PPM: The Polls and the Local Media #nlpoli

All daily media in the province reported polls released by polling firms during the 2011 general election. 

They reported the polls as the firms released them.  That is, they did not question or alter the presentation of the numbers, nor did they discuss the different methodology used to generate them. This CBC report is typical.

The second MQO poll, released on September 30 stands out in particular as a result of the way it was reported.  This poll prompted a news release from Liberal leader Kevin Aylward that we’ll discuss in greater detail in the final segment of this series.

What’s most interesting about the second MQO poll is the way the firm reported the results for a question it asked on the leaders’ debate. 

One can make a theoretical argument about eliminating undecideds in the presentation of a party choice question. Some pollsters would claim this would allow you to match their poll result with the popular vote on election day.

But there’s no reason to alter the presentation of the results in such a way for any other sort of question.  Yet that is exactly what MQO did with the leaders’ debate question.  For some inexplicable reason, MQO reported the results in such a way that they placed the emphasis on those who watched the debate.  They then presented their responses as if those who reportedly watched the debate was 100% of the sample.

When asked about the leaders’ debate, 34 per cent of those polled said they watched the televised leaders’ debate on Wednesday, September 28. Of those respondents who watched the debate, 36 per cent felt Kathy Dunderdale won the debate, while Lorraine Michael was seen as the winner by 22 per cent, and six per cent said Kevin Aylward came out on top. The remainder of respondents said there was no clear winner of the debate.

The result was this sort of presentation in news stories:

The poll poses serious questions for Kevin Aylward and the Liberals who have been struggling through the campaign with an accumulated debt and difficulty with recruiting candidates.

Of respondents who had watched the leaders' debate on Wednesday night, only six per cent said Aylward won it. By contrast, 36 per cent chose PC Leader Kathy Dunderdale and 22 per cent chose NDP Leader Lorraine Michael.

"The remainder of respondents said there was no clear winner of the debate," MQO said in a statement.

In the rush to write a news story, no reporters caught that 66% of the respondents didn’t watch the debate.  They didn’t adjust the rest of MQO’s numbers accordingly. The result is that MQO’s misleading presentation of its results survived into news casts.

Aside from the MQO and Environics polls released by the companies themselves to all media, two of the province’s major media outlets commissioned polls for the 2011 election.

NTV commissioned their usual pollster, Telelink, to conduct a poll similar to ones they have done with Telelink on several occasions over the past six years.

The poll served the usual purpose.  It gave NTV exclusive news content as well as a marketing opportunity.  NTV was also able to ask a question on Muskrat falls similar to one from an NTV/Telelink poll in February.  As such, NTV was able to describe not only the results of the new poll but the trend – in this case a decline in support – from the earlier poll.

The Telegram commissioned CRA to conduct a poll with what turned out to be the largest sample of any poll conducted during the election. 

Consistent with experience elsewhere, the Telegram used the poll to generate large amounts of original content in addition to reaction pieces.  The poll was the centrepiece of the paper’s election coverage over three days, beginning on October 6. 

The poll, however, did not add significant new information to any other poll results.  The Saturday edition  - October 8 - featured responses to questions on the so-called rural-urban divide.  However, the questions – which party do you think best deals with rural issues and so on – basically mirrored the satisfaction questions without adding significant depth or colour to public understanding of the issues and public opinion. “Satisfaction” questions ask respondents to indicate how satisfied they are with government performance on a given topic. 

The Saturday edition of the Telegram also reported on another key question.  The Telegram asked respondents which party they would chose if Danny Williams was still the Tory leader.

Curiously,  the Telegram found that health care was overwhelmingly the major issue for respondents, just as CRA polls for the provincial government reported for the past year.  However, the Telegram did not probe any dimensions of that opinion.  What is it about health care that people are so concerned about?

The most significant aspect of the media and polls during the 2011 election was not what the media reported of specific polls during the election.   Rather it was the conclusion that news media drew from the CRA quarterly omnibus results and then the subsequent polls.

The Tories were assured of a massive majority, so the interpretation went.  The only thing potentially worth watching was a race for second place in poll results.

You can see the theme in national media – CTV or the Globe for example – and you can also see it in local coverage.  The CBC interpreted the second MQO poll with a particularly strident emphasis on the supposed loss of ground by the Liberals in the poll.  The decline, incidentally, was well within the margin of error.  The CBC characterised the change in numbers as “freefall.”

What this interpretation missed as a result was the dramatic battle between the New Democrats and the Conservatives in St. John’s.  No daily media in the province reported it before the election results on October 11.  In the October 8 edition, for example, the Telegram election coverage made no mention of the battle beyond the NDP confidence in seats changing hands. 

If they missed entirely a pitched battle right under their noses, it is no surprise that they also missed the Liberal campaigns in western Newfoundland that resulted in the party winning enough seats to continue as the official opposition in the House of Assembly.  The Liberals, as one wag noted, refused to follow the media script and die on cue.

By following the polls – marketing devices for the polling firms and for some news outlets – the news media missed the news in the local election.

- srbp -

 

• Monday:  “Politics, Polls and the News Media”

• Tuesday:  “PPM:  The Polls in the 2011 Election”

• Wednesday:  “PPM:  The Polls and the Local Media”

• Thursday:  “PPM:  Controversy, Accountability and Disclosure”

The Morning After the Night Before #nlvotes #nlpoli

The story of the night is the loss of two cabinet ministers and the Premier’s parliamentary assistant in gains by the New Democrats in St. John’s and by the Liberals in Torngat Mountains.

This – coupled with the fights in seats across the province – was the real story of the election.  The conventional media stuck with the  bullshit “race for second place” theme right up until the last of their coverage on election night.

Natural resources minister Shawn Skinner went down to defeat in St. John’s Centre, losing to New Democrat Gerry Rogers.  Skinner was a key player in the Dunderdale cabinet holding down one of the more important portfolios.  That didn’t matter.

Aboriginal affairs minister Patty Pottle lost her seat in Torngat Mountains to Liberal randy Edmonds.

In St. John’s North, New Democrat Party president Dale Kirby pounded Bob Ridgley. This one in particular stands out.  Ridgley is part of the Osborne-Ridgley dynasty that had a stranglehold on three St. John’s seats.  Ridgley was parliamentary assistant to first Danny Williams and then Kathy Dunderdale.

Seat counts based on opinion polls of questionable accuracy turned out to be a mug’s game of the first order.  What was supposed to be 43 Tories, four New Democrats and two Liberals, turned out to be 37 Tories, six Grits and five Dippers.

At some point people will put seat projection artists right next to the psychic astrologers election forecasters in their news line-up.

This is a record low turn-out, beating Danny Williams’ record set in 2007.  Preliminary numbers for Tuesday night put the turn-out at 58.3% of eligible voters.

Just to put 2011 in context, here’s a chart showing the party shares of eligible vote since 1949.

The Tories just got re-elected with the smallest share of eligible vote of any government formed since 1949.  They beat the Tories’ 1975 previous low score of 33% by one point.

