Polling Thread - Iggy Honeymoon Deathwatch

other problems for Iggy seen in Ekos poll
LIBERALS SLUMP ON ELECTION THREAT AND IMPROVING ECONOMY - June 25, 2009

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Ontario Now Dead Heat

[Ottawa – June 25, 2009] – The Conservative Party has edged ahead of the Liberal Party after months of lagging behind, according to the latest EKOS poll, released exclusively to cbc.ca.

The Liberal Party and its leader, Michael Ignatieff, appear to have paid a price for threatening to take the country to the polls this summer. EKOS’ daily tracking shows that they nose-dived after making the threat last week. Although the Liberals may have recovered some of that ground once they made a deal with Prime Minister Harper to avoid an election after all, it has nonetheless been a bad week for them.

At the same time, the Conservatives are benefitting from rising optimism about the economy among some Canadians – those affected more directly by the economic news or stock and real estate markets than by the labour market, which continues to deteriorate.

The Liberals may well recover from this short-term political setback,” said EKOS President Frank Graves. “At least that has been the pattern of the last six months when purely political events have rocked Canadians’ voting intentions.”

“More hopeful for the Conservatives and worrisome for the Liberals is the rising optimism on the economy, which is clearly behind some of the movement back to the Conservatives from the Liberals in recent weeks. This might have the makings of a more enduring trend.”

The principal movement in this most recent poll took place in Ontario. For several months the Liberals have enjoyed an advantage in the province, often reaching into the double-digits. Now, they are neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in Canada’s largest province.

“The Liberals need Ontario to win an election,” Graves said. “They were gaining ground there, but now that advantage has disappeared.

“Another problem for the Liberals is the fact that baby boomers who were an important part of the party’s success in the winter as they shifted from the Conservatives to the Liberals, are now trending strongly back to the Conservatives,” said Graves. “This may be important if the Conservatives hope to reclaim first-place in the medium term.”

Michael Ignatieff’s personal approval rating also took a substantial dip last week. Earlier in the year, while many Canadians said they did not yet know him, those who did have an opinion of the Liberal leader approved of the job he was doing by a substantial margin. By the beginning of this month, more people were familiar with him, and his approval rating was essentially neutral. Now, in this most recent poll, he has slumped into net-negative territory. As with the party’s fortunes more generally, the most wounding change was in Ontario.

“There could be a couple of factors at play here,” said Graves. “It may be that the Tory ad campaign aimed at Ignatieff is finally starting to have a corrosive effect on his reputation. At the same time, Ignatieff was the public face of the Liberal brinksmanship last week, and that may have affected his personal reputation as well as the party’s.”

“Ignatieff’s negatives are not as serious as Stephen Harper’s, but the prime minister has been heading in the right direction in recent weeks, while Ignatieff’s numbers have been heading south. Canadians may not have wanted an election this summer, but they are certainly going to have a campaign nonetheless, as all the parties – and all the leaders – try to move these numbers.”

Click here for complete survey results: 0779-full-report-_june-25_

There is a brand new Nanos poll that shows the following:

Liberals - 36%

Tories - 32%

NDP - 17%

BQ - 10%

so-called Greens - 5% (is the parrot dead yet??)

http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/POLNAT-S09-T380E.pdf

Stockholm wrote:

There is a brand new Nanos poll that shows the following:

Liberals - 36%

Tories - 32%

NDP - 17%

BQ - 10%

so-called Greens - 5% (is the parrot dead yet??)

http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/POLNAT-S09-T380E.pdf

This seems to be the best poll for the Liberals of those that have come out over the past week since a couple of the others have showed the Liberals losing a few points to the Conservatives.  Obviously all the polls are pretty close between the parties though.

Yes, it would be interesting to know what the true measure of Green support is as their numbers seem a bit high in some of the other polls.

NorthReport wrote:

Just had a look at the Nanos website, and the polling changes are quite staggering since they began recording the stats:

Liberals have gone from 49% support to 36.3%. an astonishing drop of 26%

Conservatives have gone from 35% to 32.2%, a drop of 8%

Meanwhile the Democratic Party has gone from 10% to 16.8%, up an incredible 68%; not too shabby for a party whose leader who rides his bicycle around town.

 if i were a Liberal party supporter, I wouldn't be taking solice from the Nanos poll.

