The rollercoaster ride in this federal election has been the provided by the pollsters. They are guilty of creating more confusion, consternation, calculation crises and constipation than at any time in history. The only consolation seems to be that as their polls get wilder, they are also cheaper and frankly you get what you are paying for. It all goes to prove that the only poll that matters is the one on election day.
In times gone by we could get some reasonably accurate results from randomly selected home telephones. It was also a time when we used trained interviewers. And yet it was still the analysis that made the difference. Raw data from the calls were useless until you had balanced the demographics and weighed them against the analysis of previous voting. It was this analysis that we argued over and spent the most time on confirming.
It is amazing the times though when you picked up some literature and a clip board and went out to prove the conclusions. We would pick representative demographics in a riding and knock on the door for the candidate to confirm the polling. That was in the day when we were within a two per cent margin of error.
Today’s margin of error seems to be exceeding ten per cent (ten times out of ten). Cell phones have created an abyss of information from the younger generations. Some polls read as though they are just hoping nobody under 30 votes. And when they do, all bets are off.
And this is hardly helped by people pushing strategic voting. They think the time for strategic voting has come. The only problem is who do you trust to be able to vote strategically with confidence? Who is second, who is third and whose vote can help?
In Ontario strategicvote.ca has our local riding right. If as much as 20 per cent of possible NDP voters switched to the Liberal, the Liberal win would be guaranteed. As things stand, we are calling it an even money bet between the Conservative and the Liberal. There is no chance for the Green, NDP, Libertarian or independent candidates.
It helps locally that anyone who knows the Conservative and Liberal candidates realize that there is no comparison as to what they can do for the riding. The Liberal is the highly regarded president emeritus of the local community college who has an outstanding record of work for the community. The Conservative has only served with little notice on City council and has had a series of private sector jobs.
-30-
Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]