For those who missed it, NTV/Telelink put the don’t know/will not vote at 42% in its election poll.  That works out to 58% turnout.  Bang-on.  Some of the other polls had the same category as low as 18%. 

The Tories wound up with 32% of the eligible vote.  NTV had it down as 35%.  Liberals got 11%, while NTV had them at 7.4%.  NTV had the NDP at 15%.  They got 14%.

NTV/Telelink is  - consistently - the most accurate political poll done in the province bar none.  SRBP will do a detailed comparison of the polls and the results in another post.

While all three political parties will likely swap out their leaders before the next election, the Liberals are the ones with an immediate leadership problem. 

Caretaker Kevin Aylward lost his seat.  He could carry on but common sense and convention would tell him to go.  The Liberals need to change their leader and their executive board sooner rather than later in order to start the massive rebuilding effort ahead of them.

This election showed there is still life in the party, despite the gaffe-riddled campaign at the provincial level. The Liberals can’t afford to waste time.  Preparation for the next election has to start today.

The New Democrat leadership will pose some interesting choices for the party.  Expect Dale Kirby to be a leading contender based in no small measure on the profile he will likely win once the House opens in the spring.  He may not be the best choice, but he will be a leading contender.

The other thing the Dippers have to figure out is when to say goodbye to Lorraine and usher in the new era.

Part of the NDP calculation will depend on how fast the Tories dump Kathy Dunderdale. She was an interim leader who decided to stay.  The party lost big in its bedrock and had fights in plenty of other seats.

Much like the 1999 election heralded the beginning of the Liberal end, the 2011 could be the turning point for the ruling Tories.  If they continue to coast – with or without Dunderdale - they will be facing an even stronger NDP assault.  If the Liberals get their act together, the combination of Liberal and NDP attacks could end the Conservative dynasty.

The Tories need to change.  The only problem is that a change before the fourth year of their mandate will trigger an election.  They might not be ready for another election so soon after the current one, especially with a raft of members ready to retire.

- srbp -

A house divided #nlpoli #nlvotes

In the west end of St. John’s, one house shows the drama of the struggle between the forces of Blue and the forces of Orange for control of Capital City.

The first candidate who came to the door canvassing for votes turned out to be Paul Boundridge.

You won the lottery, or words to that effect greeted him as the woman of the house flung open the door.

She explained that – despite the fact it was the Thursday before polling day - he’d been the first of the three candidates to knock on her door.  So he was getting her vote.

Job done?

Not quite.

The subject of a sign for the front lawn popped up from one or the other.

The neighbourhood is bare of signs, incidentally.

Da byes in orange had one in the car so their newest supporter was happy to have them put it up, pdq.

For good measure, she called her husband, a Big Friggin’ Tory, to tell him the news. 

She wanted to make sure he didn’t come home, fly into a rage, and toss the sign on the neighbour’s lawn.

Or worse.

So he called John Dinn’s headquarters and had them race over to stick one of their signs next to the other one.

And on the Monday before the official voting day, there stood the two signs as you see them in the picture. 

How will the election turn out?

Well, so far the election is exactly what everyone didn’t expect. 

One of the three leaders people assumed would be running this time last year is long gone.  The other gave up the leader job, although she could have it back in a day or two if her replacement doesn’t win his seat.

There all sorts of seats projections out there.

We’ll all know the details by tonight.  Remember all the projections though and see which ones, if any came close to being right. 

And as a last note, for those of you with Rogers, tune into Out of the Fog for the election coverage.  You can catch your humble e-scribbler doing something other than scribbling.

- srbp -

Motivation and demotivation #nlpoli #nlvotes

“Complacency is your greatest enemy in an election,” Progressive Conservative Leader Kathy Dunderdale said Sunday.

“When it's hard to motivate people to become engaged to get out and to cast their ballot, then you have a concern about that.”

That’s a quote CBC used out as part of a story that focuses, curiously enough, on how one political leader and only one political leader is responding to an issue in the election:  lack of apparent voter interest.

The story casts Kathy Dunderdale in the role of impartial election commentator not as the leader of a political party who is – quite obviously – failing to motivate people to vote for her and her fellow Tories.

The story also mentions poll results to make sure no one forgets what election reporting is really all about.  There at the post… yada yada yada

Dunderdale’s not alone. All three leaders have that problem – failing to inspire voters positively -  but it varies from party to party.

Dunderdale is the one whose inability to find any energy in  her campaign stands in stark contrast to her slogan.

Now when news media do this sort of reporting, there’s no giant conspiracy.  It’s just a sign of how much reporting in this province has become an adjunct of the political system.

The political story of the parties struggling against voter disinterest or the Tories and Dippers fighting in St,. John’s is is part of the real story of this election and, right up until the end,  CBC and every other news media outlet in the province has ignored it.

Why are people so unmoved by the politicians?  And if they are moved, at least in St. John’s, why is it to move from the Tories to the NDP?

Fascinating stuff.

But you’ll never find it in the conventional media.

There it’s all horse races and Kathy Dunderdale and others with an interest in the campaign framing their stories for themselves.

- srbp -

Whom the gods destroy #nlpoli #nlvotes

There's letters seal'd, and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd—
They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard, an't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon.

For the past seven years the Tory political staffers masquerading  online as a variety of real people have liked to push the theme that the New Democrats should form the official opposition in preference to the Liberals.

Danny Williams , you may recall who that is, used to compliment Lorraine Michael on her performance and her questions in a way that was by no means smarmy, condescending and appearing to be insincere.

He and his friends slagged Liberals – especially Yvonne Jones – at the drop of a hat.

The Tories even agreed among themselves, backed by the supposedly impartial Speaker of the House of Assembly, to give extra cash to the NDP caucus and to deny the Liberals of funds recommended by an independent commission.

They did this in the mistaken belief that fostering a fight between the opposition parties would allow their beloved benefactors [and party] to stay in power.

If the trends in this election hold true, their clever little political plot has already come back to roger them in ways they did not see coming.

And they richly deserve both the shock and the shaft. 

“Hoist with his own petard” are the words Shakespeare wrote for Hamlet.  A petard is another word for a bomb intended.

A few centuries later own goal is a word you’ll still hear military engineers talk about them.  Except this time they call them “own goals.”

You’ll find own goals in other places too, like when any crafty plan backfires.

Own goals are the way the universe reacts to over-weaning and undeserved arrogance.

Own goals are Fate’s reward for douchebags.

The New Democrats are giving the Conservatives a hard run in their supposedly safe homes in St. John’s. 

Tom Osborne, of the Osborne-Ridgley dynasty, is fighting hard against a sharp young New Democrat named Keith Dunne in St. John’s South. He is a former health minister.

Ed Buckingham has represented the uber-Tory seat of St. John’s East.  He replaced John  Ottenheimer as the representative for a seat that has previously sent such ardent Townie Tories as Witch0hunt Willie Marshall in to battle with the evil Liberals.  Buckingham’s got a fight on his hands from gasoline guru George Murphy.

