Since since it’s the only game in town, however, it’s what we have to work with.
Here are some quickie observations on the most recent poll:
1. The margin of error for the most recent poll is plus or minus 4.9%. For November, 2008, the MoE was 2.8% and for the ones before that, it was 3.5%. Bear that in mind as you go through media coverage that talks about things being where they were.
2. The chart at left adjusts the CRA numbers to present them as a percentage of respondents rather than adjusting them as a percentage of decideds.
3. If we accept that the undecideds dropped seven percentage points from November, note that both the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives picked up equally from that. The extra point came from the New Democrats.
4. The most accurate of all CRA polls - measured in terms of the margin of error - was the one in November. The MoE was plus or minus 2.8%.
5. There’s something slightly counter-intuitive about these numbers. At a time of growing economic uncertainty – including some sharp blows in this province – one wouldn’t expect party choice for the governing party to go up. Ditto for the satisfaction numbers which remain at astronomical levels. Look at the satisfaction numbers and it doesn’t get any less curious; you just wouldn’t expect 88% of people in the province to be mostly or completely satisfied with government giving all that’s gone on.
Doesn’t matter the party. Doesn’t matter the leader. When things are bad or going bad, there just isn’t as much generosity toward government. 10,000 ticked off nurses and their families should amount for something, shouldn’t they? How about a 1,000 paper workers? Apparently not.
6. Poll goosing. CRA was in the field beginning on February 9. They stopped polling on February 28th. Oddly enough, when asked about it by a talk show host on February 19, the premier knew CRA had started polling the week before.
He also offered the view that if he was going to goose the poll he would have started goosing the week before polling started.
Interesting.
The Equalization racket started in late January even though by all indications the provincial government had the numbers on Equalization and offsets from early November onwards. Anyone else find that news conference in the middle of the night thing odd, especially since government had already planned to scrum the finance minister the day after the federal budget came down?
Notice all the feisty, fighting talk running into that first week of February. Take that as sort of the background noise to the month. Nothing like a racket with Ottawa to get the juices flowing in polling season.
Then there’s the Lower Churchill project. The infeed to Soldier’s Pond – an integral part of the project – is shaved off for some inexplicable reason and submitted to its own environmental review process starting on January 30. On top of that there were two more major Lower Churchill announcements in February, one of which was merely to say the Crown corporation had solicited six expressions of interest; not received: asked for.
Government decided to try playing nice with the nurses. They did it very publicly in February a week into polling.
Let’s not forget the “historic” infrastructure announcement made – you guessed it – right smack in the middle of polling. That was followed by a few speeches to give the thing a few legs.
Overall, though, February was a very busy month for the provincial cabinet. Lots of good news and happy talk. Marinas, fur farms, air ambulances, all announced in February.
7. Rolling Stones Update: Can’t get no satisfaction? We’ve had some issues with CRA polling before and the tendency to generate results that leaving you scratching your head.
One of those would be “satisfaction”.
Let’s leave aside entirely the problem with the question - what exactly is the difference between “mostly” and completely”? – and look at the relationship between the satisfaction number on the one hand and the party support number on the other.
Without any prompting one might suspect that satisfaction goes with support. If you are mostly or completely satisfied with government performance, then you’d be inclined to support the government party.
Not so, according to CRA. In Nova Scotia, for example, people are very happy with Rodney’s government but they plan to vote for the Grits or Dippers.
We are not talking small numbers. The Liberal and NDP vote numbers here are running fairly steadily at a combined 64% of decideds for the past three quarters. The satisfaction numbers have been running in the 50s. So if you believe CRA, a majority of Nova Scotians like their Tory government but a larger number wants them out of office.
Huh?
It gets fruitier when you look at the Tories coming in second or – in the latest poll – third place among parties. People are happy with the job government is doing but they don’t want to vote for the government party.
Those odd numbers don’t just apply to Nova Scotia. Satisfaction with Roger Grimes was decently in the 50s pretty much right up until the end. Take a gander at CRA’s polling and there’s a good likelihood you’ll find lots of examples of this completely incomprehensible correlation. According to CRA, Nova Scotians like the job a government is doing but want to throw the bums out.
Doesn’t make sense.
-srbp-