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Election Polls:In My Opinion

As the clock keeps ticking, I am rapidly approaching the exalted state of old bugger.  In other words, I’ve been around for a while, and I’ve done a few things.  I’ve seen a number of elections come and go — some good, some bad, some indifferent.  However, I’ve never been asked or harassed into giving my opinion to an election poll.  The telephone has never cut across dinner, somewhere between the string beans and the ice cream; the deadpan voice of Nanos, Ekos or Ipsos Reid has never asked me for my opinion.  This doesn’t bother me much because, honestly, if I was bored that night, I’d probably lie.  But I do wonder why.

First of all, in times of non-election, the phone rings all the time.  I have any number of people concerned about me.  They want to know every detail about my personal hygiene, how I get to work, or how many adult beverages I drink per day, on average. (One?   Two to five? More than five?  More than five!)  I even get calls from Tammy, the robot who insists I’ve won a free vacation in Fort Lauderdale and some guy who wants to solve my credit card debt, among other things.  The only thing I’ve ever done to deserve this kind of attention is subscribe to a couple of magazines and park my posterior in a target demographic.  Yet, when my country wants to renew its commitment to democracy, nobody gives a damn what I think.

Secondly, I’m the guy they want.  I always vote.  I’m aware of the issues, such as they are.  I’ve always been in everybody’s target demographic – Undecided.  I usually make up my mind around half-time in the election cycle, and despite my obvious conservative leanings, I’ve voted Liberal enough times to qualify for a red scarf.  You’d think that every pollster and most political parties would definitely want to know what I thought about Health Care or F-35 jetfighters, not to mention which way I plan to scratch my ballot.  Nope, not a bit of it, and this isn’t the first time — it’s every time – since Trudeau swept me off my feet when I was a child.  What’s the probability of that, with a margin of error plus or minus 3.6 percent?  I’m beginning to think these polls might not be the be-all, end-all political weathervane they claim to be.  In fact, I’m beginning to seriously question their methodology.

I understand that polling is not an exact science.  Political parties and the media use polls to follow broad trends, not to predict elections.  But it strikes me that daily polls are taking polling beyond the point of absurdity.  Personally, I think pollsters hire a bunch of unemployed telemarketers and turn them loose.   They track the answers of the relatively few people who don’t hang up on them and present the raw data to the number crunchers.   The number crunchers (Nobody has ever seen them, by the way) apply some kind of voodoo mathematical formula to the whole mess, and voila.  The polls pronounce the Liberals are falling out of the race in B.C. or the NDP are gaining ground in Quebec — or vice versa.  These folks talked to approximately 2,400 people, chosen at random, and they’ve got the cojones to make statements like that?  It beggars the imagination.  There are 308 political ridings in this country; divide that into the number of people they talked to, and you get fewer than 8 people per riding.  In some places in this country, you can talk to eight people and never step outside the family.  Our country is so big it makes the poll numbers useless.  For example, according to one poll, the NDP have 20% of the vote and the Bloc Quebecois have 7.8%.  But in the end, the NDP are only going to win about thirty-five seats, whereas the Bloc will take over fifty.   In Canada, it doesn’t matter who likes you, or how much: it matters where they like you.  The polls don’t reflect that.

Then there’s also this idiot plus or minus margin of error, which can be as high as 6 percent.  Three questions?  How do they know what the margin of error is?  If they do know it, why don’t they fix it?  And finally, how come it keeps changing?  Has anybody ever gone back 20 years, looked at the polls and then compared them to the actual results of the election?  That would certainly give an accurate measure of the margin of error.  Then, there’s that whole “correct 19 times out of 20” business; I don’t think anybody knows what that means.