Over in St. John’s North,  Bob Ridgley is having a hard time just like his nephew in St. John’s South.  Among other things, Ridgley is apparently facing the ire of public sector pensioners whom the Tories poked needlessly in the eye early on in the campaign.  Bob’s under pressure from New Democrat party president Dale Kirby.

And in St. John’s Centre, New Democrat Gerry Rogers is threatening to cut short the political career of natural resources minister Shawn Skinner.  That struggle contains the stuff of Greek theatre, bringing together, as it would appear, the breast cancer scandal  - the second biggest political controversy since 2003 – with the Conservatives’ entry in the campaign to supplant the 1969 Churchill Falls contract as the public reference point for political disaster.

Since the late 1990s, the Tories have used their old guaranteed seats in St. John’s as the base from which to stage their comeback.  They’ve had an unassailable lock on the seats in the metro area since 2003.  The Tories evidently figured this time would be the same.

But something happened that no one seems to have expected.

Sure the polls showed a marked drop in Tory support starting in early 2010.  The former Tory enthusiasts just seemed to disappear off the political polling landscape.

Where they went didn’t show up until later on.  New Democrat support didn’t really pick up until May 2010.  What appeared to be a temporary bump from the federal election turned out to be something more.

What the provincial Conservatives missed along the way is that in the St. John’s area their supporters bleed to the New Democrats.  So anything that builds the New Democrats weakens the Tories, not the Grits. 

If the Tories imagined the NDP could not organize its way to anything beyond what they had already, then the Tories figured wrongly.

As the Tories talked up the need to keep a member on the government side, they seem to have forgotten that in St. John’s, the old patronage lines don’t work.  They don’t work because they don’t matter.

Townie members of the House of Assembly don’t deliver pork to their constituents.  They have precious little to do with the majority of their constituents whose needs for fire trucks and road paving come from municipal government rather than their provincial politician. 

Townie voters can elect an opposition member to the legislature and not feel a single pang of retribution. 

Townie voters are also public servants in large numbers.  Tom Marshall’s dismissal of retired public servants in the talk of giving them a modest raise in benefits may well have resonated with the majority of public servants who are getting ever closer to retirement age. 

When the Tory platform promises included a set of crossed fingers – we’ll deliver the promises of more cash only if we don’t need to cut spending – that likely sent a second uncomfortable chill up the spines of civil servants everywhere.

Safe to vote for an opposition politician and given plenty of reasons to do so.

Sweet, eh?

Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, regardless of how many seats the New Democrat win and regardless of whether they form the opposition or not,  this election marks a shift in provincial politics.

The Tories got a big scare. 

The New Democrats got a big boost.

What happens next is what matters. 

At age 68, New Democrat leader Lorraine Michael is likely to step down before 2015.  The party’s new energy will drive more interest in the job and the party than usual. They will get lots of media coverage and the chance to showcase their new energy for the entire province.

The new leader and the New Democrats already have genuine new energy.  They will stand in stark contrast to the Conservatives.

The Tories will face a leadership fight delayed from Williams’ departure. Kathy Dunderdale was only supposed to stay for a while.  Now she plans to stick around for two terms.  The oldest person ever elected Premier plans to hang on until she is the second oldest person to retire from the job. 

That may cause tension within the caucus, especially if there are other potential leaders who put their ambitions aside for what they thought was a short time. 

Political pressures coming out of the election or internal divisions from tough governing choices could add other tensions.

The party platform is already starved of new ideas.  It is in autopilot.

And then there are the other Tories who planned to retire but who hung on for the good of the party through one more election.  They will go sooner rather than later.

And so the Tories will face by-elections.

Those by-elections will not be as easy as they used to be.

Political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador aren’t good at refreshing themselves while they are in power.  Then tend to coast rather than move off in a genuinely new direction that aligns with voter moods.

The inevitable result is that they get tossed.

The only reason political parties last as long as they do – 17 years for the Tories the first time, 14 years for the Liberals the second time – is that the other guys never get their act together.

That might be changing.

Whom they gods would destroy, they first make proud.

- srbp -

Tories in hard fight in Sin Jawns seats #nlpoli #nlvotes

The whole race for second place media meme  - bullshit that it always was - masked a very serious battle that’s been going on since the election started between the Conservatives and New Democrats.

You can tell it is serious because the media are starting to report it.

And what they are reporting is stuff like Kathy Dunderdale in a scrum with reporters as she campaigned in St. John’s for some of the Tory candidates who are having a really hard time.

Now Kath couldn’t acknowledge what’s really going on so she blamed on the Liberals.  What’s going on is that all those people who were voting Tory in St. John’s are abandoning the Tory party and heading for the New Democrats.  Since early 2010,  Tory support has dropped 27 percentage points.  Since May, that support has apparently been finding a happy home with the New Democrats.

Your humble e-scribbler thought the local Tories had a tighter grip on their voters provincially than they do.  The signs, though, have been unmistakeable for a week or more and the opinion polls – all conducted up to October 3 – confirm the growing NDP vote in the metro region.

The other big problem the Tories are having is interesting the people who would vote for them to actually get to the polls. Unmotivated Tory voters and the ones that are motivated are voting for someone else.

Ouch.

That just makes the NDP surge all the more problematic for the Tories. Dunderdale tried once again this weekend to encourage people to vote.

There’s a picture of Dunderdale accompanying that CBC story where she’s whining about Liberals, incidentally, with Kathy standing next to St. John’s East candidate Ed Buckingham.   Dunderdale looks like she needs to get out for a few more runs to restore her energy level to the magical new levels she’s supposedly found.

For another clue of the battle going on around Capital City, consider that long-time Tory Doc O’Keefe is out beating the streets for his old Tory buddy Shawn Skinner in St. John’s Centre. Earlier in the week, Doc wasn’t giving any clue he would be hitting the streets for his old pals. By the end of the week the local Tories are announcing that Doc’s coming in to the fight.

All of this is part of the two front war the Tories have been waging.  The other front is for the most part a battle against the Liberals in parts of the province outside the northeast Avalon. 

In a post some of you might have missed, the always insightful labradore used the advance poll turn-outs last week to show how the Tories appear to be deploying their forces.  The fights in St. John’s are heavy enough that the Tories have had to deploy forces they sent in 2007 to wind Liberal seats in rural Newfoundland into their heartland in St. John’s in order to hang on.

- srbp -

Advance voting and other campaign tidbits #nlpoli #nlvotes

If you want to get a good sense of what the advance poll turnout from Tuesday likely means in campaign terms, wander over to labradore.

In the current election, six of the ten highest advance-vote districts were in metro St. John's. In 2007, only three were. The top ten, interestingly enough, were almost all seats heavily targeted by Danny Williams-Government for pickup or hold, …

This may mean that the Tories and NDP are pumping GOTV resources into St. John's, and that the Tories are doing so at the expense of the formerly strenuous GOTV efforts in potential rural battleground districts in the Williams-era general and by-elections.

Yes, folks that would be the real story of the election which the conventional media have decided to avoid in favour of focusing on horseracing.

Luke, Luke, I gotta tell ya, at the end of the day, I am your father on a go forward basis

Speaking of the conventional media, the province’s largest circulation daily newspaper decided to engage in some public editorial self manipulation of the sort that used to grace the editorial pages of the old Spindependent. 

