Fernando 2: Liberals start Tory-style poll goosing #nlpoli

It's August and Corporate Research Associates is in the field.

On Tuesday, Ed Joyce told the people of Holyrood, Isles aux Morts, and Jackson's Arm that they would each be getting new fire trucks.

No, Ed didn't deliver a new fire truck to each community.  He held a news conference to announce that the three communities fire trucks were on order.

Hmmm.

Why would anyone hold a big announcement to say that government had put money aside for a new fire truck for three towns?

Go back and read that first sentence again.

Yes folks.  The Liberals - tanking in the polls - are going to try and goose that CRA poll with some happy news.

Oil and polls #nlpoli

Two things for Tuesday after a monster snow storm.

Oil:  Brent crude hit a low of $52.50 before rebounding to finish Monday at just below US$55 a barrel.  Newfoundland light, sweet crude trades at Brent prices.

West Texas Intermediate was even lower.  It settled at $43.88 with global production staying high and analysts fearing a glut.

Thus is a reminder of the folly of Conservative policy that ignored historic trends and did nothing to hedge against a rainy day. The people who made the stupid decisions and the people who gave them the crappy advice should be dragged through a public inquiry and account in public for their decisions and advice.

August is polling month #nlpoli

The provincial government headquarters offices in St. John’s will be closed on Wednesday for the annual St. John’s regatta.

There won’t be any news releases most likely. 

But so far,  there have been three working days in August,  the same month when Corporate research Associates will be in the field,  and that’s been plenty of time for government’s publicity machine to get to work on its regular poll-goosing agenda

Announce it forward #nlpoli

November is polling month in Newfoundland and Labrador.  Corporate Research Associates goes to the field for its quarterly omnibus and marketing poll.

Historically, the Conservatives have skewed their public communications to the four times a year when CRA was collecting data for public opinion polls that the company will release publicly.

The goal was simple:  the Conservatives wanted to manipulate the poll results.  By and large, it worked.  Then the Conservatives plummeted in the polls.  In order to get out of their hole, the Conservatives have been on a relentless campaign to do what they have always done, but more intensely.

So it’s a little odd that people wondered what was going on when the Conservatives announced a hike in minimum wage last Friday.  Look at the calendar.

One poll to rule them all… #nlpoli

The way things go in Newfoundland and Labrador, you can sometimes think that some things only go on here. 

Not so. 

Take a short trip, if you can spare a second,  to Manitoba and the riding of Brandon-Souris.  The editor of the Brandon Sun published an e-mail last week that went from a federal Conservative political staffer out to thousands of people on a series of distribution lists.

Tories below 30 #nlpoli

By now you’d be living in a cave if you hadn’t heard any news of the latest Corporate Research Associates poll.

The NDP are slightly ahead of the Tories and both are about 10 percentage points ahead of the Liberals.  More people want Lorraine Michael as Premier than want Kathy Dunderdale.  And a majority are unsatisfied with the government.

Now this is an historic set of poll results as Don Martin tweeted to tease people about the release on Monday morning.  The release doesn’t make any reference to that, preferring instead just reporting the results blandly.  By contrast, Mills hyped the living crap out of poll results a few years ago that hit historic highs. 

Influence and Manipulation #nlpoli

Public opinion changes.

Individuals don’t hold exactly the same attitudes about things throughout their entire lives.

That’s true of how the typical man or woman feels about clothing styles, cars, movies, books, politics, or just about anything else.

Not surprisingly in a society like ours, there are people who want to try and change opinions and attitudes.  They want to persuade people to buy a product, support a political decision or stop doing something like smoking.

Also not surprisingly, we have some basic ideas about how people should do that.

A Record of Manipulation #nlpoli

With a tip of the hat to Gerry Rogers and Andrew Parsons, here are some posts from the SRBP archive that all bear on the current political mess in which the provincial Conservatives find themselves.

“Playing the Numbers”  (August 2006) One element of the program involves aggressively pushing out their own message, especially when their pollster is in the field.   The first of the original three-part series that described the Conservative media strategy.  There’s a lot more to it than just online polls. Follow the links for the other two.

Freedom from Information  (Various)  Bill 29 was just the latest in a long string of efforts by the Conservatives to restrict what the public knows.  Controlling information is another key element of the government program.

“Mark Griffin:  traitor”  (February 2009)  A third element of the program involved efforts to suppress dissent.  Mark Griffin was an especially glaring example. There have been lots of others, reported and presumably unreported.  Write a letter? Get a call. 

“Everything else is advertising”  (December 2009) News is everything they want to keep you from seeing.  There’s no story here.

“Deep Throat” (February 2010) Someone inside the provincial Conservative crew leaked the messages about poll goosing. Earlier, someone (else?) dropped a quarter and ratted Danny’s secret heart surgery out to NTV.

“The Screaming of the Banshees”  (February 2010)  NTV broke the story.  The Conservatives mount an organized attack on CBC.  Some people still think that the who horde of people saying exactly the same thing arose spontaneously.  Sure it did.

