Be careful with ‘Best PM’

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

Elections are all about forcing voters to choose. So it’s no surprise that pollsters do the same in the questions they ask and the media focuses on those choices in their stories. Sometimes though, forcing a choice can hide as much as it reveals as elections are also about trying to change voters’ minds

Stephen Harper has a wide lead in every recent poll when Canadians are asked which party leader would be the best Prime Minster.  In last week’s CBC’s poll, for instance, it was 39 for Harper, 13 for Dion, behind NDP leader Jack Layton at 15. At the Globe and Mail Mr. Harper led Mr. Dion 46-22. On that basis maybe the election’s already over.

What those results don’t indicate is how willing voters might be to consider someone else as PM.  For example instead of asking who would be the best PM, ask voters to rate each of the leaders as a Prime Minister on a scale of 1 to 10. Using this measure Stephen Harper may get an 8 and Stephane Dion a 4. Alternately Mr. Harper may get an 8 but Mr Dion a 7.5.

Both ways of asking the “best PM” question show Mr. Harper in the lead but the second way of posing the question reveals something else. A wide gap suggests Mr. Harper is fairly secure but if asking Canadians to rate the leaders on a scale reveals there is little to choose between them, it might not take much of a misstep by Mr. Harper for voters to start thinking of Mr. Dion as an acceptable alternative. 

Just before election day, forcing a choice among poll respondents makes sense. At the outset though, testing voters’ flexibility about best PM is likely to reveal more about the directions the campaign might take.

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.