{"id":200,"date":"2008-09-13T14:16:31","date_gmt":"2008-09-13T19:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/election08.cusjc.ca\/?p=200"},"modified":"2008-09-14T07:31:30","modified_gmt":"2008-09-14T12:31:30","slug":"majorityminority-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=200","title":{"rendered":"Majority\/minority watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Adams<\/strong><\/p>\n

The excellent\u00a0<\/span><\/a>Democratic Space<\/a>\u00a0website, which will launch its ’08 election site tomorrow, already has a set of seat projections up based on a poll of polls from the first half of the week. They give the Tories 146, Liberals 92, NDP 30, BQ 38, Others 2, and Greens a goose egg. A majority is 155.<\/p>\n

Of course, the confusing thing is that since mid-week, one well-publicized poll from Harris\/Decima<\/a>\u00a0suggested the Tories have been trending upward, while the EKOS poll, also released yesterday, had the trend going the other way.<\/p>\n

As more polls are published in the coming days, which trend, if either, is correct should become more certain. So-called “rolling polls” blend results for several days, so if there is a trend, it takes a few days to become evident.<\/p>\n

Every pollster will defend his or her own numbers as being correct. From a journalistic perspective, it is a good idea to understand something about sample size, methodology, and so on in order to evaluate competing claims. It is also a good idea, when the information seems to be conflicting, to reserve judgment, rather than throw great weight to one poll or another — even when, as sometimes happens, the storyline of one poll is much more interesting than the storyline of another. \u00a0<\/p>\n

But from the Conservative perspective, as long as the question of majority or minority continues to be a matter of media speculation, it is not a good thing. In the last election, true, the Tories apparently benefitted a little from a “bandwagon” effect in Quebec as their numbers rose and they started to look viable there. However, there is an even more well-established pattern of at least some voters in English Canada pulling back from the Tories when they think they are closing in on a majority. Judging from the Bloc’s campaign, it seems they think that some Quebec voters may be susceptible to the same reflex this time.<\/p>\n

P.S. Also take a look at Calgary Grit\u00a0<\/a>who explains how he does his “probabalistic” seat projections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and the Globe and Mail, and is now a member of Carleton\u2019s journalism faculty, and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Adams The excellent\u00a0Democratic Space\u00a0website, which will launch its ’08 election site tomorrow, already has a set of seat projections up based on a poll of polls from the first half of the week. They give the Tories 146, Liberals 92, NDP 30, BQ 38, Others 2, and Greens a goose egg. A majority is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election2008","category-election-2008-campaign-strategy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}