The subject is a poll the Telly commissioned from the same gang that do the provincial government’s quarterly political polling.

What can be said is that it is the broadest and most detailed snapshot in time of the current campaign, commissioned by an independent media outlet.

We can only look forward with bated breath to what will follow in the days ahead.

The Telly-torialist couldn’t resist getting in a little pre-emptive disclaimer at potential critics:

The poll will be received with the usual sniping — undoubtedly by those who have a larger problem with what the results spell out than what the critics honestly have with the methodology.

Nice thought but the People’s Paper is refusing to release any information that would let someone have a look at the poll methodology.

Your humble e-scribbler went asking a few questions on Thursday only to have senior management at the paper issue an immediate and complete ban preventing all Telly editors and staff from discussing any aspects of the poll whatsoever with anyone outside the paper.

Full stop.

After all those years of bitching about the provincial government’s unnatural desire for keeping polls secret, the Telly has finally caved in and joined the secrecy society. Governments across the land will rejoice that one newspaper has finally come over to the dark side of freedom from information.

What a shame too, because the Telly finally had some interesting information, or so it seemed out beyond the stuff that graced the front page of the Thursday issue.

Ah well, we’ll just have to sit back and see if the “broad-ranging public opinion poll with a large sample size conducted by an experienced polling company” lives up to that company’s usual accuracy.

And a large double-double to go…

Politicians’ handlers need to look for what the camera sees when their charge decides to scrum.

In this case, they should have looked at what CBC saw and then used to illustrate a story in which Liberal leader Kevin Aylward claims his party has a shot at up to 30 seats in the election. 

The elderly gentleman and the fellow apparently representing the local hit-man’s benevolent association don’t exactly convey that sense of energy and enthusiasm  - let alone numbers - to back up Aylward’s claim.

The one thing that does stand out nicely is the sign advertising real fruit smoothies for a buck 99.

Was it a campaign swing or a Tim’s run?

He wrote the book…literally

Check out a fine post on the CBC election website by Doug Letto called “Oil, wealth and caution at the finish line”.

Letto’s covered local politics for the better part of 25 years.  He’s forgotten more about politics than most reporters in the province will ever know. Plus, when it comes to the province’s history of economic development and politics, Doug’s written not one but two fine books.

Chocolate bars and rubbers boots looks at economic development during the Smallwood years. Run! is Doug’s account of the 1999 general election.

- srbp -

The Placeholder Election Revisited #nlpoli #nlvotes

Kathy Dunderdale told reporters on Wednesday she plans to seek re-election in 2015.

Interesting that Dunderdale felt the need to volunteer that thought.  It must be an issue people are raising.  Otherwise, there’d be no real reason to bring it up.

Of course, Brian Tobin insisted in 1999 he’d serve out a full term even though a great many people knew he had ambitions in Ottawa when and if Jean Chretien packed it in.

Danny Williams was going to run for a third term at one point as well.

If all goes as it seems right now, Kathy Dunderdale will become not just the first woman elected premier in this province but the oldest person ever elected to the office since Confederation.

Period.

Full stop.

If she actually hangs on for another seven years and leaves in 2018 (right before the Muskrat Falls bills hit your mailbox) she will be the second oldest person to leave the job since Confederation.  She’ll be about 67 years old.

Dunderdale would have to go for another term in 2019 to beat Joe Smallwood who left his fingernail marks on the office door in 1972 when people finally managed to drag him out kicking and screaming.

Odd she raised the issue of two terms.

Odd indeed.

And as for her statement about sticking around, let’s take that one with a grain of salt as well.

After all, some people believed Danny would be running this time around, didn’t they?

Kathy will be gone before 2015.

Lorraine Michael will be gone.

And first out the door will be Kevin Aylward.

All three current party leaders won’t be in their current jobs in 2015.

- srbp -

Political Advertising #nlvotes #nlpoli

In the first of a two parter, John Sides (via The Monkey Cage) tosses out some observations on the impact of election advertising.

This is relevant to the current general election. 

Consider, for example, his first point that the value of advertising depends on whether one is the incumbent or the challenger;

When voters do not know much about candidates, their opinions will be weak or even nonexistent.  Advertisements supporting or opposing unfamiliar candidates have the potential to be persuasive.

Notice the very low level of advertising of any kind in this election.  Since the two opposition parties are less well known than the incumbents, it doesn’t make much sense that they aren’t trying to make themselves known to voters through a variety of means, including election advertising.

Some individual campaigns – like John Noseworthy in Signal Hill Quidi Vidi – are doing some radio spots.  Overall, though, the amount of advertising done by the parties themselves seems to be almost non-existent.

Maybe the perception isn’t real.  Maybe your humble e-scribbler is missing something.  Maybe there is a ton and a half of advertising.

Anyone have any specific observations on the current campaign?

- srbp -

Environics releases second indy poll of campaign #nlpoli #nlvotes

The second independent poll of the provincial campaign – this time by Environics for the Canadian Press  -  turns up some interesting numbers.

You’ll find them below, in a table with the other recent polls results, all put on the same basis as a percentage of total responses.

Two things to notice from Environics compared to either MQO, CRA or Telelink:

First, Environics tells you how they conducted the survey and warned about extrapolating these numbers to the population.

“The non-random nature of online polling makes it impossible to determine the statistical accuracy of how the poll reflects the opinions of the general population.”

Second, they present their figures with all the relevant responses included.  Removing one of the valid response categories – the undecideds – distorts the poll results in a way that can be highly misleading. 

In the past, CRA polls have reported an increase in Conservative support when their poll actually showed a decrease.

In the table below, SRBP recalculated the numbers for MQO and CRA to show percentages of all reported responses, including undecideds.

	CRA	MQO	MQO	NTV	ENV
	Aug	S 20	S 30	Oct 3	Oct 5
PCP	40	42	44	35	38
LIB	16	16	11	08	09
NDP	18	23	27	15	22
UND	26	20	18	42	30
MoE	4.9	4.9	4.5	4.3	-

The Big Story isn’t in these polls

While lots of people will focus on the decline in the Liberal polling numbers and the apparent climb of the NDP during the election, the more dramatic drop has been in the Conservative numbers since early 2010.

That orange line is the share of eligible votes the Tories got in the 2007 general election.

The blue line is the Progressive Conservative party choice number in every CRA quarterly poll from November 2007 until the most recent one in August 2011.  The number is shown as a share of all responses, not as a share of decideds.

Look closely.

The Tories peaked at 67%, according to CRA, in early 2010'.  Since then, it’s been a jagged ride downhill.  From May 2011, the drop has been precipitous, settling out at 40% in August 2011.

While the other polls show different numbers, they are all within the margin of error for the polls.

What does that mean for the Tories?

Well, when you look at real numbers it gets pretty easy to see why the Old Man skedaddled last fall in an unholy rush.

