Finally, a poll I trust
There are only two polling companies in Canada that I tend to trust - Ipsos-Reid and SES Research. SES Research notably predicted the results of the last election to within 0.2%, and Ipsos-Reid's numbers are usually comparable to SES'.
The poll out today is an Ipsos-Reid one, and it's good new for the Liberals, at least in Quebec:
Bloc Quebecois - 44
Liberals - 31
Conservatives - 13
Nationally, the numbers aren't incredible, but still decent:
Liberals - 36
Conservatives - 34
NDP - 13
It looks like Dion is really paying off in Quebec.
posted by Ryan Ringer @ 12/16/2006 09:06:00 p.m.
4 comments
4 Comments:
That's funny because I do not trust any polls and Ipsos-Reid is not an exception.
They are the chief pollster of the National Post and its affiliated news organizations so no poll they produce should be taken at face value.
It should also be noted that SES is the chief pollster of the Sun Group of newspapers so I take their results with a huge dose of salt as well.
As well, Environics is the chief pollster for The Toronto Star so their numbers are suspect.
In short, all of these polling companies are paid by these news organizations to do their polling and these news organizations are as interested in influencing public opinion as they are interested in determining it and reporting it. So to keep their contracts the polling companies will massage their methodologies to get the results that their clients want.
So, nationally (by this poll), we're about six points above where we were at the polls last January; the Tories are down two. The NDP is down four.
The Quebec numbers are the most encouraging, about ten points above where we were last January; that should be good for several of the seats we lost in the last election (Papineau, Brossard-La Prairie, and Ahuntsic being the most notable).
I didn't realize that SES was the pollster for Sun Media - I thought CPAC claimed to be totally non-partisan.
I started doubting that recently though when watching Peter Van Husen interview.
I would point out that the margin of error on this poll is 3% and both the Liberals and Conservatives moved 2%. Therefore, the movements are statistically insignificant.
So no conclusions can be drawn from this poll except there is no real change in the positions of the parties from the last poll.
Or to put it another way there is no way to determine if the movement of the parties was the result of changes in public opinion or statistical error.
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