Smoke, Mirrors, and Poll Results

Voters aren't always rational, so why would we expect poll results to be any different?

Three weeks into the campaign, the polls are finally starting to show a little life. The most interesting development has been the rise of the New Democrats in Quebec, where, according to the latest polls, they have surged to first place, even ahead of the Bloc Québécois.

In truth, this doesn’t mean a lot. While this is good news for Outremont NDP MP Thomas Mulcair (a likely successor to Jack Layton) and may even mean he will be joined by a Quebec colleague or two in the NDP caucus, one has to remember that regional polls are less accurate, and that the accompanying “rise” of the New Democrats in polls across the country only brings them back to the same place they were – around 19 per cent – when the writ was dropped.

A Nanos poll from earlier this week shows that, overall, there has been little movement for the other parties. After some pointless meandering, they are all basically back where they started in late March. The only party that is doing worse now than it was before is the Bloc Québécois, whose polling results are of course only drawn from Quebec. BQ Leader Gilles Duceppe is now carping about the NDP splitting the vote in la belle province and letting the Conservatives slip in the back door. While this is possible in some ridings, for months now the Conservatives’ messaging has not been playing well in the aggressively secular Quebec. As a result, the Conservatives will almost certainly lose at least a couple of seats there.

For The Mark’s full election coverage, click here.

For a quick guide to where the parties stand on the major issues, click here.

It’s a sad truth that election campaigns amount to little more than mixtures of smoke, holograms, M.C. Escher lithographs, and 3-D sidewalk-chalk drawings. There is very little about them that is solid or real. The current federal election is no exception.

This election largely consists of promises made that no one believes can, or will, be kept, coupled with highly artificial images of politicians doing things they would never ordinarily do, and a public that is responding to all this vapour with what are largely gut reactions.

My favourite illustration of all this irrational emoting is the Nanos Leadership Index, which records … well, it’s hard to really say what it records, aside from perceptions of the party leaders’ ability to crush skulls and bring home fresh deer haunches.

More seriously, though, the index is based on Canadians’ sense of the party leaders’ trustworthiness, and perceptions of their competence and “vision for Canada.” These are deeply emotional concepts, and the poll shows it clearly. The lines of the poll show few actual trends, per se. Instead, they look rather like Canada’s electrocardiograph (or should I say “electioncardiograph”), with constant jumps up and down. The prime minister’s “leadership line,” in particular, goes up and down regularly. He received something of a noticeable boost after his solid performance in the leadership debates, but now seems to be suffering a similarly visible drop.

That’s just silly. Like him or loathe him, Stephen Harper has pretty well been the same guy since his election in 2006. So what is this poll really measuring?

Part of the answer to that question may lie in an EKOS poll that was released shortly before the election call. “Power and Knowledge: Shifting Public Perspectives” is a thoroughly fascinating, in-depth study of how Canadians perceive the roles of knowledge, expertise, and faith in public and private life.

For Canadians who complacently look south of the border and see mass movements based on irrational fears that the president is a foreign agent, or respected commentators saying evolution is only a “theory,” this poll should give them pause.