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Polling thread for ONDP Leadership race (and related provincial polling)
February 17, 2009 - 1:18pm
Okay, here's the polling thread! I'm making this sticky too. Have at it!
I received and have spoken with several others who received the same robo call and most of us assumed it came from a particular campaign (likely the same suspicion that you had Scott), but given the 5 options for "issues" I suppose it could have been from a candidate other than the obvious one......
We don't have any polls in this race, and might not get any considering the low media interest. We do have a few numbers that are publicly available that can give us some sense of where the race stands. Here are the ones I can find:
Most MPP endorsements: Horwath
Most MP endorsements: Bisson
Most municipal endorsements: Prue
Most memberships sold: Bisson
Most money raised: Prue
Most Facebook supporters: Horwath
Some of these are obviously more important factors than others, but it's interesting how even it is.
In your dreams Stockholm. LOL (that was quite funny and good tag).
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"Do we have any evidence of polling being done. I had a the same robo-call that others have reported, but I suspect that was a certain campaign."
I had similar suspicions. Now that The Star has revealed who the McGuinty Liberals would like to see as the next ONDP leader, perhaps they've dolled out some of the notorious Liberal slush fund to get a sense if their planned straw (wo)man for the next election is panning out.
This comment isn't about the NDP, but I did receive a polling firm call last Thursday. It is a Liberal Poll, because the questions were set up like a Liberal Push Poll.
I paraphrase
1) Have you heard of the Liberal Green Energy ACT?
2) Would you be willing to pay 30% more for Hydro?
3) What is the most important issue.
Ironically, they didn't have Job Protection, The Economy, Job Loss, as a choice. It was environment..... then.....
4) Did you know that the Green Energy Strategy will provide 50000 jobs? Do you support this?
5) Do you think the Federal Conservatives are doing a good job?
6) Have you heard about the initiatives of the Ontario Liberals in the last 3 weeks? Do you support them?
7) Do you think Ontario is going in the right direction with its Green Jobs Strategy.
8) Do you Agree that Green Jobs should be the NUMBER ONE priority of the Ontario Government?
9) Do you agree that the government should enforce Green energy in communities?
Many more questions like this.
http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/news/Product.asp?ProductID=2821
I can assure you that it was not me calling you!
A couple of points/reminders:
- Bisson's campaign has produced absolutely no evidence that they've sold the most memberships. Gilles' riding has seen the most growth. But, unless you assume that the other candidates only sold memberships in their own ridings (they didn't) then that doesn't prove very much.
- If Tabuns had recieved the endorsement of the Star (for the record he was dismissed as a "single issue candidate") I wonder if synthome would have withdrawn his support?
This just in : Switch to green jobs crucial for Ontario, McGuinty says
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/591708
Looks like the old, before we issue a press release through out media outlet we'll poll the electorate to see if they are interested in the article first. Love how the news gets to be news!
Sunday.... All you need to do is look at the membership lists, it's pretty self-evident. Bisson's campaign obviously knows who and how many they signed up because they'd have those names as marks to pull the vote on, right? What's the point of signing up members if you don't plan on getting them out to vote?
My bigger question is if the other campaigns don't believe the Bisson campaigns numbers, why haven't any of the other campaigns come out and said that they have either sold more or called those numbers into question? I can't help but believe that if they really doubted those numbers, they would have said something about them so far. If they had sold more members outside in other ridings, they would have said something too because if they were doing a proper membership drive, they'd know who they signed up, where and for how much. It would be a good news story for them. So why the silence on their part?
Of course not, Robo. The questions were short and easy to understand.
Why would an ONDP Leadership campaign spend money on AUTOMATED POLLING??? People hate Automated polling. The most common way people deal with automated polling is to hang up. The 2nd most common way to deal with automated polling is to eliminate the source of it.
Maybe I am wrong. While I did receive the above poll from a polling firm, and have every reason to believe it was paid for by the Liberals or our Ontario Government, at least there was a person on the other end.
I have no use for automated polling, and would never respond to questions in an automated poll.
Automated polling is now the standard way that political polling is done in the US - and in the most recent campaign it was also highly accurate - so obviously a representative number of people DO respond to them.
I suspect that any ONDP leadership campaign would prefer to reach more people by in-person polling - but doing that is also vastly more expensive and none of the campaigns seems to be all that well funded - they probably figure that automated calling/polling isn't great, but its all they can afford and is better than nothing.
The Bisson campaign did release a statement saying that Gilles riding had the most new members: "NEW MEMBERSHIP NUMBERS PUT TIMMINS JAMES BAY ON TOP" and implied that that somehow proved Gilles had had a succesful membership run. But you can read it as many times as you like: it never states how many new members the Bisson campaign signed up. Nor does it state that Bisson's campaign signed up more than anyone else.
It just doesn't.
