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Latest Internal BC Liberal Party Polling Results Show BC NDP with 9% Lead
February 13, 2009 - 5:24pm
http://billtieleman.blogspot.com/2009/02/bc-liberals-internal-polling-shows-them.html
Perhaps most shocking is a riding result showing Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon in a neck and neck race with the NDP in Surrey-Cloverdale.
Gap Widens Between BC Liberals and NDP
http://www.mustelgroup.com/pdf/20090213.pdf
The BC Liberals have increased their lead to 16 percentage points over the NDP according to the most
recent Mustel Group poll (February 2-10th). If an election were held tomorrow, the BC Liberals wouldhave the support of 52% of decided voters (up from 47% in January) and the NDP would be supported
by 36% (up directionally from 33%). The Green Party would be supported by 12% (down from 16%).
The BC Liberals have gained support among women (increasing from 42% in January to 50%) while
support for the NDP has remained stable (37% in contrast to 36% in January). Among men, 53% support
the Liberals and 35% the NDP, with no significant change from previous measures.
I think that we are in an extremely volatile situation in terms of political trends what with the economic crisis. There is a very, very small window at the beginning of an economic meltdown, when people's initial knee-jerk reaction to "hide behind mother's skirts" and go scurrying to the incumbent. This wears off very quickly and people start to get angry at the government for not doing more or for mismanaging etc...
I guess the question is where we will be by mid-May. I think that if BC were going to the polls in October - Campbell would be a piece of roadkill for sure. Its hard to say where the public mood will be three months from now.
Both these polls sound like BS to me.
Tieleman needs to view his "very reliable source" with a little more skepticism, while Mustel's numbers are crossing the lines of credibility.
I guess the truth is the first casualty of election campaigns.
Well, I believe, from facts on the ground, that Shirley Bond and Pat Bell will be gone. People in their ridings, mine is one, are pretty damn pissed about the pine beetle situation and no forestry. And there was NO PG Cancer clinic as promised either.
The only thing that could save their ridings is if there was a massive call back to work in the forest industry before the election.
Too bad the NDP could not ditch Ms. James before the next election.
She comes across terrible. All she seems to do is whine and not offer any alternative.
As a lifelong NDP member I am not sure I can vote NDP in May and will spoil my ballot this time. But will vote NDP in 2013.
I wonder who will replace Ms. James during the upcoming NDP leadership convention I assume they will have this upcoming summer or fall? Will they want to have a new leader if Chairman Gordo decides to sit in the Fall?
I assume Carole james will step down election night.
J22, you're correct.
Tieleman has been had.
It was a perfectly timed set-up.
Exactly. This neo-con calls Bill the day before the Mustel poll. The neo-con must have been aware of the Mustel poll coming out today.
This "reliable source" tells Bill that the Libs own internal polling shows the Libs behind by 9%. Bill blogs the info not realizing that the neo-con was trying to make a fool of him.
Even another neo-con blogger, a Lib insider, had this to say today:
A perfectly timed set up is right. What else would one expect from a neo-con?
I think you're giving these so-called neo-cons far too much credit. What purpose does it serve to leak a story that the BC Liberals are losing if the truth is the opposite. Parties make up numbers to make them look like they are doing BETTER than they actually are - not worse. I could understand someone from the NDP wanting to get a story out that the NDP is actually doing way better than the published polls are saying - but there is no motive for a Liberal supporter to leak an erroneous bad news story.
And "making a fool of Tieleman" is not much of a motive. Nobody reads his blog except for a few hardcore political junkies anyways - so who care? In any case we will never know who the fool was. Unless an actual election were held today - we have no way of knowing who is right - Tieleman's source or the Mustel poll.
If you read the Tieleman article, he says the Liberals are nine points behind the NDP, then he says this:
"Perhaps most shocking is a riding result showing Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon in a neck and neck race with the NDP in Surrey-Cloverdale.