If you consider the discrepancies between CRA’s polling numbers and the 2007 actual voting result, the Tories might have problems getting their vote to the polls.  Even if you allow that the 27 percentage points the Tories have dropped since early 2010 was all Danny-loving over-reporting by super enthusiastic respondents who weren’t real Tories anyway, the Tories would have to get all their voters from 2007 to the polls and then some to avoid losing any seats at all.

That’s something noted here early on in the campaign and it still stands.  The Tories will likely lose seats.

The Murky Shifts

The variation in the Liberal and New Democratic Party numbers looks dramatic, even if you just look at the table above.

Just remember, however, that the variation in the Liberal result in all these polls done since September 19 is within twice the margin of error for the polls. That means we likely haven’t seen any shifts of any significance.

The Liberal number from Telelink could wind up being like their Liberal number in 2007: roughly half what it wound up being as a share of eligible voters once all the ballots had been counted. Averaging the Liberal result of the first four polls (excluding Environics) gives you a number close to the 2007 actual.

The Wild Card

The NDP results show a wider range of variation.  The four polls – excluding Environics -  range from a low of 15 to a high of 27, with the high and low actually coming from polls done within days of each other.  The average of the four is 21%.  That is three times what the NDP were polling in early 2011.

Anecdotally, it seems that NDP support is focused in St. John’s and one or two districts outside Capital City. The climb in NDP support appears to be related to the drop in Tory support.  That’s not surprising in St. John’s where the NDP and Tories are closely connected and where the major shifts are likely occurring.

In some respects that shift from Tory to NDP in St. John’s is the other half of the Big Story of this election.  The Race for Second Place remains an imaginary tale at worst, and a triviality at best.

Even moreso than with the Liberals, the NDP chances of picking up seats on October 11 depends on how effectively they can get their vote out.  That’s especially true in St. John’s where the Tories tend to rack up sizeable majorities.

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Note:  CRA and the telegram have a new poll due Thursday.  Rumour has it that MQO is in the field again and may release another poll later this week or on Monday.

Searching for Rescue #nlpoli #nlvotes

Tory boss Kathy Dunderdale and Grit boss Kevin Aylward both think that the provincial government should investigate search and rescue response times around the province and then push Ottawa to spend more.

Classic provincial politician’s political play:  go on a crusade to get the feds to pay.

It’s also a classic for the party leaders in this provincial election campaign to agree on the need to spend provincial cash on federal stuff. 

You may recall that Kathy Dunderdale was the first one to pledge to spend provincial tax dollars to keep a co-ordination centre running so that former Tory candidate Merv Wiseman and his colleagues could work in Sin Jawns some more.

Now that Merv is a provincial Liberal candidate, the Liberals think that’s the way to go as well.

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What if they gave an election and nobody came? #nlvotes #nlpoli

Next Tuesday, the face of the province’s House of Assembly likely won’t change very much at all.

The new premier will take office following an election with what is on track to be a record low turn-out.

That’s got nothing to do with public opinion.  It’s got everything to do with the way the politicians re-engineered the law governing provincial elections in a string of changes made after 2003.

For starters, how long does an election campaign have to be? 

Well, according to the Elections Act, 1991, there must be a minimum of 21 days between the day the House is dissolved and voting day.  Historically, incumbent parties liked to call elections with the shortest possible campaign time.  But some elections have gone on for almost a month.

After 2003, the provincial Conservatives introduced changes that set voting day as the second Tuesday in October.  They could have the official campaign period before that for as many days as they’d like.  In 2011, they called it so that there was the minimum time to campaign allowed by law.

But that doesn’t mean there is actually 21 days of activity.

When the Tories picked the second Tuesday in October as their preferred date, they didn’t pick by accident.  They picked it so that voting day would always be right after the thanksgiving day weekend.

Clever boys and girls are they.  That automatically reduces the  period during which voters are paying attention to the campaign by at least three days.  No party is going to campaign on the holiday weekend, for fear of pissing off voters.  And voters who are travelling around to visit relatives aren’t going to be thinking much about politics as they sleep off a big scoff.

Take that 21 and knock off three.

We are left with 18 days.

Advanced voting takes place a week before the final day.  Lop off four more days.

That leaves you with a functional campaign period of just 14 days.

The election financing rules make it illegal for an individual candidate to raise funds before the election is called.  That makes it pretty tough for a candidate in a district to raise local cash for his or her own local campaign. They have to rely on the party.

For someone who might want to run as an independent candidate, it’s impossible.  Well, impossible unless you made millions on the lottery or by flipping your cable company.  For the average schmuck in the street, the rules are stacked against you.

To see how it works in practice, don’t look at the Liberals who barely tried over the past four years.   Look instead at the NDP to find out how those rules work.  Party president Dale Kirby told Randy Simms a few whoppers on Tuesday about fundraising.  He claimed they only had money for a few ordinary people.  That bit was true. 

The fib was the bit he left out:  the NDP’s major bankroll comes from one union.  The single largest contribution of anyone, to any party, bar none.

Kirby also left out the fact the NDP use the House of Assembly and the government money that goes with it, just like all parties do for the odd staffer here and there.

But a whole campaign, all year?  Only the incumbents can do that.  And rake in cash the provincial Conservatives have, especially from people who do business with the government.  The Tories are bankrolled by Big Oil,  the other Dale Kirby whopper.  The province’s construction industry chucks the most grease on the wheels of the governing party’s machinery.

Incumbents flush with cash, others starved of cash, and election rules that make it very hard for anyone who doesn’t already have a high profile from having been in office already to try and get known in a mere two weeks.

But the real loser in all this is the voter.  People don’t pay a great deal of attention to politics at the best of times.  They have other things in their lives. 

Election campaigns, and all the noise and commotion that goes with them are the means by which parties get their attention.  Elections are supposed to be when voters get to make choices based on information.

The only problem is that provincial elections in Newfoundland and Labrador are designed not to engage voters.  They don’t give anyone enough time to get involved.

And this time around they certainly don’t give much chance for the parties to send information around and canvass for votes.  A week before polling day and your humble e-scribbler has received exactly nothing in the mail from either of the three parties.  One candidate – the Tory – showed up on the doorstep last week for the first time since he first got elected.  He had a brochure that said little.

The Tory obviously knew shag all about Muskrat Falls than the bullshit he’d been told to say and had nothing to offer other than that. The Liberal hit the doorstep on Tuesday night.  No sign of the Dipper and odds are neither he nor a piece of literature will show up between now and the last day to vote.

One of the most common complaints this election is that people don’t know who their candidates are.  One voter-friend of the scribbler in St. John’s East was surprised to discover who the incumbent was in his district. 

Ditto for a few people in Virginia Waters who were shocked to know their member of the House before the writ dropped was none other than Kathy Dunderdale.

The other candidates across St. John’s are unknown, for the most part and none of them have sufficient time to get their message to voters before the first votes are cast.  And that’s even if you allowed them a full bank account and all their prep done so they could start canvassing on the first official day of the election.

Aside from structural impediments to campaigning that all three parties have endorsed over time, the three political parties have all decided to avoid creating any sense of interest or excitement in the electorate this time around. 