He has said it himself in person at debates, and when he has said it, the other candidates haven't called him on it. Wonder why that is? Maybe because they know he's right
Another very approximate way of looking at how the race stands is by looking at how many members are in each region. Every campaign has supporters everywhere, but they also have concentrated areas of strength. These should give some approximate numbers:
GTA: About even Prue/Tabuns
North: Should be pretty solid for Bisson
Hamilton-Niagara: Andrea territory
Ottawa: Dewar and Broadbent should give Tabuns the edge here
London: Mathyssen should also help Tabuns here
Windsor: Prue seems to have the most support
Kitcherner-Waterloo: Andrea has a lot of the key people
Guelph: Tabuns seems to have the most support
Rural Ontario: Unsure, no campaign seems to really stand out here
Looking at the various membership counts, these very rough numbers give:
Tabuns - 6900, Bisson - 5300, Prue - 4600, Horwath - 3700
That's very true. There doesn't seem to be a mass movement of labour in any one direction. If anyone has a larger share of union support it seems to be Horwath, and everyone knows about the issues in Tabuns' past so that might hurt him a bit there.
The labour vote would thus seem to make it even closer than the above numbers indicate.
Scarberian, this is an inexact science and no one's seen any polls but I think you're dramatically overestimating Prue's support (particularly in Toronto), somewhat overestimating Bisson's and very seriously underestimating Horwath's.
I'm sure, before long, people of all partisan affiliations will be weighing in and for all I know I could be way off. But I do know:
- The President of the Steelworkers has never endorsed a fourth place candidate as far as I know. In fact, I think every NDP leadership candidate they've endorsed (federal or provincial) has emerged in first or second. There's a first time for everything I suppose... but I think it's foolish to assume they've bet on the last horse in this race.
- Tabuns has already declared this a two-horse race. He could be lying to throw us all off but, again, I don't see why he would.
I can tell you that this surely isn't a two horse race. It's at the very least a three horse race because of how split the labour vote is and because of how the membership vote breaks down. Going into convention, this thing is very much up in the air.
I agree it's up in the air but I only see Tabuns or Horwath winning. I don't think Gilles has significant strength outside the North and I anticipate he'll start strong but he won't grow on subsequent ballots.
Again, this is all deduced from pretty meagre evidence. We'll have to wait and see.
I agree on the meagre evidence part of things. Honestly though, I can quite easily see Gilles winning it because this race is not about the first ballot, because no one is winning it in one ballot (I think we can all agree on that), it's about the subsequent ballots. For everything that I've seen and heard, I think he has the advantage there.
Anyway, all of this is hard to tell because of the lack of evidence/polling out there, along with the fact that this is the first time that the provincial party has ever done this like this and all the moving pieces (voter turn-out, the divides in labour, etc). There are too many variables here, but I don't see that as a bad thing. It's always good for a party to have an actual race, rather than a coronation.
I find it funny to read all these "two person races" that people are creating.
Horwath and Tabuns
Prue and Bisson
Horwath and Bisson
Bisson and Prue
Prue and Horwath
Tabuns and Bisson
And on it goes. THe only one i don't think I have read is a two person
Prue and Tabuns race.
I can see no front runner from the posts here on babble. I can see no backmarker either. I do see alot of opinion and speculation. Clearly, this will not be won on the 1st ballot, and the person who finishes in 4th will shock and disapoint many supporters.
It may be good for the NDP to not have a coronation. It may bring more media coverage to the event because no one knows how it will go. And the NDP could use media coverage.
In the past I've been involved with NDP leadership campaigns, but the Ontario NDP has long left me cold so I'm done doing anything with them. So here is my outside perspective:
Overall these are the dullest candidates I have seen in a leadership race. Regardless of who wins, I think the Ontario NDP will be out to pasture for some time. For all of Layton's faults, he has at least brought some engergy back to the federal NDP and has gotten some decent electoral results. I don't think that will happen in the ONDP.
Having said that, I predict Horwath will win. She is the only one that I can see having any upside at all. Mostly because she is still pretty unknown, so she at least has the chance to surprise people. The others are known too well, and that is their problem. Also, I can't see Tabuns supporters going to Prue or vice versa. I think Horwath will be the beneficiary of whichever of those two gets knocked off.
My two cents from a former NDP supporter.
"Also, I can't see Tabuns supporters going to Prue or vice versa."
That may be true of the dozen or so people who are actively involved in the Tabuns and Prue campaigns - but among the thousands of card-carrying ONDP members who are paying only very superficial attention to the race - you may be surprised at how many may rank Tabuns-Prue or Prue-Tabuns 1/2. About 98% of the people voting are blissfully unaware of any bad blood that exists between any of the candidates and will rank their choices based on some vague combination of name recognition and small bits and pieces of hear-say. Most ONDP members just see two middle aged male MPPs from adjacent ridings in the east end of Toronto and probably assume that they are almost interchangeable.
No matter who emerges as leader - the ONDP will almost certainly gain seats in the next election - despite itself. The economy will keep deteriorating, McGuinty is almost certain to become way more unpopular in this second term and when Liberal support declines, the NDP gains seats - even if it does nothing but tread water.