Niqabs! Polling Station Phobias! Balanced Budgets! Why This Latest EKOS Poll Needs to be Taken Seriously

Well boys n girls, the latest poll came out from EKOS and it is no longer a 3 way tie (warning, the choir I normally preach to will not like this post). Harper is out ahead now with 35.4% with the Liberals and NDP in a virtual tie trailing behind them by approximately 10 percentage points.  Given that I’ve always found and sure others too, that EKOS has a history of skewing away from Cons, this poll should be taken seriously. It is also in line with my own research on seat count projections.  The rolling nightly polls of Nanos which had been pointing to a 3-way-tie will, I imagine catch up with this one as will others.

Forum also has the Harpercons ahead, albeit slightly , a pollster I rely less on most of the time due to the fact that they have been getting election projections very wrong for the past several years, is also more or less congruent to the seat count projections I’ve been seeing.

I knew for some time now that Harper would likely come back with a majority.  Before anyone calls me “crazy” again like they did prior to the 2011 election when I predicted for the longest time that Harper would get a majority, keep in mind, while every pollster had it wrong back then, I held fast to that prediction and was proven correct.  I believe this to be true again for a variety of reasons.

Frank Graves of EKOS cites the following reasons for the Harpercons’ good fortunes:

Harper may also be getting a credibility boost out of the wrangling about the importance of balanced budgets.

As Trudeau had pointed out in the G & M debate regarding the economy, it is funny how Harper only manages to balance the books during election year. Heh! More like cooking them on the backs of veterans, seniors and the unemployed.  However, sadly, teaching others is not an activity during election campaigns. Harper had learned something well– it doesn’t have to be true, it only has to be plausible. Misinformation will rule every time and the so-called balanced budget scenario is no exception.

Ironically, according to Graves, Mulcair’s stance on balanced budgets appears to only be helping Harper in that department. Yes, I know, the NDP has never had a chance to prove or disprove this at a federal level while the Harpercons ran straight deficits ever since they took office almost a decade ago.

Trudeau, I believe, took a bold stance on that question. He said the Liberals would run modest deficits in order to stimulate the economy through much needed infrastructure spending.  Makes sense. Nobel prize winning economists like Paul Krugman had always said that stimulus spending is needed during recessionary times.  Trudeau approached this with honesty.  Political pundits and strategists have always said that in order to have a winning chance, one must propose something “bold”. This may prove to be untrue. Folks may say that, but at the end of the day, they like the tight scripted almost robotic messaging.

Harper did indeed run deficits, but try telling that to a Harpercon cheerleader. No matter how much evidence you present, they will still hold fast to their own misinformation.

Rampant Racism in Canada

Another thing Graves explained which really shouldn’t be of any surprise, is that dreaded niqab issue.  Boys n girls, it’s time to realize one fact– those who support the right of a woman to keep her niqab on during a citizenship ceremony are in a minority here.  Many on the left don’t support this neither.  Many on both the left and the right see this as oppression to women. Yes, I know, Harper is quite the misogynist, but there are would be Liberal and NDP voters who do not support that neither.  While “I luv Israel more than u” is the single issue voting that appears to be taking hold in ridings like Mount-Royal here in Montreal and the Toronto area’s Eglinton-Lawrence, the niqab ban could well become a single issue for many voters, particularly in rural areas and I’m not just talking about La Belle province neither.  Well, that and the idea that Big bad “Moooslem terrorists” are hiding under the bed unless we’re “kept safe”. Ridiculous, but not to Jane and Joe Six-pack.

The plight of the Syrian refugees is not a winning issue neither. In fact, Harper and Jason KKKenney and Chrissy Alexander are basically saying don’t pay attention to that poor Syrian child found washed up on a Turkish beach– he would’ve likely been a future terrorist anyway and many would see it this way. Once known for our human rights record, Harper has turned us into a mean warring machine, punching above our weight and that’s how many like it. In fact, I have noticed the rampant racism on social media, comment boards and callers to call in radio stations. Harper and the likes of Ezzy Levant have made it ok to sing it loud and sing it proud.

Mulcair, I think took a huge risk when he said he woulnd’t mount any legal challenge regarding the Niqab and that opened the flood gates for Gilles Duceppe and Harper to attack. A bold stance given the increasing bigotry in Canada, but this is one that likely won’t pay off for him.  For Mulcair to succeed (at this stage of the game, holding the keys to Stornoway), he needs to maintain each of those Quebec seats Jack Layton took in 2011 and then some. Before Mulcair even opened his mouth, that feat was tenuous at best, particularly in and around teh Quebec City areas and rural areas where they don’t even like the kirpan and tend to be pretty right leaning to begin with.  I know Mulcair meant well, but most just won’t see it that way. According to that same EKOS poll, while Mulcair is leading still, the Harpercons have experienced an upswing.

Bonus track: for those who think that bigotry is exclusively a Quebec thing should read this article.

