Tories on the brink of majority…really on the brink

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

Doing seat projections from polling data can be a bit risky. Polls are estimates of public opinion, even if usually quite accurate ones. Figuring out how these figures will translate into the distribution of seats in our first-past-the-post system is a tricky and imprecise business.

However, pollsters and journalists have spent the last two weeks implicitly making seat projections every time they have spoken of the Conservatives “being in majority territory” or “on the brink of a majority”. They just never show their work.

So here is what they are talking about. Taking EKOS’ national sample of over 2000 Canadians from Monday and Tuesday, and running them through a model that takes into account both the special arithmetic of our first-past-the-post system, and the parties’ historical patterns of support, when we say the Tories are “on the brink” we really mean it.

A majority is 155 seats.

The model gives the Tories 156 seats, Liberals 82, NDP 37, BQ 33.

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and Globe and Mail, now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

May in after all?

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

A source in one of the networks tells me it looks like May is in the debate after all.

Heard it here first

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

EKOS is about to release new numbers from Monday and Tuesday which show (drum roll…), no change from last week.

Tories 37%, Libs 26%, NDs 19%, BQ 8%, Greens 10%

For those riding along on my gender gap hobby horse, the Tories are still running away with the men’s vote, but the Liberals have lost their skew towards women. The NDP is attracting women in much larger proportion than men, however.

Here’s the link

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and Globe and Mail, now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

Intriguing corrections

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

From today’s Globe and Mail:

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May wished good luck to the Liberal candidate running against Conservative minister Jim Flaherty, but did not endorse him, as stated yesterday.

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the school and a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and election night executive producer for CBC TV News.

Did the networks really want Elizabeth May?

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

Yesterday, Ira Wagman raised the question of whether the networks really wanted Elizabeth May in the debates to begin with. In an article on the Globe website, the former head of the network consortium, ex-CBC Supremo Tony Burman, who is belatedly advocating an independent debate commission, sheds some light:

Early last year, as Canada’s new Conservative minority government was under attack in the Commons, I called the networks together to quietly discuss the format of the next debates in case a sudden election became necessary. We invited Ms. May and her senior colleagues to make their case to us.

After they left, the networks privately debated the issue. We never actually reached an agreement that day, although all of the networks were sympathetic to the ‘public service’ dimension of the Greens’ case. Some networks worried that adding a fifth leader would make the debate “unwatchable” but we all knew that the elephant in the room was actually living at 24 Sussex Drive. And he – the Prime Minister – would effectively have veto power. Within days of the meeting, we were privately told by the Conservative Party representative that Prime Minister Harper would not participate in the debates if the Green Party leader was there.

So the answer seems to be “yes and no”.

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with CBC and the Globe and Mail who is now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates

More about women

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

Further to my post yesterday about the Tories’ decisive lead among men, and the Liberals’ struggle to maintain their traditional lead among women, this from the Globe this morning (based on Strategic Counsel’s work in battleground ridings):

The poll also indicates that the Conservatives’ strength in battleground ridings is fuelled by a commanding lead among male voters, those with higher incomes, and voters over 50.

The Liberals, who typically need a lead among female voters to win, are trailing the Tories among women in the B.C. and Quebec battlegrounds, and are essentially tied among women in the Ontario battleground.

“It used to be almost mirror image, where the men would disproportionately go for Conservatives. Now [the Conservatives] have still got their advantage with men and they’ve evened the score with women,” Mr. Donolo said.

Peter Donolo knows, of course. He was Jean Chrétien‘s communications director.

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with CBC and the Globe and Mail. He is now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

When the referees don the uniforms

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Ira Wagman

There has been a lot of attention devoted to the media consortium’s decision to exclude Elizabeth May from the national leader’s debates. To be sure, there are a number of issues to be dealt with concerning the arcane rules about participation – rules that should be debated in another forum, as Paul Adams indicated below. Clearly there are political implications, too. However, there is a deeper issue here – one that has to do with the position of Canada’s broadcasters, which have gone from simply covering the story to becoming part of it.   

Remember Stockwell Day and the Reform Party’s decision that they would no longer participate in the scrums outside of the House of Commons, only to take questions in the controlled environs of a press room in the basement? What happened then? Many major media outlets said thanks, but no thanks and, as a result, the folks downstairs came upstairs – because that is where the coverage would be.   

