Vote parking or not?

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Christopher Waddell

A combination of Paul Adams’ comments about Green Party strength among young voters and today’s Ipsos-Reid poll in the National Post showing the Greens at 11 per cent creates the possibility for some interesting dynamics in the coming weeks.

The Green Party won 4.3 percent of the vote in 2004 and 4.5 per cent in 2006 so that is probably its base level of support for this campaign as well. Perhaps the Greens at 10-11 per cent or even higher just reflects people parking their votes there for the moment, as they can’t decide among or don’t like the other parties and leaders.

But the longer in the campaign the Greens stay there or move higher, the more problematic it becomes to make seat projections. Those projections are based on the relationship between past election results and current opinion poll standings. No one knows who these new Greens used to support so it is very difficult to factor that into calculations.

Even more interesting, if the Green Party gets 10 per cent of the vote or more nationally on October 14, the Greens will have had a major impact on the election results even if they don’t win a seat. They will turn many ridings into four party races, making some people MPs who never thought they had a chance to win. That’s because the winner could have no more than 30-35 per cent of the votes cast in the riding.

If that happens in enough ridings, look for a revival of talk about electoral reform and proportional representation that died after the crushing the issue took in last year’s Ontario referendum.

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.

More on gender gap

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

Paul Adams

David Akin sent this after my earlier blogs on gender gap:

Ipsos Reid, as you may know, is the pollster retained (hired) by Canwest News Service, which is my employer. More than 1.5 million Canadians subscribe to a Canwest daily paper. The day before you posted this, those 1.5 million subscribers read a poll, taken by a competitor of the firm you work for, which addressed gender issues. I wrote the story. I don’t get paid by Ipsos or have any financial in any polling company but I thought you’d like to know that at least one other pollster has been surveying on this issue.

Here’s the Victoria Times-Colonist’s pick-up of the Ipsos gender poll.

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

Canada’s most eminent political blogger

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

The discerning Paul Wells plugs our site. A snappy dresser too. 

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

Green tease

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

EKOS will be reporting on large samples in the three major metropolitan areas tomorrow (Saturday) morning. One interesting finding is that the Greens are running in first place among Generation Y (25 and younger) in Toronto and Vancouver and first among Generation X (26-44) in Montreal.

Now, if people that age would only come out to vote….

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

Our website…way ahead of the MSM

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

The Globe and Mail is carrying this story on the timing of the Canadian leaders’ debate coinciding with the American vice-presidential debate.

This is very old news to readers of the Campaign Perspectives 2008 blog, who were informed of this conflict/coincidence on Tuesday.

I think we also scooped the MSM on May’s inclusion in the debate earlier this week. We were about 6 minutes ahead of CP, I think. This is important.

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

Tories in a slump…or not

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

I am deep in the middle of today’s polling muddle, which is why I haven’t blogged yet today. On very large nightly samples, at EKOS, we have the Tories slumping this week, but others disagree, as Paul Wells points out in this recent post.

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

CTV and the power of three

Posted by jsallot under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Jeff Sallot

The big story in the first week of the campaign is the way Green Leader Elizabeth May’s plea for simple fairness ignited a firestorm of a reaction from voters in cyberspace and in talk radio land, forcing the other leaders and the TV news network execs to back down and allow her to participate in the upcoming TV debates.

But you’ve got to wonder if the producers of two of CTV’s major news and current affairs programs, Mike Duffy Live and Canada AM, have missed this point. The Duffy show on prime time last night  had two separate political panels featuring activists or candidates from the Conservative, New Democratic and Liberal parties.

This morning Canada AM had a panel of talking heads with reps from the three same political parties.

What happened to the Greens? Or the Bloc, for that matter?

You can argue that these CTV programs are national and the Bloc is not a national party. I’m not even sure if I were a BQ candidate in Quebec if I would think an appearance on Canada AM or Mike Duffy Live would help me get my message out where it counts for my campaign. But I would be very surprised if the Greens wouldn’t have put somebody up to appear on these panels.