Patholical Fear of Polling Stations

I have other reasons to believe why the Harpercons are leaping ahead and why I have been predicting another majority for them.  For awhile now, I have been experiencing a sense of Deja-vu. Back to 2011 election campaign and that is that the NDP and Liberals along with their respective supporters are sniping at each other more than they are at Harper. Folks, the goal is to get Stephen Harper outta power not fight for the keys to Stornoway. I think we’ve seen that opposition parties in majority situations,  especially under ol’ Stevie, have far less power than in a minority situation.

I also knew that after weeks and weeks of 3-way-ties, something had to give and it finally did.  Remember, most folks, for some odd reason, have a patholical fear of polling stations. Remember the whining preceding the 2011 election about how they may have to go to the polling stations sooner rather than later? That fear of potentially returning to the polls sooner rather than later is key.  Both Mulcair and Trudeau dropped the gauntlet, saying they would never prop up a Harpercon minority. I suspect that might have something to do with the Harpercon upswing. Remember how both Ignatieff and Layton took the blame for the 2011 election being called? Never mind that then speaker Peter Milliken found Harper in contempt of parliament– a first in Canadian parliamentary history.  A concept that is apparently, too abstract for your average voter.  They made Iggy and Layton pay in 2011 by awarding the Harpercons a majority.

In 2011, the biggest fear was a coalition with those evul soshalists, separatists and the Liberals.  That fear has since subsided amongst both Liberal and NDP supporters, but I think the fear is lessened by the fact that this time around, Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois have been and will be again, virtually wiped off. No threat of “separatists” joining the pack. I find it funny how folks forget that shortly after Paul Martin won a minority in 2004, Harper was indeed willing to go to bed with those very same soshalists and separatists as illustrated in a letter he wrote to then Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson saying that he and the Bloc and the NDP could form some kind of cooperation should the Martin Liberals be defeated. Both Duceppe and Layton were signatories.  Nonetheless, it is what it is and folks will ignore it even if you put the letter in their faces.

Coalition fear mongering is not being used by Harper this time around, but partisans of both the Liberals and the NDP have been hammering it out.   However, it was important to bring up because another major factor in Harper’s winning the majority in 2011 was that the Blue Liberals all jumped on the bad ship Harper.  They saw Iggy’s fortunes sink and were far more afraid of seeing an NDP government in power than seeing their own leader lose.  I would hazard a guess that Blue Liberals would still rather not see any kind of cooperation agreement between their party and the NDP.  Remember, those Blue Liberals, should they see Trudeau tank again, they will rush to the open arms of ol’ Stevie Spiteful.

It also bares mentioning that any kind of coalition/cooperative arrangement is far from being any guarantee that we still wouldn’t be heading for the polling stations sooner rather than later. Being uncharted territory, no matter how many agreements are signed on paper, the likelihood of a spat between the would be partners would be quite high and then it all falls apart.

Stop Preaching to Our Own Choirs and Actually Talk to Jane and Joe Six-pack

Many of my progressive friends are dismissive of them. They say they don’t exist. They most certainly do. They are your family members, co-workers, neighbours and friends. Many of whom you would very rarely if ever talk politics with them.  It is high time to do so. Many are a-political, so trying to engage in a political discussion with them would prove more difficult than performing root canal with a dull spoon.  I think you would be very surprised.

Most like their taxes down and a lower gst, however slight it may be.  Not true our taxes are down, but they believe it.  GST rate cut is a major reason why the treasury is down, but again, your average voter doesn’t care about that.  Just a few examples.

I will be posting shortly about bread and butter issues that affect all of us vs the abstract matters that are being bandied about this election campaign.

There are many undecides, though, they appear to be gravitating to Harper. Those undecideds are Jane and Joe Six-packs who will decide the election. We ignore them at our own peril. Not those of us who are engaged in politicsl.

The Polls

Personally, I take polls regarding polling intentions with a grain of salt mainly because they only calculate popular vote percentages which means precious little in our First Past the Post system. Yes boys n girls, many of us may not like it, but that is what we have to work with come October 19. Wishing it away is not helpful. I had been studying seat count projections. For awhile now, Harper had been leading on that score, particularly in Ontario where, as Harper and Jean Chretien before him proved, elections are won and lost. I figured it was only a matter of time before we saw a poll or two catch up with the seat count projections.

In this EKOS poll, Harper appears to now be leading in British-Columbia. Again, no surprise, despite the NDP having led there for awhile. Surely no one thought this would last? In the case of British Columbia, one only has to look at their last provincial election results where poll after poll said that that election was the NDP and Adrian Dix’s to lose.  Folks panicked and went back to their Liberal party (It should be stressed again that the BC Liberal party is really Conservative). Sure ol’ Chrissy Clarke lost her seat, but her party came back with a majority. Who was to say that folks in British Columbia wouldn’t panic again?

In the case of Ontario, well, the Trudeau camp would do well to separate themselves from Kathleen Wynne who is very unpopular in that province right now. Sure provincial parties are not the same as their federal counterparts, but many if not most don’t make that distinction.

Sure, as many have said, polls are only designed to stoke the masses to vote a certain way, but if anything, that is an even bigger reason to not dismiss some of them so quickly.