Advertising appears to be at an all-time low volume.  The parties have a social media presence.  But the three parties in this province seem to use it as a token of their hipness rather than as the tool for voter activation that it can be.  .

Of course, for the incumbents – especially the Tories - that’s a useful strategy.

For the opposition parties, it would be idiotic.  Well, it would be if we started from the premise that the opposition parties want to unseat the government party.  Sure they say the words about what they’d do if they formed government, but the opposition political parties seem to think they are incumbents too.  Neither the Liberals nor the NDP have done anything meaningful that would risk them winning the election and taking over government. They both seem to be contented with things as they are.

It’s an old refrain around here that the three parties have essentially the same platform and that they all agree the Tories should be re-elected.

The election has turned out to be proof of it.

And all that is the reason Kathy Dunderdale will take off based on one of the lowest, if not the record lowest turn-outs in provincial history.

You’d almost think they wanted it that way.

 

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Muskrat Falls support plummets: poll #nlvotes #nlpoli

Despite a massive marketing effort by the provincial Conservatives and the provincial government’s energy corporation, Nalcor, a new poll by NTV/Telelink shows a dramatic drop in support for the provincial Conservatives’ Muskrat Falls project.

In its most recent poll of eligible voters in Newfoundland and Labrador, NTV/Telelink found that 42% of respondents supported the project compared to 71% in an NTV/Telelink poll conducted in February.

Opposition to the project went from six percent  in February to 22% in October.

Undecided went from 24% to 36%.

The margin of error for the poll is 4.2%.

The more people know about Muskrat Falls, the less they like it.

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Telelink releases campaign’s only independent poll #nlvotes #nlpoli

NTV and Telelink released the only independent poll of the campaign on Monday and with a week to go in the 2011 general election, things are on track for a historic election.

For starters, let’s look at the Telelink party support numbers:

• PCP 35%
• NDP 15%
• LIB    08%
• UND 42%

These numbers are ones you can trust for accuracy and reliability.  In fact, once you read along here and look at 2007 you’ll understand the real reason why CRA and other numbers are pure crap on a cracker.

Next, let’s take a look at the 2007 poll numbers.

In 2007, Telelink’s election poll turned out these numbers:

• PCP 42%
• LIB    08%
• NDP 3.5%
• UND 31.7%

The actual poll results on election night, as a share of eligible voters was:

• PCP  42%
• LIB    13%
• NDP  05%
• DNV  38%

By comparison, CRA’s August 2007 poll (adjusted to show  percent of all responses) was:

• PCP  62%
• LIB    14%
• NDP  06%
• UND  18%

All opinion polls in this province survey eligible voters. The polling firms don’t report their figures that way.  They make it seem like they are talking about share of popular vote. But if you look at it, they simply talk to anyone eligible to vote.  That means you have to compare their poll percentages to the share of eligible votes a party got on voting day.

Incidentally, if you looked at the popular vote numbers and the ones CRA actually reported (as a percentage of decideds) their accuracy doesn’t get any better.

So compared to CRA, Telelink was almost spot on for everything, except the Liberal vote.  

And with all that in mind, let’s look at what we can see in 2011.

Record Low Turnout

For starters, we can expect a record low turn-out at the polls beating the previous record set in 2007.  Given the way the Telelink numbers compared to actual then, we could be looking at half the population not bothering to get out to vote.

In patronage-addled political cultures like Newfoundland and Labrador, voting is one of the ways people pay the patron back for his benevolence. They also need to turn out to vote to show their continued loyalty to the Boss or to signal their allegiance to a new one.

Not surprisingly, in the 18 elections from 1949 to 2007, turnout was above 69% in all but three. Turnout in 1949 was 95%.

So in years when the turn-out was low, you have to wonder what the heck was on the go.  What do 1956, 1966 and 2007 have in common with 2011?  One thing they don’t have in common is overwhelming satisfaction with the party in power at the moment.

Tory support high but dropping

Conservative support sits at 35% and that’s likely where it will hold.  What’s most interesting over the past four years is the way even CRA polls have picked up a decline in Tory support.  When you take out the misleading twist of giving the numbers as a share of decideds, the Tory support has dropped dramatically since early 2010.

The Race for Second Place and Other Bullshit

While plenty of people in 2011 will be talking about the low Liberal number in the Telelink poll, you already know it’s exactly the same number the Liberals turned up the last time out in the Telelink poll.

On voting day in 2007, the actual Liberal share of eligible vote turned out to be almost double that number.  And as a share of popular vote, the Liberals turned out three times what turned up in the polls. They held three seats at the end of the night and picked up another one later on.

The polls don’t tell the story and the media reports on those polls sure don’t tell the real story.

You can also see that when you consider that the NDP polling number in 2011 (15% to 18%) is roughly what the party had in the mid-1980s.  They had two seats.

The final seat count will depend very much on what happen  on the ground this week. 

The Conservatives have undoubtedly dumped as many bodies as they can into the seats where they are under pressure.  Some of those seats are in St. John’s and others are spread across the island and into Labrador.

If the Liberals and New Democrats learned anything from the last time, they are pushing back hard as well.

There is no race for second place.  That’s a fiction invented by the media.  The real election race is being played out in those pressured seats – as many as a dozen or so – across the province.  The Liberals pose the bigger threat to the Tories because they are potentially viable in more seats.  That’s just a function of the electoral math.

What you will see Tory partisans doing is pushing hard on the theme that the Liberal Party support is collapsing.  They want people  - especially Liberal campaign workers -  to become demoralised and stay home. 

The Tories are getting plenty of help from Liberal gaffes.  They are also getting help from the news media who report fiction – like the race for second place or the importance of debates - as if it was fact.

What is really happening and what the news media often report are two very different things. 

And what happens next week after all the voting is done, well that won’t look much like the media projections to date and it may well be a lot less dramatic than people are assuming.

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The Imaginary Centre of an Imaginary Universe #nlvotes #nlpoli

Town and Toronto start with a “T”.

Some Townies can be like some Torontonians sometimes.

Yes, yes.

Settle down.

Hold it down with the other “t” words, like twit, twillick, and twaddle monger. 

You are getting ahead of the story.

Townies, like Torontonians sometimes seems to think that all that matters in the world orbits the tight pucker of their collective arsehole.

The news media in this province are dominated by the townie-based daily crowd.  Lots of things that happen beyond their usual watering holes in the downtown or their homes in the east end of Town can go sailing past them and hence their audience.

If you wanted an example of just how much gets missed, take this media commentary on a recent poll and what it supposedly means.

Like it or not, the bulk of the wealth in this province is in St. John's and that's where parties have the most luck raising cash. The Liberals had money problems long before they started musing about "diverting oil money" to rural areas (presumably at the expense of St. John's), and when Liberal candidate Danny Dumaresque slammed the idea of giving any extra cash to St. John's, the sound you heard (over the collective gasp of the endangered urban Liberals) was the thump of every chequebook in the capital city slamming shut.

A look at the most recent financial statements from the province’s electoral office shows pretty clearly what’s been going on in the province over the past while.

