It’s all in how you ask the question

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

People often ask why polls released on the same day produce somewhat different results. Of course, some of this may just be the result of statistical error. That is, the differences between two polls may be within the margins of error of the polls. On other occasions, if you look closely, you can see that one poll was actually conducted on different dates, or over a different period than another, even if they are released the same day. This has been true, for example of the EKOS (conflict alert), Nanos and Harris-Decima daily tracking polls.

At EKOS, we think we have been a little ahead of other pollsters because the large sample sizes we get using a new methodology called interactive voice recognition (IVR) — a kind of robotic pollster. Of course, don’t expect other pollsters to agree with this, and quite rightly some people are asking how much we should trust this new technology. But that’s another story.

Sometimes, though, the effect of methodological differences in gathering poll data are perfectly clear. This has showed up in Nik Nanos’ daily tracking polls, which have consistently shown the Liberals running more strongly than other polls have, and have tracked the Green Party at significantly lower levels. 

This is important, of course. If Nanos is right, the Liberals are much more in contention in this election than the media and punditariat have given them credit for. And the attention to the Greens is disproportionate to their actual strength. Clearly, the media have taken their cue in framing this election from the consensus in the other polls that the Liberals are well behind the Conservatives, and dismissed the Nanos polls, in this respect, as an anomaly.

These media orientations may be crucial to the prospects of the parties, so it is important to understand why Nanos is so different. After all if he is right, and the rest of us pollsters are wrong, the media are missing the story.  

The difference in the Nanos numbers and those of other polling companies was explained quite well yesterday in an article by Glen McGregor appearing here in Ottawa in the Ottawa Citizen.

Unlike most other pollsters, Nanos is using an “open” question when asking respondents about their voting intention. What that means is that his phone operators ask people how they plan to vote, but don’t present them with a list of the parties from which to choose.

“If they don’t get the list, you get the cleanest read because they have to articulate their support,” Nanos told MacGregor.

This is an old debate in polling circles, and has merit on both sides.

I first encountered it in the early 1990s when I was working with Elly Alboim and Christopher Waddell among others on what was then the CBC-Globe and Mail poll. (I mention them because we are now all on staff at the Carleton J-School).

We published a national poll the same day as La Presse published one of their own focusing on Quebec. The La Presse poll showed the relatively newly-formed Bloc Quebecois running much more strongly than ours did, which led to accusations that the CBC, as a federal institution, was trying to deprecate the separatist BQ.

Of course, there was nothing to that accusation. We wondered however, whether the difference between our poll and La Presse’s could be explained by the fact that at the time we were using an open-ended question, without prompting respondents about the names of the parties. Perhaps without a menu to choose from people were “forgetting” that the BQ was an option; and the same might hold for the newish Reform Party in English Canada.

So in the next poll we did, we split the sample — asking half the respondents an open question, and half a closed question. Bingo! The closed question, in which all the parties were named, registered much higher support for both the BQ and Reform than the open question. Since these parties were going to be on the ballot, we decided to go with the closed question in future.

Similarly, at EKOS a few years ago, we decided to replace our old open question with a closed question — this time because of the emergence of the Greens. Sure enough, Green support popped up when we did that. And our results using the closed question actually tracked quite well to the final result.

Of course, none of this is to deny that there is an argument on the other side. After all, if you can’t even remember that a party is in the race without an operator reading its name out to you, how deep can your support for it be? 

What may be happening in this election is that many faint-hearted Liberals tell Nanos they are voting that way, but when presented with the Green option in other polls, they flip the other way. On election day, of course, they need to make a decision. And it may also be that as election day approaches, and people’s decisions become more firmly grounded, the difference in the methodology will start to wash out.

So what to make of all this, journalistically? I think it is wrong to reject the polls as meaningless, as some claim they do. I don’t think they actually do anyway. The polls agree on the ordering of the parties, at least at the top of the race: Tories first, Liberals second, NDP third. Moreover, all of them suggest that the Conservatives are in sight of a majority, but don’t have it in the bag.

Those are important issues for the media, and for voters who may choose to vote tactically.

But what journalists should do is look carefully at the differences among polls and why they exist, and not rely heavily on any single one. A couple of weekends ago, the Globe put great weight on its front page on a poll showing the Tories had had a strong first week. By Monday, the same pollster was saying there had been a softening in Tory support.

Polls provide interesting information bound by statistical and methodological limits. We don’t know which one will be closest till after the election is held. A record of success (or of past failure) by a pollster is worth bearing in mind, but even past success doesn’t guarantee the best results next time. 