Polls are a strange exercise in diagnosing political thought.  In reality, at least in Canada, they’re practically useless; at best, they’re only ever close.  I can’t say for certain, but sometimes I think pollsters get a little beyond their per day, on average consumption of adult beverages.  They say, “Screw the phones!” and go into the back room and start throwing darts or rolling dice.  That’s the only explanation I can come up with to explain the mystery of why two polls from the same time and place can be so different.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what I think: nobody’s asked me for my opinion, anyway.

Sun News Network: The Nexus of Evil?

“I amar prestart aen.
Han mathon ne nen.
Han mathon ne chae.
A han noston ne with.”
Lady Galadriel (Lord of the Rings 2001)

For those of you who need to brush up on your Elvish, Lady Galadriel said, “The world is changed.  I feel it in the water.  I feel it in the earth.  I smell it in the air.”  She said all that to say, “Hide your hobbits, boys, ‘cause evil’s on the march in Middle Earth, and it’s going to take all our resolve, three industrial-strength movies and Viggo Mortenson to finally kill it off, once and for all.”   Elves are immortal, as everybody knows, so I’m surprised Galadriel didn’t show up yesterday on CBC to sound the alarm again — in Canada.  Sun News Network begins broadcasting today, and to hear the carping and bitchin’, you’d think that the Evil Lord Sauron was about to open a branch office in Ontario and retrofit the Dark Tower to accommodate his army of Orcs and Ezra Levant.  I guess her ladyship was busy.

The introduction of another 24 hour news (news?) network in Canada has caused total fear and loathing in the sacred media halls of Fortress Toronto.  The supporters of the status quo in Tee-oh have spent the last year in maximum overdrive, trying to discredit their coming competition before the studio lights even go on.  Sun News has been called everything from, “right-wing, homophobic, militant white supremacist, racist, xenophobic, misogynist, propagandists” to “Fox News North,” and nobody’s sure which it the worse insult.  Last June, CBC’s resident Methuselah, Don Newman, nearly burst a blood vessel arguing with Cory Teneycke about it, and he still thinks it’s the end of journalism in Canada.  I think Don was a lot happier when Front Page Challenge ruled the airwaves.  Likewise, Avaaz.org, an international activist group, called the network, “American-style hate media” and circulated an on-line anti Sun News petition which was signed by Canada’s head writer Margaret Atwood, and oddly enough, Dwight Shroot [sic] and the Snuffleupagas [sic].  Obviously, there’s some serious opposition to getting any more news than we’ve already got, here in the true north strong and free.

I don’t blame the supporters of the Drone Clones — CTV and CBC — for caricaturing Sun News into Joseph Goebbels’ evilest grandchild.  I realize that, after years and years of having it their own way, it must be pretty hard to share the media pie with an interloper.  My problem is the arbitrary nature of the criticism — long before anybody’s even opened their mouth.  The Sun News critics take the position that any conservative viewpoint is naturally wrong and has no place in Canadian society.   Furthermore, if conservative sentiments absolutely must be uttered (in the interests of fairness) they need to be aired under the watchful eye of a trained professional, in a strictly controlled environment like CBC’s Power and Politics.  It’s almost as if conservative is a contagious disease which, if left unattended, will become a political pandemic, surging through our land, turning ordinary citizens into raging racists.  I honestly don’t think Ezra Levant and Charles Adler are that persuasive, nor Canadians that stupid, but apparently a lot of people in Canada do.

The other thing that bothers Sun News detractors is the “slant” of the new network.  They maintain that there is no room for bias in journalism in Canada.  (The sound you hear is most of the country, outside Tee-oh, laughing.)  I’m not going to get into the liberal bias debate; it always ends up in a “You did not” “I did so” argument.  Let me put it this way: has anybody ever accused Heather Mallick of being fair, or balanced or unbiased?  She’s recently taken to attacking Stephen Harper’s hair, not exactly a big political issue.  And back in 2008, when she called approximately 25 million Republican men (even the Hispanic, Asian and black ones) “sexual inadequates,” I think that might have qualified as hate speech in most jurisdictions in Canada.  In the same vein, in my opinion, Neil Macdonald hasn’t said a good word about Israel or America since he was in high school (and then only because the teacher made him.)  And then there’s Frank Graves, one of the many CBC’s pollsters, who once suggested the Liberal party wage a cultural war on rural Canada and “If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad.  Go south and vote for Palin.”  No bias?  Even Michael Ignatieff can’t keep a straight face.  In the last few years, CBC has spent so much time defending their “fair and balanced” reporting it’s a wonder they have any time left over to actually do any.