A panel with three guests works on TV. Four is awkward. Five is a real crowd. Photojournalists sometimes talk about the power of three, meaning three people in a picture gives you better opportunities to find interesting compositions. Four or five faces is tough to work with. Nevertheless,  during an election campaign journalists have to do more than worry about a crowded frame.

CTV has had Green Party reps on its programs in the past. And CTV no doubt will have many other opportunities to cover the point of view of the Greens as the campaign runs its course.

But the very week that the Greens were forcing themselves on to the political agenda seemed like an odd time to broadcast political panels with only the Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats.

Something wasn’t quite right with this picture.

Libs losing Green Shift battle in the media

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

Paul Adams

The Liberals are losing their battle to define their own Green Shift plan in the media. The plan aims at cutting greenhouse gas emissions through carbon taxes, but a critical element in the architecture of the plan is the offsetting tax cuts to individuals and businesses. The Liberals even promise the Auditor-General will be brought in to certify that the Green Shift is “revenue neutral” — i.e., gives every cent it takes in carbon taxes back in tax relief of some kind.

On CBC’s World Report this morning, the Green Shift was twice described as a “carbon tax” — once in the intro and once more in the item. Although the story dealt with a “calculator” on the Liberals’ website that supposedly allows an individual to figure out how the tax and offsets would affect them, the plan was never clearly explained. If you didn’t already know about the offsets, this item would not have enlightened you.

The Ottawa Citizen ran a story today about Stephen Harper’s attack on the plan that, although sympathetic in tone to the Green Shift, refers to it as “Mr. Dion’s proposal for a carbon tax”. Nowhere in the story is there any mention of the tax offsets.

In its front page story today,Dion’s Green Plan Would “Wreak Havoc”, the Globe does a better job. The offsets are mentioned only in the last few graphs (after the turn), but there is a large graphic that clearly spells out the taxes as well as the offsets.

One supposes that the Liberals hoped the name “Green Shift” name itself would convey the message, but it doesn’t. A “tax” is a tax — everyone understands that. A “shift” can mean anything. The “Green Shift” name will only convey the full meaning of the plan once people already understand it, which most still do not do. 

There are, of course, examples of reporters struggling to be fair to a complex plan, but Green Shift is falling foul of three intersecting forces:

• The media’s desire for a “shorthand” reference to the plan 
• The Conservatives’ attempt to define the Green Shift as a tax pure and simple
• And the Liberals’ inability to communicate the features of the plan simply and clearly  

In a survey last week, EKOS found that 63% of Canadians supported the carbon-tax-plus-offsets plan when it was clearly explained to them. But so far it hasn’t been, by the Liberals — or by the media. 

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

Calling all Philistines – the unnamed source/smear file

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

Further to Paul Adams’ post earlier this week on unnamed sources and smears, here are the top two paragraphs of a page one story in today’s Globe and Mail written by James Bradshaw:

“TORONTO — In his first detailed defence of $45-million in controversial cuts to arts and culture funding, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper called his party’s decisions good governance and said the government must walk “a fine line” between providing financial stability and “funding things that people actually don’t want.”

In an exclusive telephone interview with The Globe and Mail during a campaign stop at a winery in St-Eustache, Que., Mr. Harper, who many have called a Philistine, also spoke at length about his life-long passion for music and the piano as he denied the cuts were ideologically motivated.”

Who are the “many” who called Mr Harper a Philistine? Readers are never told. If there are so many, it can’t be that hard to find someone who would say it, can it?

Such unnamed source smears are a prime example of the why the public increasingly dismisses the credibility of the mainstream media.  In the absence of any evidence to support the claim, it seems safe to assume the “many” is actually the reporter.

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.

Sleepwalking to the polls

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Faculty links

Colleague Andrew Cohen writes about the campaign and Canadians in today’s Ottawa Citizen.