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and the Globe and Mail, and is now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty, and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

Recalling the recalls

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Ryan Hicks

Last November, Michel Dumont discovered that his five-year-old son Sterling had been chewing on recalled Thomas the Tank toys covered in paint that contained high levels of lead.  

Dumont says the public simply does not remember the magnitude of the problem.

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Culture en péril? Gone viral

Posted by jsallot under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Media commentary

BY JEFF SALLOT

New media in the form of a hilarious YouTube video could make life difficult for Conservatives in Quebec.

The video, titled Culture en péril,  has gone viral with more than a half-million viewers in the last five days.

It depicts Quebec singer-songwriter Michel Rivard appealing before a board of clueless federal bureaucrats for a small cultural grant for a folk festival.

The board consists of a bunch of Anglophones who clearly do not understand what Rivard is talking about. They become alarmed when they think he’s using the old anglo-saxon F-word when in fact he is using the French word phoque. It gets even funnier after that.

The bureaucrats are seated in front of a Big Brotherish portrait of Stephen Harper. The back drop to the portrait is an American flag.

The message is clear. You can’t count on Tories to protect Quebec culture.

But I wonder if the fact that the French-language video has been viewed so often in such a short span might undercut the claim that Quebec culture is in peril?

Food safety

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Faculty links

David McKie, one of our sessional instructors at the School of Journalism and Communication, examines food safety in Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

The debates and the Internet

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

While media organizations covering the campaign fall over themselves to hype the importance of the Internet in this campaign, there’s a reason why they are concentrating on the frequently inconsequential (what’s available on blogs and You Tube) and ignoring the web’s real potential. 

For instance treating 10,000 people watching a Stephane Dion clip on YouTube as being significant, misses the point by a mile. There are about 100,000 voters in every urban riding in Canada, there are about 20,000,000 people eligible to vote and the Globe and Mail, for instance, sells about 300,000 copies a day across the country. So how important are those 10,000 hits on a YouTube clip?

More important is the fact that the Internet creates the potential to tell stories in different ways, combining audio, video, still photographs and text. 

But if news organizations focused on highlighting examples of that, they would have to direct their readers, listeners and viewers to innovative work at competitors’ sites that would take those eyes away from their own newspapers, newscasts, programs and web sites. Imagine for instance CBC’s The National highlighting an interesting way to package information and tell a story that’s on the CTV News web site, or the Globe and Mail sending readers to the Toronto Star’s site. It’s not going to happen.

It’s easier to focus “Internet coverage” on blogs and YouTube – often reported with little context about who is producing it or sense of what impact they have on voters.

The Internet is MUCH more than that.

Here’s an example  from the New York Times of the potential for the Internet to change significantly how we see and absorb information. By the way you can watch all the major speeches – Republicans and Democrats – from the two U.S. conventions this way on the Times web site 

My bet is that the Times will do the same thing for the three Presidential debates – the first one is this Friday.

I hope a Canadian news organization will do the same for our leaders’ debates on Oct 1 and 2 – if one does, I’ll bet their competitors won’t mention it. 

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the school and a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and election night executive producer for CBC TV News.

Journalist hints at possibility politicians will be candid

Posted by jsallot under Election 2008, Election 2008 Faculty links, Election 2008 Media commentary

Jeff Sallot

The politics page at globeandmail.com is featuring a story today headlined: Layton hints at possible Liberal-NDP coalition 

The lead says: NDP Leader Jack Layton refused Monday to rule out the possibility of entering an alliance with the federal Liberals to prevent another Harper government.

How many weasel words and phrases can we find here?

Hints is popular when the people being written about don’t  actually say what the headline writer wishes they had said.

Possible is another qualifier word. What else did Jack Layton hint is possible? I suppose that until the polls close Oct. 14 he can say that the New Democrats could possibly form a majority government.

“Refused … to rule out”  is another weasely formation.

I’ve been tempted to use the same phrase myself when politicians have been performing the dance of the seven veils.  But I prefer to cast the hinted at possibility in a more positive frame.  How about this? Jack Layton left the door open to a possible coaltion with the Liberals. It works better as a lead.

Reporter and editors actually hate these kinds of stories. They don’t deserve the headline play the Layton story got at globeandmail.com today. Yet they can’t be ignored until we start hearing politicians speaking candidly.

Jeff Sallot teaches journalism at Carleton University. He is a former Ottawa bureau chief for The Globe and Mail, a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery,  and has covered nine federal elections.