You appear to be measuring historical trends going back a number of years to when the Liberals were in government.  But the current numbers are what is relevant, and those have the Liberals ahead and doing much better than they were in the last election.  Meanwhile the NDP support is stagnant and the Conservative support has declined.

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Don't talk that way - cats are people too, you know!

Keeping iwth the theme of the deathwatch on Iggy, consider the triage problem. Medically this can mean when you are overwhelmed with the wounded you sort them into three categories-  thsoe you think are going to die, even if you give them assistance - you give them no assistance and  let them die,  - thsoe you think  will live even if you don't give them assistance- you let them live on their own, and the crucial category--you concentrate on -those you think ay live if you give medical asiatnace but die if you don't'

Politically, Iggy and his Liberal  team have to divide the 308 ridings into three categories- those incumbent  Liberals he thinks will win without any help from the central campaign, the crucial categogy  , those rdings which may be won if they get help from the central campaing but lose if they don't. get help and  with scarece resources has to  ruthlessly categorize a lot of ridings as losers  those ridings the Liberasl won't win even if they get help from central.

 In the old days of Liberal majority government, Liberal central could assume most of the incumbents, perhaps 100 or  so,  - wouild get re-elected on their own or with little help from the central campaign, cabinet ministers or incumbents in ridings the Liberals had held for  decades..  There might be other 100 seats in that crucial  categoy to be assited 50 or  so incumbents who reasonably could lose if they didn't get help from the central,  and another  50 or  so  seats they  didn't hold but figured could be won if the central campaign helped out.. Win nost of your 100 or  so safe incumbenht seats and half your assisted winnable ridings and you got to be government again.

The problem  Iggy has on the deathwatch  is he doesn't have 100   safe incumbent seats, sure of winning without help from the central campaign, there are no cabinet ministers and not that many Liberals  seats the party has held for decades. Given the Liberals have steadily lost seats the last few elections most, if not all, of the Liberal incubments wil be calling for help from the central cqmpaign- money, advertising, visits from the leader. But if you concentrate asll your resources on holding to what you have now there is no growth and no life.If they have any hope of forming a government  Iggy and cKiberal ampaign central have to cut most incumbvnets loose to live or die on thier own and concentrate  resources on  50 or 100 seats they consider and hope and pray are winnable. Somtimes they may look to pick up huge gains in Quebec and sometimes they look at losing seats in Quebec. Sometimes they look at gaining seats in Ontario and sometimes they look at losing serats in Ojtario. what about the West ? what about Atlantic Canada?

And the risk when you are weak and pull the plug, hoping to win an election,  it may be you who suffers.

Speaking of the Iggy honeymoon death watch, I have to say that when Chantal Hebert is good, she is good!

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/658102

"For 36 crucial hours, no one could provide a coherent script for his session finale. His MPs were in the dark; his spin doctors were offering up contradictory explanations. Ignatieff looked like he was making up his lines as he went along.

If this had been the first act of a campaign, the Liberal leader would have risked being booed off the stage."

"It is a paradox that a party that prides itself on being led by a public intellectual is coming up with so few genuinely fresh or challenging ideas.

For six months, Ignatieff has been recycling bits and pieces of past Liberal platforms, many of them conceived in more affluent times. He has also hammered away at Harper's economic management, but in the absence of any concrete indication that he would do anything differently, he has failed to make a decisive dent in the perception that the Prime Minister is the better leader of the two."

Stockholm wrote:

Another large Quebec poll, this time from Leger with an n of 1,000 and it appears that the CROP poll showing the NDP at 17% in Quebec was no fluke. Leger has the BQ and the Libs tied at 35% each, the NDP at 15% (not as good as 17% but I'll take it) and the Tories dead last at 11%.

http://www.legermarketing.com/documents/pol/096301FR.pdf

As for the Conservative government:

Tres Satisfait          3%

Tres Insatisfait      40%

Stockholm wrote:

Another large Quebec poll, this time from Leger with an n of 1,000 and it appears that the CROP poll showing the NDP at 17% in Quebec was no fluke. Leger has the BQ and the Libs tied at 35% each, the NDP at 15% (not as good as 17% but I'll take it) and the Tories dead last at 11%.

http://www.legermarketing.com/documents/pol/096301FR.pdf

So the numbers for the BQ still continue to be somewhat weak, and lower than the 38% they got on election night, although it's not as if they are in freefall as they are still holding the majority of their vote.

