Believe the Polls... but not the local ones

So about that "local" poll showing a "two-way race" in a three or four way riding...

Yep, that’s me in the background doing the wave in 2019…

The day before voters went to the polls in the 2019 Nanaimo-Ladysmith byelection, the NDP loudly declared that they had polls proving that this was a two-way race between their party and the Tories. They claimed the Greens were a non-factor and that a vote for Green candidate Paul Manly was a vote for the Conservatives. Manly’s campaign manager loudly called bullshit anywhere and everywhere he could.

Spoiler: The Greens won the byelection. The NDP were a non-factor.

I vividly recall this because I was working for the federal Green Party at the time, campaigning in Nanaimo, proudly waving Manly signs next to Paul, his father and Elizabeth May.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve watched Paul Manly’s team loudly declare the election is a two-way race between his party and the Tories and that a vote for either the Liberals or the NDP is a vote for the Conservatives.

Elizabeth May is saying the same thing in her riding. A few days ago she told CBC’s As It Happens: “Either it will be a Green MP or it will be a conservative MP.”

To quote Manly’s campaign manager from 2019 - bullshit.

Before I go on, I want to be really clear here… If I believed there was legit data showing which party had the best shot to beat Tory candidates who are currently hiding not just from media and voters, but from anyone outside of their immediate family, I’d scream it from the rooftops. Seriously, if you’re a Tory fan please tell me why you’re okay with your would-be representative avoiding all-candidates meetings the way folks in the trucker convoy steered clear of their COVID boosters.

But since this magical data Manly and May are citing does not exist, I think it’s vital to call out anyone pretending they have “proof” of where they’re polling, so their BS doesn’t accomplish the exact thing they claim they are trying to stop.

The Green-commissioned polls being touted as absolute proof the Greens are the only options for stopping Pierre Polution are not only absurdly stale-dated data, from a ”B” level pollster with a history of skewing Green, but even their margins of error make it clear that other parties are in play.

CBC Poll Tracker’s ranking of the Green pollster.

Here’s the poll currently pinned to the top of the Manly campaign’s Facebook page.

The Greens and the Liberals are within two percent of each other. In late March??? With a 4 point margin of error?

That’s not a bulletproof poll.

Heck, that’s not even a decent Tarot reading,

But 338 says…

The other “proof” being cited to show the Greens as the only choice for non-Tories are stats from aggregator sites like CBC’s PollTracker - where most local ridings with three or four parties in play are showing HUGE margins of error.

As of April 20th, PollTracker had the Greens in S-GI at 27 percent, plus or minus 8.

Plus or minus 8?

That barely qualifies as math.

But what about strategic voting sites….

Right now the Green party, which has long publicly and loudly opposed “strategic voting” - aka “voting” - is steering everyone in these ridings to strategic voting sites.

These sites pull data from polling aggregators and then tend to make margin calls for the smaller (aka not Liberal) option.

SmartVoting.ca currently shows a Liberal majority - with or without a strategic vote. Their “strategic vote” adds more Liberals to the mix and also elects five more NDPers and two more Greens.

If that’s your goal, godspeed, but again the margin of error in these ridings is four percent, which means that in most of the three and four-way ridings at least two non-Pierre-parties are equally competitive.

Cooperate for Canada - a strategic voting site that I see a lot of friends sharing online - starts from the premise that: “We believe a diversity of political voices are better for democracy.”

So when the Cooperaters suggest a “strategic vote” their priority is NOT who has the best chance to defeat the Tories because, all other things being even close to equal, they’ll push the non-Liberal option.

Again, if that is your goal, rock on - but don’t cite it as proof that it’s your party vs. the Tories, when it may also be your party vs. Carney-mania.

And if you want to trust data being put forward by the Greens (or ANY party) as opposed to just liking it ‘cause it says what you want it to say, then ask them to show you the receipts.

Who was sampled… where… when… and how.

Elizabeth’s riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands - where I live - is fascinating because it covers so much territory and so many wonderfully unique communities. Saanich ain’t Saturna.

If I were polling for the Greens and wanted to show Elizabeth in a commanding lead, I’d oversample the Gulf Islands and undersample Saanich and the rest of the Big Island.

There are similar sampling choices a pollster can make to skew a poll Green - or Tory or NDP or Liberal - in Nanaimo-Ladysmith.

Or anywhere else.

I have no clue where the Green pollster pulled their projections from because I haven’t seen any of the people sharing the polls, sharing that data. And I’ve looked. So if someone wants to post the granular polling methodology below to reinforce the value of these polls (or prove they were gamed to get exactly the results they did) please do!

But I do know that these polls being waved as proof positive the Greens are the only option for stopping two fundamentally non-Tory ridings from turning blue predate the federal debates - and the Green debate debacle where the two leaders released completely contradictory statements on how they managed to have 100-plus registered candidates go into witness protection before election day.

So polls about voter intentions from March are about as reliable as checking your Facebook feed and feeling reassured your party is winning by a landslide because the algorithms only show posts from people you agree with.

If it sounds like I’m coming hard at the Greens here that’s because back in 2019, I privately thanked, and publicly praised, Manly’s campaign manager for busting the NDP for pushing bogus polling data - so seeing the same move, in the same way, in the same riding just strikes me as gross.

But before it looks like I’m just coming at the Greens - and just talking about two ridings - pollsters running aggregators freely admit they are really shaky on three and four-way splits because there is so little local data to draw on.

I don’t know which party has the best shot at stopping Poilievre Pollution in either of these ridings - but neither does CBC’s polltracker, nor does anyone claiming a two-way race in a three or four-way riding. So, if you want to stop the Tories, go out there and vote for the candidate you believe has a shot at beating them and/or vote for the candidate you believe in. If you’re lucky, that may even be the same person.

And here’s a conversation I just had on the eco-aspects of the Canadian election with eco-writer Arno Kopecky.

Author Arno Kopecky on Canada's Election Climate

And some more on the adventure of strategic voting…

Seth Klein at The National Observer breaks all this down nicely here: Four tips for progressives wondering about strategic voting

Mario Canseco explains the above in pollster-speak…