The same thinking should have applied here. The Consortium should have taken the position that the debates will take place as scheduled, whether some, all, or none of the parties wish to participate. After all of the posturing and blustering, I can assure you that most, if not all, of them would be on the air that night. Who would pass up a chance to reach a national audience?  The decision around participation should have been left for the political parties to decide.  

What happened here was not just a case of the broadcasters being intimidated by the political parties, as my colleague Chris Waddell noted here earlier. It was something even worse. By threatening not to participate in the debates the various political parties forced the broadcasters out their position as referees and onto the playing field. In other words, they politicized them. This now gives the parties additional ammunition about how the media are biased, it also re-circulates images of media cabals, and undercuts the credibility of the organizations charged with covering the elections as a public service, however we would like to define that term. The fact that the Consortium has not come out with the details of its decision-making process doesn’t help to shed the image that there may be other things going on behind closed doors. If the press expects openness from the political parties in the name of Canadians, why shouldn’t they be as up front about their process as well? Now that the Greens are threatening to take a complaint up to the CRTC and to the courts, it runs the risk of politicizing them too.  If you think this kind of thing won’t have an effect on the election consider what happened when the RCMP announced they were investigating Ralph Goodale about income trusts during the last election. It draws attention where it doesn’t need to be. The bureaucracy and the press need to stay on the sidelines.

This is an awful position for Canada’s media to be in at the beginning of an election. Considering that many of these broadcasters now own many of Canada’s largest newspapers and radio stations, there are already issues about the extent to which Canadians can expect comprehensive media coverage from the mainstream media outlets.  

By not getting caught in political issues around the debates, the Consortium would have made a bold statement about its own position in this election — as broadcasters interested in acting as equitably as possible in the public interest. With their involvement in the Green Party decision, they have, regrettably, become part of the story. 

Ira Wagman is an Assistant Professor, Mass Communication in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton.

The election and the economy

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Faculty links

Read an assessment of the impact the economy may have on the campaign – Campaigning through a minefield.

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the school and a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and election night executive producer for CBC TV News.

All about women

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

In the last election, the Liberals likely would have won if only women had the vote.

For some reason, most pollsters haven’t been publishing information on gender so far this year. However, EKOS Research [conflict alert — I also work there] did two polls last week, using different methodologies, both showing the Tories running much more strongly among men than women. One poll showed the Tories doing 6 percentage points better among men; the other showed an astonishing 18 percentage point gap. (See both polls at www.ekoselection.com )

If the Tories did as well among women as they do among men, the election would be practically over, and they’d be heading for more than a majority: they’d have a landslide. Even closing the gap would do wonders for their prospects.

All the other national political parties — the Liberals, NDP and Greens — attract more women than men. So while the Tories have been very successful at aggregating the men’s vote, the women’s vote is dispersed among the opposition parties. If one of them were able to bring the women’s vote home as the Tories do with the men, it would transform the electoral landscape in this election, and probably beyond.

Maybe that’s why we were hearing about child care from the Liberals this morning — and why Elizabeth May was quick to point out that she was excluded from the leaders’ debate by a pack of male leaders and male broadcast executives.

Paul Adams, a former political reporter with the CBC and Globe and Mail, is a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

Infinity of mirrors?

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Jeff Sallot

One of the most intriguing phenomenon in the early days of this federal election campaign is how mainstream media are paying attention to online media.

Last night CBC TV’s Susan Ormiston told us on The National she’ll be looking at how the election is playing out in cyberspace. Her page on the CBC News web site urges those with interesting digital footage to send it in.

I awoke this morning to reporter Chris Hall’s item on the CBC Radio morning newscast telling me that political bloggers are being flooded by posts from people who have something to say – and to share with the rest of the world – about the fact Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has been shut out of the TV debates.

The morning’s Ottawa Citizen has a piece by Canwest’s David Akin reporting that some web-savvy Conservative activists are launching a web site with video footage of Stephane Dion looking something less than prime ministerial.

I get to the office this morning and turn on CBC Newsworld to find reporter Julie Van Dusen talking about a Liberal website called Scandalpedia, an attack site that will go after the Harper Conservatives.

And this just in, CBC Newsworld anchor Heather Hiscox is talking about how the new Liberal web site featuring Dion looking prime ministerial has just gone live.

Jeff Sallot, a former Globe and Mail political correspondent and Ottawa bureau chief, teaches journalism at Carleton University and is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.