The picture isn’t pretty and it also is nothing like that paragraph would lead you to believe, either.

The provincial Conservatives rake in the lion’s share of the cash compared to all other parties, bar none. Government parties usually do in this province. People like to curry favour.

What’s noticeably different since 2003 compared to previous years is that the companies that give to the “in” party no longer give to the “out” parties.

There’s a reason for that and the reason is more likely related to the attitude the Tories have displayed to political pork and electoral districts than it is to the Liberals alienating the townie money pits.

No one should be surprised if donors quietly got the message that the powers that be would look unfavourably on donations to the other guys, in the same way voters have been told bluntly they needed to vote Blue if they wanted their grandchildren to know what pavement looks like for real instead of just in pictures.

Another noticeable characteristic of the Tory political cash is that it comes primarily from corporate sources, not individuals.

That’s been especially true for the people who have made quite a haul the past four years from the boom in provincial government capital works contracts over the past couple of years.  The construction industry both in the province and on the mainland gave more than $230,000 to the provincial Conservatives in 2010.

The argument in that media commentary is that the Liberals haven’t been able to raise money because they have turned their back on townies.

Now if that were true, then we’d expect to see the New Democrats, who are pretty well all- townie-all-the-time, would have more luck with donations.

Guess again.

The Dippers get lots of small donations from individuals, most of whom live in and around Capital City.

But there isn’t really a lot of cash in their bank accounts.

What’s more,  their biggest single donor is a Toronto-based union that for the past two years dropped 20 large on the NDP in this province.  Before that it was a Washington DC union that ponied up 10K.

That’s because, as much as anything else, political cash is tied to at least three things.

First is incumbency.  You have to be in power or likely to be in power to warrant attention from donors in these parts.  That’s an old connection that the politicos themselves drew decades ago and the  connection has persisted over time.  There are companies all over the province, not just in Sin Jawns

Second is the political culture.  Individuals don’t seem to give much to parties, relatively speaking, over time.  2010 is no exception. Take a look at the analysis by labradore and you can see the extent to which this is true.

And that’s likely because – third – the parties aren’t organized and interested in individuals.  Old habits die very hard and parties like the Liberals and Tories that got used to corporate cash have just kept looking for corporate cash. 

Besides, they, like the NDP, also aren’t built around individual members who actually run the party.  It just wouldn’t occur to them to try and build the party on appealing to individuals to get out an participate.  Even if it did occur to someone, they’d go at it half-heartedly if they went at it at all.

The fundraising problems the Liberals have come from some chronic problems over the last five or six years.  The biggest one is basically a lack of focussed effort.  That’s also what’s caused the lack of general preparedness and the problems in candidate recruiting as well. 

On a local level, in some districts, they are doing quite well and likely will do quite well.  Candidates have been raising money and they have volunteers and a momentum going. There might even be some surprises. That’s all taking place well outside of Sin Jawns, though, and as a result, the details won’t show up in daily media in the province.

Consider that to be the reverse of the NDP where their usual sort of campaign – not much cash or workers – comes across as amazingly gigantic in news reports because it is so close to reporters they can’t see the wider details.

And all that sort of skewed reporting and commentary is pretty much what happens when the frame of reference is the imaginary centre of a largely imaginary universe.

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If only they knew the whole story… #nlpoli #nlvotes

The Telegram wonders why it is taking so long to install court security equipment at the province’s courthouses.

The signs have been up since early January.

“Public notice: Improved security to protect you. Your safety is our No. 1 concern.”

But more than a year after the provincial government announced plans to install a new security perimeter screening system at provincial court in St. John’s, it has yet to happen.

The story mentions the Court Security Act, 2010.  That’s where they get the “more than a year bit.”

But the story of money spent and things not yet done actually dates from 2004.

The original Court Security Act slipped through the House of Assembly in early 2004 and then quietly vanished. 

Never put in force.

No reason ever emerged why the justice department did nothing with it.

The 2010 version is just the 2004 bill word for word, plus a couple of minor changes that could have be done by amendment.

While the court security law never took effect that didn’t stop the gang in the courts from buying up the shiny new scanners a and wands.

If the Telegram looked for the purchase orders, they’d likely find the dates are from 2006 or so. The stuff has been sitting in storage – packing wrap and all – ever since then, or so word around the department goes.

Speaking of other things the Tories never got around to doing, check that 2004 link and you’ll find some other tidbits dating back to the last provincial election that they never got around to doing.

Like say the Sustainable Development Act, 2007.

And the Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act, 2007.

And a natural gas royalty regime.

Or the oil one too, for that matter.

There’s no greater fraud and all that.

 

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More numbers #nlpoli #nlvotes

The results of this poll by the pollster for the provincial government’s energy corporation show numbers well within the margin of error for the poll and as such, don’t reliably show any change at all from the results the company released in the first week of the campaign.

The Tories lead with 44%, a change of 2% of last week. The NDP are at 27% up from 23%. The Liberals are at 11% 13% * down from 16% with undecideds at 18% down from 20%.

The margin of error for the poll remains ridiculously high at 4.6%.

Don’t expect the conventional media to report the connections between the pollster and Nalcor,  nor should anyone to report accurately on the figures and what they mean.

Instead, they’ll take the misleading approach favoured by CRA and MQO, pollsters for the provincial government and its energy corporation, and ones that fit a narrative they created before the campaign started.

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*Copying error: 13% is the figure in the MQO news release as the percentage of decided respondents who chose Liberal. 

Townies and Baymen #nlpoli #nlvotes

Some people were surprised the other night when Danny Dumaresque told the very small audience at a Board of Trade economic forum that:

I would have to say to the mayor of this great city that there are a hell of a lot more priorities outside the overpass that need to be addressed before we start forking more money over to the City of St. John's.

Some people thought his remarks were stupid.

Danny is anything but.

What Danny Dumaresque said won’t hurt him one bit in the Isles of Notre Dame and Danny knows it.

What’s more, what Danny said is true, at least for the people who currently dominate the Liberal Party.  About 12 years ago, they started shifting the party focus away from the province as a whole to one that idealises an imaginary one.

Ruralism started to bloom in the brief period Beaton Tulk served as Premier.  It’s not surprising that Kevin Aylward brought Tulk back to play a key role in the current campaign.

Ruralists believe – as the Liberals’ centrepiece policy for the current campaign states – that:

The fishery is our province’s defining narrative…Our fishery has been our past and the Liberal Party believes it will be our future.

It is not just the fishery, though.  Ruralism, for all its romantic, reactionary beliefs, holds the fishery as the foundation of an entire culture with social and economic components.

The Ruralists flourished after 2003 and their philosophy was firmly entrenched after 2007.  Despite Kevin Aylward’s fervent efforts to pretend otherwise during the debate Wednesday night,  the party he now leads has written off anything east of Goobies.

To be fair, the Liberals aren’t alone in their Ruralist beliefs.  The provincial Conservatives carried on with the Liberals’ Ruralist agenda.  They kept the Rural Secretariat and married its assumptions with Danny Williams’ peculiar version of nationalism.