The BC Liberal polling also indicates its MLAs in the Burnaby-North and Burnaby-Willingdon, John Nuraney and Richard Lee are in serious trouble, along with Kamloops-North Thompson cabinet minister Kevin Krueger and in the riding of Kamloops, where Claude Richmond is retiring."
WTF? If the NDP is leading nine points and is competitive in Cloverdale, all of Burnaby should be a lead pipe cinch. He should have questioned that.
I agree that people are giving way too much credence to imputed motives for someone conning Tielman. Its so unlikely.
I'm wondering what is different about BC [besides the obvious] that anyone talks about internal polls to outsiders.
Doesn't happen in Nova Scotia. In fact, you find party insiders and political reporters talking among themselves will say, "The Liberals' internal polls muct be telling them ________ , because....."
In other words, guessing what is in internal polls you'll never hear the results that might explain actions recently taken.
There is inherently a lot of margin of error to the localized conclusions drawn out of internal polls. So anomolays are not at all unusual.
Not to say there isn't a decent chance they are reporting something real. For one thing, ridings are not equally effected by the same issues.
Bottom line though: this isn't an indication of the reliability of the internal poll.
Even if there is an anomolay there, the larger regional trends still show.
"If the NDP is leading nine points and is competitive in Cloverdale, all of Burnaby should be a lead pipe cinch."
One thing you need to keep in mind that while Surrey-Cloverdale should be a reasonably safe Liberal seat - you can't just look at the results in the riding named Cloverdale from the 2005 election. The redistribution moved the boundaries of that riding quite a bit to the north and gave it the southern half of the NDP held riding of Surrey-Panorama Ridge - so while it should stay Liberal, the NDP core vote will inevitable rise just because of the new boundaries.
OK, but leaving Cloverdale aside (as I don't know the area well), from what I know of Burnaby (this area I know somewhat) there is nothing that would cause it to buck such a huge trend to the NDP. None of the Liberal MLAs are praised or despised, the population is very diverse, and I know of no galvanizing local issues.
All evidence I know suggests Burnaby should basically follow the wider trends in the Vancouver area, if not the whole province.
The poll supposedly has the BC Liberals in Burnaby "in trouble" - that could be a euphemism meaning anything from a dead heat to being behind by a wide margin.
As we all know, trends are never uniform across a whole province. The economy is particularly depressed in interior forestry dependent places like Kamloops and Prince George and those are also places where there is particularly hostility to the carbon tax. Burnaby is a bit of an odd duck - its just about the only place in BC that has gone NDP in each of the last three federal elections but where the BC NDP only took 1 out 4 provincial seats. Usually, the provincial NDP is much stronger than the feds.
Here's a tough question:
Guess who is going to win another majority government in BC?
Mustel Polling
Nov '08, Jan '09, Feb 12 '09
Liberals 44% / 47% / 52%
New Democrats 42% / 33% / 36%
Green 12% / 16% / 12%
The polls have been all over the place. Reading through Tielman's blog, the point and several others are making is that the electorate is volatile to say the least. There are a few other excellent comments with respect to the depth of any Liberal support and the lack of details released by Mustel (including the short time frame between polls).
The potentially most serious flie in the soup is the Gag Law now in effect. It leaves the field wide open for the Liberal shills in the MSM to set the issues and the agenda.
We'll see how it plays. Funny how the serious economic dislocation caused by the "asian flu" was readily placed at the feet of the NDP, but this "Campbell Contraction", worsened by the priorities of the provincial Liberals is always explained as beyond their control!
The shorter time-frame between the Mustel polls can be easily explained: we're close to an election.
"The poll supposedly has the BC Liberals in Burnaby "in trouble" - that could be a euphemism meaning anything from a dead heat to being behind by a wide margin."
I think most who read it, would see that as meaning "dead heat".
At the Federal level, Svend Robinson may still have a residual affect on Burnaby. Siksay and Julian are also fairly strong MPs. Siksay barely got re-elected though. At the provincial level, the NDP lost three tight races. There is not a huge difference.
Agreed on forestry towns. They will have their own dynamic.
