected. How poetic the son’s own corker of a reversal now seems.

The point is not, as Liberals would like it to be, that everyone else is too timid to fess up and agree that deficits are salvations. Rather, it’s that if that’s the case, then why are we only learning about it now? Not, say, after any of the Harper budgets that were rubbished over their deficits, which, it’s logical to presume, Liberals opposed only because they contained too few zeroes.

Another old faithful, the Charter, probably pushes shame up against even Liberal limits, after welcoming Bill Blair, Toronto’s police chief during the G20 policing disgrace, as a star candidate

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jamey-heath-what-do-the-libera...

i did not know Egypt was under military dictatorship.

now i know i agree swallow.

Ciabatta2 wrote:

alan smithee wrote:

I respectfully disagree . I think Trudeau losing his seat is a fantasy,much like my fantasy of Harper losing his.

I'd literally be shocked. And the Montréal numbers back up what I think.

Agreed.  It was mildly plausible when the polling narrative was Liberal obliteration, but the Liberals have momentum and its the Libs and the Cons squeezing the NDP.

I am not so easily swayed by the "polling narrative". Especially when it is being driven by 1 poll by a company that has consistently shown the lowest NDP results. 

Abacus looks at the undecided voters:

Past Federal Voting Behaviour

In 2011, 42% say they did not vote while 58% said they voted.  Among those who voted, 46% supported the Conservative Party, 25% voted NDP, while 21% voted Liberal.  Two percent said they voted Green.

A quick look at the demographic and regional make up of this group finds they are:

– More likely to be female (59%) than male (41%)
– Younger than the general population.  52% are under the age of 45.
– More likely to reside in Ontario, less likely to live in Quebec.
– Less educated.  41% have high school or less compared 29% among those who identified a party they support.

http://abacusdata.ca/research-note-who-are-the-undecided-voters/#sthash.LuRFLap6.dpuf

This scenario can also cause a vote split which can benefit the NDP in some ridings.

[url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-polltracker... front-runner status at risk:[/url]

Quote:

The softening NDP numbers seem to be largely driven by recent shifts in British Columbia and Ontario.

With polls in the field to Aug. 24, the NDP had 39 per cent support in B.C. in the Poll Tracker, but has since dropped to 32 per cent. The 12-point lead it had over the Conservatives in the province has dropped to two.

In the last five polls published in the province, the NDP has scored only between 31 and 33 per cent. In the five polls prior to those, the NDP was scoring between 38 and 41 per cent support. Numbers from EKOS, Abacus, Nanos Research, and Ipsos Reid have all shown drops for the NDP in B.C.

This is problematic for the New Democrats, as the province is, along with Quebec, a key to forming government.

The polls in Ontario are also souring for the New Democrats, with four consecutive surveys putting the party under the 30 per cent mark. As of Aug. 24, the poll average was giving the NDP 34 per cent in Ontario. The party's score is now 28 per cent.

quizzical wrote:

oh ya the slime are everywhere shouting bad NDP. and people are identifying with their abusers.

That is pretty disrespectful of people who disagree with you politically. I don't see a whole lot of people shouting "bad NDP" either. All the major parties get accolates and condemnation from the press on various issues.