The NDP number is decent, but it is still within the range we saw for the NDP going into the election last year - there is not much change so far, although it is obviously good to be ahead of the Conservatives as that is a change in position from this time a year ago.

There is a new EKOS poll out now that says:

Libs: 32.2%

Tories: 31.0%

NDP: 16.2%

Greens: 11.5%

http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/0779-full-report-_july-2_...

I think that Ekos seems to have a bit of a "house bias" towards towards the Greens since no one else has them anywhere near 11.5%. In fact its interesting that Nanos doesn't prompt any party names at all - he just says "Who would you vote for?" and het gets them below 5%. Anyways, for all the usual pundits doing their circling vulture dance about the NDP - the polls all have the NDP only very slightly below the results of the last election - and higher than in any of the polls from the summer of '08.

do you seriously think that ANYONE in Canada apart from a few diehard political junkies like us would have been paying the slightest attention to a page 49 story about May pulling petals off a daisy over which riding to run in?

I think not.

Stockholm wrote:

There is a new EKOS poll out now that says:

Libs: 32.2%

Tories: 31.0%

NDP: 16.2%

Greens: 11.5%

http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/0779-full-report-_july-2_...

I think that Ekos seems to have a bit of a "house bias" towards towards the Greens since no one else has them anywhere near 11.5%. In fact its interesting that Nanos doesn't prompt any party names at all - he just says "Who would you vote for?" and het gets them below 5%. Anyways, for all the usual pundits doing their circling vulture dance about the NDP - the polls all have the NDP only very slightly below the results of the last election - and higher than in any of the polls from the summer of '08.

I don't think that the pundits were saying the NDP is dead or that it is going to be nearly wiped out like in 1993 - I think what some of them were pointing out was that the support is stagnant and that after several elections of growth in 04, 06 & 08 that there is a danger next time of slipping back again.  Chantal Hebert and others were also exploring the idea that maybe the NDP will need a new leader at some point in the near future to take it to the next step before it loses ground.  There is a danger of it getting squeezed out by the 2 big parties in the next election.

The other thing that is interesting about this poll is that last week when the Conservatives were a point or two ahead several pundits (along with some posters on this board) were practically saying it meant Ignatieff was finished and was in freefall.  Now the Liberals are back in the lead.  Of course, the last 2 polls have had the parties in a statistical tie and so the numbers are not significant, but I guess the good news for Ignatieff is that he seems to have survived the crisis of late June and is holding steady in the polls - for now.

remind wrote:

Your continued post about nothing,  except to rah rah the Liberals, amaze me. As there is nothing to indicate that the NDP will be squeezed out, but yet you insist. Then you say the Liberals are back in the lead, while admitting they are at a statistical tie with the Cons. I guess you recognized after you wrote it down that people would call you on it, eh. ;)

Er no, I pointed out that neither party has a meaningful lead over the other (although the Liberals do in the NANOS poll) but that it shows the Liberals have not had a freefall in support the way some were saying here and elsewhere.  That was the main point, which I think you may have missed. 

It was not a "rah rah" for the Liberals - it was an objective analysis of the situation.

I also was responding to Stockholm's comment about why the pundits were discussing the NDP's numbers in the way they are these days.

For some reason - the "pundits" seem to have a collective obsession with wanting the NDP to go away. If you were to look back at what "the pundits" were all saying in the lead up to the 2006 and 2008 elections (let's set aside 2004 since it was clear even to the most NDP-phobic pundits that the NDP had no where to go but up in that election) - you would see that in each election they all crowed about how the NDP was inevitably going to get squeezed by people polarizing between the Grits and Tories and yadda-yadda - and it keeps on not happening (much to their frustration. Its even less likely to happen now that Ignatieff has led the liberals so far to the right and into a virtual coalition with Harper.