That was a "push poll" released by Strategic Counsel in the waning days of the 2005 campaign showing the Libs with a 13% winning margin.
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2005/05/16/GlobePollUnethical/
That was the only BC provincial poll ever relased by Strategic Counsel.
Ipsos and ARS should be also releasing poll results soon. But I'm also leary of ARS (being the BC polling infant) based upon their Alberta election polling results and their Saskatchewan federal election polling results, even though they have had some "good" results in other jurisdictions.
ARS was dead-on in the last two Quebec elections, the Manitoba election, the federal election and the Saskatchewan provincial election. Every company gets it wrong at least once.
Who knows what questions may have come before the vote question on the Mustel poll?
BTW: I've been through this with people a million times. A "push" poll has nothing to do with what were talking about here. A push poll is one where no data is even collected - where a candidate fakes conducting poll as a way of planting dirt about their opponents - for example is every single person in Jack Layton's riding got a call from a non-existent polling company asking if they would be more or less likely to vote for him if they knew that he was a child molester. What you are talking about can be called a "biased" or a "skewed" poll - but a "push poll" is something very specific.
Thanks for the posts - and while I love the fact that many people visit my blog, I agree with the comment that the BC Liberals couldn't be that desperate or sophisticated to "con" or "set me up" with false info the day before a Mustel poll comes out - a poll no one knew the results of anyway.
What would be the point? I also find it interesting that BC Liberal insider Jordan Bateman is willing to tell us all that the internal poll he has allegedly seen has a "double digit" lead for the Libs.
My job is to report what I hear - I gave readers lots of context from previous polls showing the volatility of voters in BC.
Internal party polls are always a dubious commodity since no one on the outside can see them, the questions or the cross-tabs but I am more than willing to publish what I hear and allow readers to decide for themselves.
I agree Cloverdale being close seems strange but that's what I was told so I simply put it out there.
Lastly, the most dangerous thing of all is to predict the results of an election in BC based on one poll in February!
Bill Tieleman
http://billtieleman.blogspot.com/
I also think its going to have something to do with what happens in that time and so far its been one unfavorable event after another for the Liberals. And since there is an election on anything could surface or happen as its been one shooting after another, roadways unable to accommodate American visitors for Olympics, P3s putting city on the hook, and other such articles. Schools and Hospitals suffering along with Kids being forced into things no children should be forced into and there is a endless list. And all that Homeless and all citizens get to do is talk, talk, talk after 5 years of talking and asking still nothing is done about the housing crisis and its multiplying as many find themselves jobless and homeless. So I imagine even the Olympics advertising on day and night for the next 365 days in its home town will not even camouflage whats really been going on as much has come to the for front. It should be interesting and I am looking forward to election day as I'm certain many are. Did you notice the Feds failed to say exactly what they would be spending on Olympics advertising just that they would be spending something like those P3s as spending becomes private? Campbell promised citizens they would not have to bail out P3s thats what made them so great but City had to do just that bail out P3s and while hurting the number one cities credit rating so people just do not believe are premier as he has lost the publics trust. And I do believe its going to take more than 2 months of constant advertising of the Olympics to get it back in-fact it just may have the opposite affect.
There's a lot of volatility.
Last year people were pissed at Campbell and wanted a change. He was arrogant and stupid and it was time for him to go.
The recession has sent people back to him. They're scared of change and think he'll be a steady hand at the wheel. This is ironic since he totally misjudged the severity of the recession, is billions over-budget for the Olympics and is proposing a dramatic transer to consumption (carbon) taxes.
If Carole James can sink that point AND prove that she's up to the challenge of running the province she may turn things back around again.
Hmmm, what are you going to believe a public poll by a reputable pollster like Mustel that shows an incontrovertible BC Liberal lead or hearsay on an alleged internal poll?
If Mustel says the NDP is down 16%, then the party starts the post-third party advertising period deep in the hole. The only silver lining (for both parties depending on how it cuts) is that most BCers aren't paying attention. Can anybody say electoral fatigue?