karl_30

The Liberals are meeting in Montreal with the Olympics as a possibly distracting backdrop.

The Prime Minister’s visit to Mexico might also provide a soupçon of distraction, except for the fact that there is very little real news emerging from that set piece event.

The Ukraine is providing a surfeit of bad news that ought to seriously distract us all.

But that news is not the kind that will inflame partisan passion in Canada. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich does not have too many fans — in any political party — in this country.

The less agonizing happenings at the Liberal Convention provide an opportunity for political writers of all kinds to engage in the sort of reporting that most claim they eschew, but secretly love.

In the trade it is called “horse race” reporting.

Who’s up? Who’s down? Who’s rising? Who’s falling? What do the publicly available opinion polls say? What do the polls only insiders see say? Or, rather, what do the insiders intimate those polls say?

No journalist will admit that their coverage is influenced by public opinion polls. But the polls influence us all more than we admit.

Ever since Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau started rising in most polls, the media, in general, have described the Canadian political universe as (once more, as it used to be) a two-way competition between the two traditional governing parties.

The NDP may be the Official Opposition, and, by all accounts, may be doing a more than creditable job.

No matter.

The polls, we are to believe, now tell us that race is between Trudeau and Harper, with Mulcair and the NDP relegated to the traditional third party role.

Byelections were a genuine test of voter sentiment

It all might turn out that way in 2015.

But the problem with that paradigm, today, in February 2014, is that it is not borne out by sound and solid evidence.

It is a truism that polls are a mere snapshot: a frozen moment in the (recent) past, not a predictor of the future.

But it is even truer that the further poll respondents are from actual events, such as an election that is about 18 months away, the less their choices have any genuine conviction.

People who are polled do a lot of vote-parking this far from actually having to vote.

The only actual choices voters have had to make recently were in last November’s four byelections.

Those had the Conservative vote down, quite a bit and across the board, in all ridings — even though they held the two ridings in Manitoba that they won in 2011.

The Liberals were significantly up in Manitoba; but pretty much where they were in 2011 in Ontario and Quebec.

And, polls notwithstanding, the NDP held its 2011 level of support in Ontario and Quebec; but lost a great deal of ground in Manitoba vis-à-vis 2011.

News of those byelections is stale by now, in any case. They happened nearly two months ago — an eternity in politics.

There have been plenty of polls since then, however.

As long as someone is willing to pay them, the Ipsos-Reids, Angus Reids, Nanos’, Ekos’, Abacus’ et al. will happily do their nightclub magic acts.

They’ll gleefully and enthusiastically take to the talking head circuit and spout explanations and rationalizations in what has become the grand tradition of political-journalism-as-sports-coverage.

It is all about tactics and image; strategy and positioning. None of it has any real import for real people.

In this fantasy world, the interplay of policy and politics does not mean that the environment will be healthier or sicker, that the poor will be any less poor or the rich any less rich, or that the sources of conflict and war in the world will be more or less virulent.

It is all a mere game of no more significance than the ones they are playing in Sochi right now — indeed, perhaps not even as much significance.

And so coverage of Trudeau and the Liberals in Montreal will inevitably focus not, as Duncan Cameron did, on the Liberals’ policy resolutions, but on the really big question: do they have what it takes to win?

Read all the polls carefully and analytically

Before anyone gets too carried away, however, it might be worth considering that the most recent polls — those of Ipsos-Reid, Angus Reid and, in Quebec only, CROP — definitely do not show a bipolar political universe in Canada. Not right now, at any rate.

They all show a fairly close three-way race, nationally.

More important, regionally, which is where the polls really count, given our first-past-the-post system, the polls tell a highly complex and nuanced tale.

Some show the Liberals ahead in Ontario; some, the Conservatives and at least one depicts something close to a three-way tie in Canada’s most populous province.

In Quebec, the most recent polls seem to indicate something of a resurgence of support for the NDP, at least among francophones.

There is little doubt that Trudeau has great appeal to non-francophone Quebeckers, for whom his father is still a larger-than-life hero. If that appeal translates into votes come the next election it will cost the NDP a number of seats it won last time, especially in western Montreal.

In Quebec’s 45 to 50 predominantly francophone ridings, however, it is a different story. There, the recent polls show significant resilience for the NDP. Currently a number of seat projections (which are always highly speculative, mind you) have the NDP hanging on to the majority of those seats.

As for the other big battleground, British Columbia, the most recent polls are, again, quite divided.

Some show a literal three-way tie; while some now actually have the NDP and Conservatives vying for the lead, with the Liberals in third place.

The point is, of course, that these polls are but the ephemera of politics, only so much will-o’-wisp in the breeze.

Any comfort or encouragement they might offer to any party would be without true substance.

But if pundits and reporters insist on quoting the polls, as though they have meaning, they should take the time to analyze them — all of them — very carefully.

Karl Nerenberg

Karl Nerenberg joined rabble in 2011 to cover Canadian politics. He has worked as a journalist and filmmaker for many decades, including two and a half decades at CBC/Radio-Canada. Among his career highlights...