Last weekend I found myself in a conversation with a colleague of mine who asked how almost 30% of respondents to polls could still say they supported the Liberals. He seemed quite pleased with the Conservative lead but was still disappointed in Liberal supporters.
Being the political animal that I am I then piped up and stated that if an election was held on the following Monday the Liberals would probably win, possibly a slim majority.
Of course he was skeptical because he believed the polls but of course he only looked at the one part of those polls that was reported by our media.
So I explained it to him.
Anybody that has read this blog before knows my opinion of the public polls. However, I still used them for the first part of my argument. Although, the party support question shows a clear lead for the Conservatives the underlying numbers tell a different story. The PM still comes out on top as the best PM, the gap between his approval and disapproval ratings has grown but his approval rating is still above 35%. Those pollsters that ask about the appetite for change still show that only around 60-65% of respondents want change. If that 35% were to translate into actual votes then the Liberals would win a majority government. I also pointed out that the PM's underlying numbers are better than both Stephen Harper's and Jean Chretien's at the eight year marks of their governments.
Of course, we really cannot depend on the polls to provide us with much useful information. I just used it to demonstrate to him that the polls are not as reliable as he believes in telling us what is the actual political situation in this country.
I then asked him whether there was any speculation out there about a Fall election? The polls seem to be indicating that all of the Opposition Parties would feast on the Liberals in an election so there would be an incentive for them to bring down the Liberal minority government and forcing an election. However, such speculation is not evident. The Opposition will have at least eight opportunities to vote non-confidence in the government and so far this Fall no one is suggesting they will. Everybody and their dog is suggesting the PM resign personally but no one is saying he should resign his government and call an election. That should be a bigger indicator of what the real political situation is at the Federal level than the polls.
As well, I pointed out that political parties in great shape do not have their leader make a sudden and jarring change in their appearance and demeanour. Heck, Mr. Poilievre did not only change his appearance it would also seem that he hired a vocal coach to change his voice. They also do not spend millions of dollars on an advertizement campaign during the dog days of summer if their political situation is a good one.
I pointed out that both the Conservatives and the Liberals have developed rather sophisticated data science capabilities, where data professional collect data from a variety of more reliable sources than the public polls and then crunch the numbers to give their respective leaders an idea of the support for their party at the riding level. If those analyses matched what the public polls were telling us all of the political parties would be gearing up for a Fall election.
Finally, I pointed out that the Bloc seems to be fading a bit in Quebec. As the Bloc only cares about Quebec and they essentially have all of the seats they can really win there the incentive for Mr. Blanchet to tour Quebec during the summer is quite low. However, he did just that this summer, much more than last year.
In both 2019 and 2021 the Liberals were denied a majority government because of the Bloc. If the Liberals can win just 10 seats from them in a future election and assuming they are able to win the same number of seats as they now hold in the ROC the Liberals would win a slim majority government. Yes there are alot of assumptions there but based on what we are currently seeing those assumptions are not unreasonable.
If you look at just one part of the public polls, without looking at other parts of them and how the political parties are going into the Fall, it looks gruesome for the Liberals. However, if you look at the bigger picture it is telling us a different story.
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