Let’s put this argument to rest.  Sun News advertises themselves as fair and balanced.  That’s not very likely.  Have you seen their on-air personalities?  The news on Sun News is going to have a distinct right-wing spin, and the opinion pieces are going to be so far out in right field they’ll be able to see Sarah Palin from their kitchen window.  But the critics of Sun News don’t get it.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  Sun News is blatantly conservative.  So what?  Nobody objects when Heather Mallick makes cheap jokes about Stephen Harper’s haircut, or Frank Graves insinuates that everybody west of Kenora was an extra on Deliverance.  Why is it so terrible to say Jack Layton’s policies suck pond water?  Sun News is going to have a slant; all journalists have a bias.  They can’t help it; they’re human.  I don’t care how impartial interviewers or reporters try to be, their political views come through, even if it’s only in their choice of words or tone of voice.   The only difference is Sun News is admitting it — up front — and try as I might, I don’t see the sin in that.

Despite every attempt to block it, Sun News Network starts broadcasting today.  If the critics are correct, there are only two ways this thing can go.  One: Sun News’ conservative bias is so hopelessly out of step with average Canadians that nobody‘s going to watch it, and it’ll go broke and die.   Two: the Drone Clones have actually been as “fair and balanced” as they claim, and Canadians already have a place to park their conservative point of view, in which case, they’ll stick with Mansbridge and Robertson/LaFlamme.  Once again, the new network will go broke and die.

Of course, there might be one other scenario.  Sun News Network might live up to its advance billing.  It might not be a propaganda machine, intent on luring Canadians into conservative dens of wickedness.  And here’s another radical idea: people outside Toronto might not be ignorant yobs.  They might not be stammering sub-slobs, easily hoodwinked into abandoning the true and righteous road of liberal thought.  They might have more brains than Don Newman and the folks at Avaaz give them credit for.  They might be able to decide for themselves which TV network they want to watch.

Regardless, as of today, I’m going with Lady Galadriel: “The world is changed.”

Democracy Wins, Vancouver-style

God, I love democracy!  Most of the time it shuffles around, looking like nobody’s good version of Peter Parker, but then, when the jackboots come out, it suddenly turns into Spiderman and kicks the living snot out of the tyrants.  In Vancouver, we’ve just had an up-close-and-personal view of how democracy really works, and it feels good.  Here’s the slimmed-down version.

First of all, you need some background.  For the last 10 of 12 years, there’s been a running battle between the government of China and a quasi-religious group called the Falun Gong.  Although it was originally encouraged in China, the government there became very wary of the Falun Gong’s rapid growth and increasing power — and with good reason.  The last time a religious group, The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, got out of control in China, the result was a fourteen year civil war and 20 million dead bodies.  The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) may be the bloodiest domestic disturbance in history.  Either way, the Chinese government banned the Falun Gong in 1999, on the grounds that it is an “evil cult” and disruptive to Chinese society.  Since then, they’ve done a pretty good job of stamping it out and driving it underground.  On the other hand, the Falun Gong believe they were just peaceably going about their business when the government went bananas and started dragging them off to face the People’s Justice (which, has never been timid about torture, conviction, execution and dismemberment.  In fact, one of the major accusations the Falun Gong makes is that the Chinese government is murdering its members and harvesting their organs.  There is even some serious speculation that China’s scientific exhibit, “Bodies: the Exhibition” is made up of Falun Gong followers who were not given an opportunity to sign the organ donor card.  Obviously, there are no Falun Gong protests inside China anymore, but around the world, the group has targeted every official Chinese institution they can find.  The Chinese government is decidedly miffed at this international black eye and spends a lot of diplomatic time — and muscle — trying to put a stop to it.  There’s tons more information, but you get the idea.

