When determining where MP Joyce Murray got her information about two-thirds of Canadians wanting proportional representation, the light dawned. Nothing beats exaggerating an already questionable poll. Anyone who has ever been involved in polling—especially political polls—knows that the context of a question as well as how you word it can produce different answers. Our advice to Joyce Murray is to never trust a single poll. Look for trends not certainties.
And the distrust of polls is growing. Cell phone usage has changed telephone coincidental polling for all time. If you cannot contact large blocks of voters, how can you use the figures you do get? Mind you, anyone who would believe these polls where you press one if you believe in this candidate or press two if you think the moon is made of green cheese has no idea what the owners of the telephones think of those calls. In an area of predominantly young families, those selections could be made by three-year olds.
Today’s campaign manager has many challenges and understanding polls is just one of them. Sure, you need polling, but it is just another tool. Nothing beats getting out in the field and sampling voters yourself. You have to listen to what these voters are interested in. You have to listen carefully. No poll can tell you more than a relaxed voter chatting on his or her own front porch. Of course, the sample needs to be large enough. The demographics have to be matched to the voting population.
But the Forum Poll taken last October that said that 56 per cent of Canadians approved of a proportional representation electoral system is not credible. While there is no point in arguing that the poll might have had 56 per cent say they wanted proportional representation, the facts are that 56 per cent of the Canadians have no idea what you mean by proportional representation. It is not something that they have actively learned about unless they were involved in voting in countries that use the system.
When the people at Fair Vote Canada get their bias supported by polls such as this, they will milk it for all it is worth. It is like their use of Arendt Lijphart, who writes to prove the point that he prefers proportional representation. So what? The Democracy Papers that are archived in this blog were not paid for by anyone but the author and they refute every claim that Lijphart and Fair Vote Canada make. Which leads to our advice to Joyce Murray that she study both pros and cons of the question.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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