“Planted Calls and Personal Threats Against Talk Show Host Revealed”  (August 2010)  Randy Simms, interviewed by Geoff Meeker, included a text-book definition of a planted caller.

“Enough of the Political Day-Care” (March 2012) As soon as you read it, you will remember the episode.  What might leap out more for someone of you now than before is the idea that calling Open Line was a threat that struck fear into Tory hearts.

-srbp-

Who knows the mind of a squid? #nlpoli

[Almost Immediate Update at the bottom]

Why do they do it?

People keep asking why the provincial Conservatives spend so much time and tons of public money goosing the VOCM question of the day in the way that supports whatever the Tories are supporting at the moment.

It is a mystery, gentle readers.

It is inscrutable.

Like the ways of the Lord, it passeth all understanding by those of us who have not touched the hem of Hisself’s garment or who don’t hang around churches chowing down on breakfast, lunch or dinner, like current poll goosing ring-master Paul Lane apparently does.

Talking Point Politics #nlpoli

The Telegram’s Saturday front page story on Tory efforts to manipulate online polls and comments garnered two equal and opposite reactions over the weekend in that political echo chamber called Twitter.  [The story isn’t free.  it’s in the online subscriber edition]

Some people got into a lather over it.

Some other people tried to blow it off as something we’ve known all along, something everyone does everywhere, and no big thing.

Equal and opposite, if you will, but the big issue here is in the middle of these two opinion poles.

Radio Free Nalcor #nlpoli

Talk about putting on the full court press to try and squeeze out every favourable bit of commentary for a project that remains mired in controversy and doubt.

Nalcor is running a couple of days of media trips – free of charge – to the falls itself where Nalcor has already started working on a project it claims they haven’t got approval to start work on yet.

And if that wasn’t enough, and surely purely by total coincidence Conservative strategist Tim Powers is a co-host on VOCM’s Back Talk.  The station is owned by Steele Communications, incidentally, whose boss sits  - by complete happenstance - on the board of directors of Nalcor’s oil and gas corporation.

Gander at the goosing #nlpoli

Apparently, your humble e-scribbler got on Steve Kent’s nerves.

The Conservative politician and his friends have been bombarding Twitter and Open Line shows since the middle of July will all sorts of their old poll-goosing tactics.  So yours truly has been re-tweeting some of the little comments with an added remark like “Gee, you’d swear a poll was coming.”

Small stuff.

But apparently enough to go right up Kent’s nose in a bad way.

Don’t remind her, Tommy #nlpoli

The townie Tories are all a-twitter over federal Dipper leader Thomas Mulcair’s endorsement of Sheilagh O’Leary for mayor of Sin Jawns in the next municipal election.

On Monday, reporters asked Premier Kathy Dunderdale about Mulcair’s comments.  Here’s a bit of what she said, via CBC:

"I don't know how somebody who doesn't live here, is not on the ground, doesn't appreciate the demographics to start with and the particular issues, could be offering advice on who is best suited," said Dunderdale outside the House of Assembly Monday. [capitalization corrected]

“So the frig what?” would seem like a better, i.e. appropriately dismissive, response.  Instead Kath used a comment that begs for the retort that she does it all time:  talks about stuff when she doesn’t “appreciate the demographics” or understand what is going on.

$#*! the Premier says, Open Line edition #nlpoli

I suggest that the members opposite do the same and they encourage our representatives in Ottawa to do the same, because the only time we hear from them is on Open Line shows here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale, Hansard, March 22, 2012

Kathy Dunderdale was making fun of politicians who call Open Line shows.

Seriously.

Maybe she was making fun because they weren’t participating in an organized program of Open Line show stacking like Kathy and her colleagues have done since 2003.

Sure.

That would have to be it.

Because otherwise, she’d be like, ah, well, like the biggest friggin’ hypocrite alive.

- srbp -

They who lived by the bullshit… #nlpoli

Regular readers of these e-scribbles will know that the quarterly Corporate Research Associates poll is cause for nothing if not a fair bit of derision.

They aren’t polls anyone should use to judge anything serious.  They are just a marketing device for CRA.

Nonetheless and despite seven years of solid evidence they are crap, the local media eat them up.  The local pols put great stock in them too.

Anyway, those who lived by the bullshit are now getting sliced up by it.  CBC, in particular, is pushing hard at the idea that Kathy Dunderdale’s numbers have taken some sort of meaningful drop in the most recent CRA marketing exercise.

“Premier’s popularity drops” says the headline. Down 16 percentage points since this time last year.  Sounds bad, except that the CRA poll numbers went from 64% in February 2011 to 51% three months later.  Since then, Dunderdale’s popularity numbers have basically hovered around there ever since.

So what’s the big deal?

There isn’t one.

Just like there hasn’t been a really big deal about these things for a long while.