One of the many Falun Gong protests around the world is a 24 hour silent vigil in front of the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver, Canada.  This has been part of the Vancouver cityscape for a number of year; it started around 2001.  However, just before the 2010 Winter Olympics, for some reason, the Vancouver City Council decided the Falun Gong protest actually violated city by-laws.  Who knew?  The result was the Falun Gong spent the Olympics far away from the Chinese Consulate — and the world’s media — in a protracted legal battle which ended when – surprise! – the courts upheld the Falun Gong’s right to protest and told the city to redraft the by-law.  So, during the first part of April, 2011, hidden away somewhere between City Hall’s multi-million dollar makeover and the stacks of debts left over from the Olympic Village, Mayor Gregor Robertson and his (dare I say) henchpeople were busy — tearing a page out of Woodrow Wilson’s playbook and trying their damnedest to make the world safe from democracy.  They produced a document that succeeded beyond anybody’s wildest expectations.  It was a complicated mess, but, in essence, the new by-law limited protests in Vancouver to a select group of affluent dissidents who had conveniently planned ahead.  More importantly, however, it legally kicked the stuffing out of the Falun Gong, which was the reason for the by-law in the first place.  They, of course, were shocked and appalled, but everybody knows that you can’t actually fight City Hall so it looked like democracy was going down for the count — at least, in Vancouver.

This is where we get to the good part because, just when all seemed lost, Peter Parker strangely disappeared, and Spiderman showed up.  Under tyranny, people accept the laws as they’re written and do as they’re told.   In a democracy, however, people ask questions.  They want information.  They want clarification.  They say things like, “Hey! Wait a minute!” and “You can’t do that!”  And that’s what the people of Vancouver did.  Spiderman (aka Democracy) started demanding answers, and the folks at City Hall started dodging around on the defensive.  Councillors began tiptoeing through the halls, justifying their position and qualifying their support, whenever they actually did get caught by the media.  Mayor Robertson even invoked the Geneva Convention, for Godsake, insinuating that his hands were tied by international law or something.  And it was revealed that the City of Vancouver had “consulted” the Chinese Consulate on the wording of the by-law.   OMG!   Suddenly, everybody (including the janitor) was looking the other way, as if they’d never seen the new by-law before in their lives.  It was kinda like Penny Bellam and the city staff had been working on a remote island for six months and had appeared, out of nowhere, with the new by-law in hand.  Mayor Robertson demanded that the odious document be taken from his sight and rewritten — as though he was repulsed by its very presence.  The fact is, even though nobody within bike-riding distance of City Hall will admit it, everybody in town knows that the mayor of Vancouver and the city council have “consulted” one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet for advice about the fundamental tenets of democracy: “free speech” and  “peaceful protest.”  There’s nothing else to say.  I’m surprised the whole works of them aren’t wearing paper bags over their heads; too ashamed to show their faces to the citizens of Vancouver.

Luckily, democracy works.  Mayor Robertson wants to be Premier of British Columbia some day. Thus, every time his administration does something sticky like this, he’s got to wipe it up and make it look good.  In the end, it doesn’t matter who kowtowed to Chinese diplomatic pressure or who gets tossed under the bus.  But believe me, his name isn’t going to be Gregor.  What matters is democracy won.  The “new” new by-law has a bunch of face-saving language and poor sport regulations, but it allows the Falun Gong — or anybody else, for that matter — the right to say and do as they please in a peaceful manner.  For now, all is well, in Vancouver, it’s Democracy: 1, Tyranny: 0.

But the war isn’t over.