More fun with numbers

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

Last week I blogged about the parties’ different retention rates from the 2006 election, illustrating the Conservatives’ advantage in grabbing half the straying Liberal flock, with the rest of the former Liberal supporters being spread among the other parties.

The Conservatives have another advantage, which is that their support at the moment is more solid than that of the other parties. There’s evidence that the race is now “gelling”, at least up front with the Tory lead, even if there is room for more jockeying behind among the current opposition parties.

Look at the table below, and you can see that 82% of Tory voters say that they are unlikely to change their preference before voting day. The Tory vote, in other words, is the most solid of all the parties. Just 18% of Tory supporters say they are likely or somewhat likely to switch before election day. At the other extreme, the Green Party, whose support has grown the most in the last week, has the most tenuous grip on its support. Almost a fifth (18%) of Green supporters say it is likely they will switch before election day, and another 12% say they are somewhat likely to do so. A total of 30% of Green supporters are still not settled, in other words.

In fact, if you look at the last two bottom rows of this table, you’ll see almost a quarter of Liberal and NDP voters also say they are likely or somewhat likely to change their vote before election day. So that’s a lot of the non-Tory vote still potentially sloshing around. (The numbers are taken from EKOS’s weekend sample of more than 3000 respondents.)

So, if those voters were to start moving, where would they go? We know that in past elections, as voting day approached, many Canadians have taken a look at the polls and decided to “vote tactically”, that is to go with their second choice party thinking that it is better placed to win. In both 2004 and 2006, this enabled the Liberals to grab some NDP support in the last days of the campaign, though their weakness in this election so far might make that a harder sell. And then, we have those wavering Green supporters. Will they hold, or will they bolt as they close in on their final decision?

Here’s where the second table tells a bit of the story. First of all, look down the first column. If the Tories slumped, that would help the Liberals the most, but since significant numbers would also go to the other parties, it might not actually turbo-charge the Liberal campaign. Anyway, we don’t need to concern ourselves so much with where the Tories might go, because as we saw above, they are less likely to move anyway.

More interesting is the second column. If the Liberals slumped further, where would their vote go? Last week, we saw that to this point, about half the Liberal defectors have gone to the Conservatives; the other half have been dissipated among the other opposition parties. What the table below shows us is that if Liberals continue to stray, the pattern will likely be different. Only about a fifth of Liberal voters (18%) say their second choice is the Tories. The rest go mainly to the NDP and the Greens. Another way of thinking about this is that the Liberal Party has already lost a big chunk of its traditional centre-right support, and it is down to its centre-left core.

On the other hand, if the Liberals were to begin climbing out of the hole they are in, it looks like they do have potentially fertile ground to their left. A third of NDPers and a quarter of Green Party supporters see the Liberals as their second choice. The Liberals’ best hope in this election remains becoming the most viable champion of the anyone-but-Conservative (ABC, as Danny Williams calls it) vote, which was important to the party in both the 2004 and 2006 elections.

The NDP, meanwhile, still have potential themselves to become that ABC champion since they are the second choice for many Liberal and Green supporters. However, they probably need to close or eliminate the gap with the Liberals in their overall party support before they can benefit from this kind of tactical vote nationally, and at this point they don’t show any sign of getting closer that 7 or 8 percentage points of the Liberals. Still, in some regions, notably British Columbia and the West, they are clearly the Tories’ main opponent at the moment.

The Greens now have two tasks. They have some potential to continue growing, as they have done since the campaign began. But more important to their success may be their ability to consolidate the support they already have. They have the wobbliest support of all the parties and although they are now neck and neck with the Conservatives for the lead among voters 25 and under, this is a notoriously hard group to turn out on election day.

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and the Globe and Mail, and is now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty, and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

Centretown News campaign coverage

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Follow the federal election campaign in Ottawa Centre at Centretown News Online  and meet the candidates.

Centretown News and Centretown News Online are publications of the students in the Bachelor of Journalism and Master of Journalism programs at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University.

A terrible mistake or . . .

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Matthew Pearson

Terrible mistake or terribly mistaken? When it comes to Vancouver’s safe injection site, Insite, politicians and advocates continue to be divided.

Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani inserted himself into the debate last week during a visit to the city. He called Insite a “terrible mistake” and said the clinic would encourage the use of illegal drugs.

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Be the change

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Kristen Cucan

A handful of Green party supporters met in their local Ottawa riding last night donning green-coloured clothes and accessories, and hopeful that Canada might see its first green MP elected to Parliament.

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