On the face of it, yesterday morning’s surprising Edmonton Journal–Calgary Herald-Environics poll of which Alberta Conservative leadership candidates have the most support among their party’s members seems like a brilliant journalistic coup.
It showed Gary Mar in the lead, but not by enough to capture the leadership on the first vote. Astonishingly, Alison Redford was in second place, possibly poised to win on the second ballot. Steady old Doug Horner came third. And Ted Morton, the leading candidate of the right, was fading into the distance. What a terrific yarn!
This, in turn, provided a great opportunity for some entertaining journalistic commentary on how the Alberta leadership contest is really turning into a horserace.
But like something that’s been just a little too long at the back of the fridge, this little morsel may look tasty, but there’s a whiff of something not quite right about it!
According to an updated version of the story published yesterday evening by the Edmonton Journal, the Environics’ Sept. 8-9 telephone survey of 800 card-carrying Tories, whose names in turn were taken from a 22,000-name list of party members registered before September, “was conducted for the Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Herald.”
This answers one important question that was implied but not directly addressed in the original version of the story — that is, for whom was the survey conducted? But this answer in turn raises other important questions, the first and most important of which is, where did the list used by Environics come from?
This is an important question because it goes to how much we can really trust the poll, not to mention whether someone broke Alberta’s privacy protection law when the list made its way to a newspaper, or directly to the pollster. At any rate, when we tug this thread, things begin to unravel in interesting ways.
It’s known that the 22,000-name membership list was given by the Progressive Conservative Party to each of the six leadership candidates’ campaigns. It seems unlikely that the PCs would have given the list to either a newspaper or directly to the pollster, but surely the party will have to weigh in soon and confirm that this is so.
The simplest explanation is that one of the campaigns provided the list to the newspaper, which passed it on to the pollster, which then used it to conduct the poll. Or perhaps a campaign passed it directly to the pollster, which contacted the newspapers with the idea of a poll.
Regardless, the next obvious question is, which campaign? The Herald–Journal story does not help us with this information, but it seems reasonable at this point in our inquiry to ask, cui bono — who benefits?
Not Gary Mar, surely, who is left in the unenviable position of appearing to have to win on the first ballot or be bypassed by the deal-makers on the second. And certainly not Ted Morton, the other candidate often called a frontrunner, who appears to have been left in the dust. Nor Doug Horner, who emerges looking pretty weak.
Then there is the matter of whether the passing of names, telephone numbers and possibly other information about the members of any Alberta political party is permitted under Alberta’s privacy legislation. Even if it turns out the transfer is legal, there is an ethical question about handing around this kind of information.
I don’t know about you, but if I were a member of the Alberta PCs — and let the record show, I am not, nor have I ever been — I would be none too pleased to learn my private information, given to the party in good faith, was being passed around among pollsters and journalists.
Indeed, every time the list was passed along, it’s possible there was a breach of the law. One would hope that Alberta’s independent Information and Privacy Commissioner would look into this matter, and one would expect the PC Party to do the same.
Finally, there is the question of the accuracy of the list itself that is bound to arise when a situation like this emerges. The chain of evidence, as it were, has been broken. Given the uncertain provenance of the list used by Environics, is there any way Alberta newspaper readers can be assured it really contained only the names of PC members who joined the party before the end of August?
It’s hard to imagine that anyone would tamper with a list like this before delivering it to a pollster or a newspaper, but it seems reasonable at this point to suggest Environics turn the list it used over to the PC Party, and for the party to assure the public that it is the same as the 22,000-name list it provided to each of the leadership campaigns so we can be confident the poll results reflect the true standing of the candidates.
One doubts that these questions will be pursued too vigorously by our provincial media. Perhaps this is an opportunity for one of Canada’s national newspapers to do some good reporting about Alberta.
This poll also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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