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Apparently not.  It also seems to think others here are stupid and have no memory.

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remind wrote:

Debater wrote:

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

No one said the Liberals were in freefall.  What some have said was that the Liberals had a very bad end of session.  Hard to debate that.

However, you did trumpet that very view, as did a bunch of no-win pundits, about the NDP.  Seems not surprisingly you were full of it.

Actually, several people, including on this board, have basically said the Liberals are in freefall - they have said Ignatieff is finished and will never be PM.  My point was that that prediction appears to be premature and that the Liberals are still very much in the game.

And I did not trumpet a view that the NDP was in bad shape - I have said though that I think there's a strong possibility it will lose ground in the next election.  But we don't know what will happen yet, so I'm not sure why you're using expressions like "full of it" when you can't reach a conclusion on the NDP's results before they happen.

Of course you trumpeted a view that the NDP was in bad shape,  there is no way else this comment of yours below, could be anything else.

"There is a danger of it getting squeezed out by the 2 big parties in the next election."

Do you not look over your own posts to make sure you are not getting tangled in your own web of propaganda?

 

There you go again - attacking for the jugular without thinking.  Getting squeezed out does not mean being in bad shape - it means that the party may not gain ground and may lose a bit.  Being in bad shape would be predicting a freefall, which I did not.

Debater wrote:

remind wrote:

Of course you trumpeted a view that the NDP was in bad shape,  there is no way else this comment of yours below, could be anything else.

"There is a danger of it getting squeezed out by the 2 big parties in the next election."

Do you not look over your own posts to make sure you are not getting tangled in your own web of propaganda?

There you go again - attacking for the jugular without thinking.  Getting squeezed out does not mean being in bad shape - it means that the party may not gain ground and may lose a bit.  Being in bad shape would be predicting a freefall, which I did not.

Oh, I must certainly did think, and your personal attacks are getting tiresome, please do refrain from doing so in the future, thanks.

Let's deconstruct your word usage in building a conceptual framework indicating the NDP was in bad shape.

First of all, you set the tone of the NDP being in "danger", as if there were some evidence to indicate such when there isn't. Then you brought in the "squeezed out" phrase, which does not actually mean that the party may not gain ground and may lose a bit. It means "squeezed out".

In order for your phrasing to be accurate to your latest version of what your words were meant to mean, the use of "squeezed" without the "out" would have been the actual descriptor. That you added "out" to squeeze changes the whole conceptual meaning. It means that the NDP has already been squeezed, and has potential to be completely gone in the next election.

"Squeezed out" by the other 2 "big" parties indicates complete eradication, as when majority shareholders squeeze out minority shareholders, as opposed to "squeezed" meaning exerting pressure from both sides to compress, in this case the NDP's vote share.

So you can clearly see, why your word use choise indicated, erroneously, that the NDP was in bad shape.

KenS wrote:

And neither were there ".. several people, including on this board, have basically said the Liberals are in freefall.."

Sure, if you want to paint the brush broadly enough.... there are people somehere who said that. We're talking about here- and I rather doubt there was even one, but there certainly were not several. 

Debater wrote:

North Report is one who said so - plain as day.

I don't know why you are disputing it.

You just quoted me even, I did not dispute that one person said it. Read the words, I disputed what you said, not what you acted as if I said.

This has already been said, but I'll put it a different way.

What aggravates people about you is not that you argue the positions of a Liberal partisan. If that was all, it would be useful for discussion, and refreshing even.

What aggravates people is your passive aggressive schtick, and lawerly twisting of words- both what others said and shape shifting your own words to move the goalposts.

And in case you don't know, 'lawerly' is not a compliment. Not even an unintended one, as in a sour grapes unintended acknowledgement that someone has been clever. Being lawerly is just a cheap intellectual parlour trick.

Strategic Counsel pollster said today that the honeymoon is over.

Glad to see the Bloc are doing well in PQ. :D

Guess Harper's attack ads worked.

lol not quite!

Take out Alberta, and you wouldn't.