Again, not surprisingly,  Kevin Aylward proudly declared himself a staunch nationalist shortly after he took over as Liberal leader.  

At its miserable heart, though, Ruralism is really nothing more than old fashioned paternalism and patronage.  Grit or Tory, all the Ruralists really want to do is use public money to keep people in some parts of the province dependent on political hand-outs and therefore firmly under political control.  It’s a miserable, cynical ploy.

To make it clear that patronage isn’t just a favourite ploy for one party, consider that Conservative candidate Keith Russell made it plain enough on Thursday when he said to voters in central Labrador (via the Telegram) that

we have to be on government’s side to access government coffers…

Conservative leader Kathy Dunderdale repeated basically the same line while campaigning on the south eastern coast of Labrador on Thursday.  CBC’s Chris O’Neill-Yates tweeted it:

Abandoning the Avalon Peninsula doesn’t mean the Liberals are doomed as a political party.  They can still win plenty of seats and could well pick up a few this time around.  They’ll likely stay as the Official Opposition. What they can’t do, of course if form a government.  The Liberal strategy is as short-sighted in that respect as it is simplistic. 

Its narrow focus means the Ruralist Party, as it should now be named,  has had way more trouble than an opposition party normally would getting candidates in the last three elections.  In 2011, they’ve had to turn, once again, to dragooning political staffers to fill out the last remaining slots in the candidate roster.  The only thing Beaton Tulk didn’t do in his mad search for names for the ballots on the Avalon was hold a séance.

The Ruralist Party’s focus doesn’t mean they haven’t turned up some good candidates in the process.  George Joyce in St. John’s West is the best of the three candidates running in St. John’s West by a long way. 

In St. John’s Centre, newcomer Carly Bigelow has been kicking Shawn Skinner around. 

During an appearance on Out of the Fog, she popped Skinner’s eyes a bit when she reminded him that Tory policy is to keep public service pensioners on fixed incomes with no increases and then double their electricity rates.  He flipped but that pretty much sums up Skinner’s position. The truth really does hurt, as it turns out.

George and Carly could be easy choices St. John’s voters.  After all, a vindictive, patronage-addled Conservative administration can hardly shag the district for funds in retribution for voting the “wrong way”.  They don’t push pork into townie districts anyway, at least not like the do outside the capital city, so Sin Jawns voters have the opportunity to pick candidates on merit, rather than by party colour.

The Liberal Ruralists aren’t the only ones with problems in Capital City.

In St. John’s North, both the Conservative and New Democrat candidates  are running headlong into the problems with their platforms. 

An NTV profile of the district on Thursday evening’s news noted that the district has a very large percentage of people on fixed and low incomes.  Plenty of public service pensioners live there so incumbent Bob Ridgley must be having a hard time explaining Tom Marshall’s cavalier dismissal of their demands for a modest increase in pension payments now that the government has $4.0 billion in cash laying about.

Add to that the Tory plan to use the cash to double electricity rates instead and you have a very tough pill to shove down voters throats.  If you are a Tory that is.,

Meanwhile, Sin Jawns New Dem Dale Kirby is having an equally hard time.  His party backs the Dunderdale plan to force the people of St. John’s North to pay to ship discount electricity to Nova Scotians.

And then there’s the public sector pensions.

Not a peep in the NDP platform about it at all.

Kirby must be having a devil of a time explaining how the NDP party president and his colleagues didn’t think those pensions might be an issue. Talk about treating seniors with the respect they deserve.

Pensioners can take some cold comfort with the knowledge they weren’t the only thing Kirby and his colleagues didn’t know about.  They missed entirely the contracts that prevent them from introducing their new crude oil tax that was supposed to pay for some other campaign promises.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was another glaring Dipper gaffe in St. John’s.

Liberal Drew Brown is running an uphill fight in Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi  against  an entrenched NDP campaign that knows which way every blade of grass votes in the district. He’s another candidate who’d be far better than the incumbent.

But facing all that didn’t stop Brown from picking up on a glaring oversight in the NDP policy book: the party of supposed social responsibility has no platform plank on replacing the Dickensian-era HMP that happens to sit in Lorraine Michaels’ district:

“The existing infrastructure at Her Majesty’s Penitentiary is still abysmal, despite the findings of the 2008 ‘Decades of Darkness’ report on the state of the provincial corrections system,” Brown explained. “I find it really surprising that no one is talking about it in this election, especially considering the federal Conservatives’ forthcoming crime legislation is likely going to result in an increased number of prisoners going through the system.”

The Liberals plan to begin work on replacing the prison – and aggressively lobbying the federal government to cost-share the project – within weeks of forming the government.

“Without safe and effective prisons, our system of justice here in Newfoundland and Labrador is seriously weakened. Better conditions for the prisoners aside, the facility workers themselves deserve a safer workplace than the one they currently have,” Brown added. “It’s a government facility – the working conditions for employees at Her Majesty’s Penitentiary should be held to the same standard as any other government institution.”

Wowsers.

So at about the half-way point in the general election, one party  - the Liberals – have voluntarily surrendered  a huge chunk of the voting population to the other parties.  They’ve left some very good candidates to fend for themselves.

Another party has just missed the boat entirely on core issues in the one region of the province where they are supposed to have such amazing support and affinity.

this is not a townie versus bayman thing, as much as some people might like to paint it that way.

It’s really about political parties that operate with limited political vision.

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Keith Russell: Panic! #nlpoli #nlvotes

Tory candidate Keith Russell must be in a desperate battle to win his seat.

He’s trotted out the old patronage card in a bid to boost his chances.  The district better vote the right way, warns Russell or else no megaprojects for Labrador.

Here’s how the Telegram reported his comments:

we have to be on government’s side to access government coffers…

Candidates who trot out the truth of the way the Tories have been handling things like road paving over the past seven years usually get slapped down not for what they said but for saying it out loud.

Wonder what Kathy Dunderdale will do to Russell now that he has voiced the threat implicit in the Conservatives’ campaign pork-fest.

Incidentally, the Telegram notes that Russell – who used to work for the Innu nation – testified at the joint review panel hearings and raised concerns about the Muskrat Falls megadebt project.  The Telegram didn’t do Russell’s testimony justice, but that’s another story.

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Own goals #nlvotes #nlpoli

Snappy comments help get news coverage.

Some people call them sound bites.

Like this one from the leader’s debate, highlighted by CBC:

She did, however, have a feisty comment for Aylward when he challenged her on the PCs' approach to the fishery.

"Your slogan is 'we can do better,' you can hardly do worse sir," said Dunderdale.

She’s right. 

The Liberals would be hard-pressed to do worse than the Tories when it came to managing the province’s fishery.

From the FPI fiasco to the idea of re-starting the Fisheries Give-Away Public Cash Board to keeping people splitting fish for Third World wages, you’d be hard pressed to do worse than the Tories have done.

That’s not what Dunderdale likely meant but it was the hapless politician said.

It’s typical of the sorts of basic cock-ups she makes a lot.

But in politics you only have to be better than the alternatives and in the debate she looked better.

The Liberals and NDP can hardly do worse than that, either.

- srbp -