Category Archives: polls

B-Sides and False Starts

climate crisis, conservative party, democracy and good government, economy, green party, polls

I’ve started to accumulate a back-log of things I wanted to write about, or started to write about but couldn’t make work. Here, then, are a handful of brief observations and links from the past few weeks.

I Am Rubber. You, Are Glue.

Angus Reid finds that, while Conservative attack ads do hurt Dion, they hurt Harper even more. For me this reveals that attack ads against the personal character or patriotism of another politician (the Liberals are guilty of this too) are actually attacks on democracy itself, as they turn everyone off of the process and do damage to the level of debate in this country. Unfortunately, they seem to also help rally donations.

Four Myths on Senate Reform

An interesting piece by Thomas Hall in The Hill Times [pdf]. A good backgrounder on how and why most politicians are misleading us on senate reform.

More Support for Carbon Tax

Put a price on emissions now or else, report says. The economic impacts of not introducing a carbon tax would be worse than introducing one, and the cost goes up with each day of inaction. And yet, the Green Party continues to be the only party in Canada to support this painfully obvious necessity. Why then do the others–chief among them the Conservatives–keep hiding and distorting the truth?

Vote Like You Mean It

An Angus Reid poll finds that 58% of Canadians “would like the Green party to have representation in the House of Commons.” If anyone can think of a realistic way to make this happen without actually voting for us, I’d like to hear it. (Though voting for MMP in Ontario would help too.)

Buying Good Headlines

While the Greens were getting good headlines, the Conservatives were buying theirs. Like, wow.

Greens and NDP Tied

green party, ndp, polls

From cbc.ca:

The poll also suggested the Green Party continues to show momentum across Canada, with 13 per cent support nationally, tied with the NDP for the first time in Decima’s polling, the agency said.

The poll recorded 35 per cent support for the Bloc Québécois in Quebec, down significantly from its numbers in the run-up to the last election, when the Bloc was regularly closer to 50 per cent support in its home province, Decima said.

“It seems more the case that they can find little to rally anti-Ottawa emotion with,” Anderson said Thursday in a release. “And so those voters in Quebec who are nationalist but not separatist feel free to consider their other options, which now decidedly include the Green Party.”

The Liberals followed the Bloc in Quebec with 23 per cent, with the Green Party at 13 per cent, and the NDP with seven per cent.

That’s A Funny Lookin’ Surge

conservative party, green party, ndp, polls

Headline in today’s Globe and Mail: “Tories surge on Harper’s leadership.” You probably read that and thought, “oh, I guess that means that the Tories have surged.” But you’d be wrong, you silly fool you.

Read the first paragraph to see that the poll found that, “Stephen Harper is the most decisive federal leader.” He’s decisive alright, in a George Bush “I’m the decider” kind of way. Never mind that just because you’re “decisive” doesn’t mean you’re making the right decisions.

Get to the third paragraph, and you find out that the Harper government is at thirty four per cent. Only zero-point-seven per cent more than a third, and two percentage points less than they got in the last election.

Where’s the surge?

Oh wait, there it is. “The main beneficiary appears to be the Green Party, which has the support of twelve per cent of voters.” That puts us ahead of the Bloc at eleven per cent, and just two points behind the NDP at fourteen.

Ok, so I tracked down the surge. The only thing I’m missing now is the part where the electorate is being accurately represented. The whole article is writen as if thirty four per cent is a huge amount of support. It’s not, and Harper should stop behaving otherwise.

Yay for Democracy Part I

conservative party, democracy and good government, green party, liberal party, ndp, polls

Two days ago I asked you to be skeptical of any political party that has a death-bed conversion to the world of environmental sanity. Yesterday, Decima released a poll that proves once again that every single Canadian not only reads my blog, but also does everything I say.

The poll’s most encouraging finding? You’re not buying it.

A new poll suggests Canadians view all the major federal political parties with a lot of skepticism when it comes to environmental policy.The survey by Decima Research, provided to The Canadian Press, found that respondents by a four-to-one margin see recent Conservative green announcements as being driven by public opinion, not genuine commitment.

Oh, and guess what else:

When Decima asked how respondents would vote if the environment was the only issue in the next election, the Green Party led with 24 per cent support. The Conservatives and Liberals were essentially tied, 17-16, while the NDP attracted just 10 per cent support and the Bloc Quebecois only four per cent.

I don’t expect the environment to be the only issue in the next election, but it’s a pretty darned important one. (As in, “if you don’t have a planet, then, well….”) Onward and upward.