But if you do want to notice something interesting, follow the link that CBC’s David Cochrane tweeted and look at the CRA poll from June 2004.  Danny Williams’ popularity was at 39%, just five points above Roger Grimes.

That’s when the last round of public sector restraint and “program review” came to a quiet end without any results. Danny, Kathy and the rest of cabinet ran from sound fiscal management like scalded cats. They started a spending spree that created the fiscal mess the current Premier likes to talk about but without any sign she actually will do anything about it.

And, dear readers, if Danny Williams didn’t have the balls to be fiscally responsible because it made him unpopular, you can understand why Kathy Dunderdale isn’t planning to change the government’s unsustainable spending either.

She will just talk about it.

- srbp -

Release the budget now! #nlpoli

Headline on a news release issued on Wednesday by the provincial government:

Budget 2012 Investments Will …

And in the first paragraph, you get this line:

Budget 2012 will allocate $1.4 million…

So if they can announce some budget details in February, they can release the rest of it, too.

No excuses.

Let’s have it.

- srbp -

Seven Habits of Spectacularly Ineffective Politicians #nlpoli #cdnpoli

“Run government like a business” is an old line. 

Some people use it as a rallying cry for success and innovation. 

Others think of it as a recipe for disaster.

Regardless of which side of that argument you come down on, you can sometimes find value in applying ideas from one sector to the other. 

Take, for example, a list of seven habits attributed to business leaders who screw up published online at forbes.com recently.  It’s a variation on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People except you learn positive lessons from the negative experiences that illustrate the bad habits. 

Included in the forbes.com column are some warning signs as well.  Those are indicators that while your business leader might not have the full-blown bad habit, he or she is headed in that direction.

And bear in kind:  some of the companies cited in the article were successful for a period of time or appeared to be quite successful. Over the longer term, though, things weren’t quite that good.

So what would happen if you took the seven habits of what forbes.com called unsuccessful business executives and applied them to politicians? Let’s have some fun:

Habit # 1:  They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment.

Think of this as the idea that they can do no wrong, that everything they think or say is genius and that they crap brilliance every minute of ever day.

Unlike successful leaders, failed leaders who never question their dominance fail to realize they are at the mercy of changing circumstances.They vastly overestimate the extent to which they actually control events and vastly underestimate the role of chance and circumstance in their success.

The rules only apply to other people.  They don’t apply to us.

They live in a bubble.

Sound familiar?

Of course it does. 

Warning Sign  #1:  A lack of respect

You won’t even need to think too hard to come up with an example of a politician who consistently shows an utter lack of respect – and sometimes outright contempt – for other people and their ideas.

While those other links are to a couple of Danny Williams’ defining characteristics, that lack of respect thing is one Kathy Dunderdale leads in.  She loves to claim that her opponents are stupid or incompetent and usually that’s the sum total of her argument.

Habit #2:  They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests.

Warning Sign #2: A question of character

House of Assembly spending scandal.

And if you want something creepy, you can always go back to the Old Man’s 2007 claim:

I think I represent in my own heart and soul the hearts and souls of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

It’s hard to think of a statement in which someone confuses himself with the whole.

Habit #3:  They think they have all the answers.

If anyone can think of a time when Danny Williams ever took advice from someone else and acknowledged it publicly, then by all means share the story with the rest of us.  Did he ever take disagreement with his pronouncements well?

If you want a Dunderdale example, consider her approach to Muskrat Falls.  She  and her team of geniuses  have all the answers. So far Dunderdale hasn’t heard a single criticism of the project that makes her doubt the wisdom of ploughing ahead with the project.

And, in any event, all the critics are picking at little things in their predictably partisan way so what would they know?

Warning Sign for #3:  A leader without followers

Habit #4:  They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them.

Think about the bizarro need to call people who wrote letters to the editor just to sort them out or blast them as traitors.

Let’s not forget the periodic expressions of concern about the handful of people who didn’t love Hisself unconditionally.  In the Straits after the by-election he sniffed about how much he had done for people and yet they didn’t vote for his hand-picked candidate.

The Old Man may not have relentlessly eliminated anyone but the Yes-Men and Yes-Women but he was overly concerned with dissent.

Warning Sign #4:  Executive departures

Think Beth Marshall in Health,  Florence Delaney or the executive level churn in the public service under Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale. 

Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image.

Poll goosing.

Public comments about having to spend 50% of his time dealing with counter-spinning negativity.

Micromanaging an access to information request to withhold copies of his public speeches.

Clinical example of this habit.

Warning Sign #5:  Blatant attention-seeking

This Hour Has 22 Minutes in a Hurricane

Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles.

Muskrat Falls.

Warning Sign #6:  Excessive hype

Pick an example.  There are too many to list since 2003.

Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past.

Danny Williams:  the Ultimate One Trick Pony.. 

Prime Ministers.

Oil Companies.

A lawyer from GFW.

Randy Simms.

If Danny Williams wasn’t lacing into someone for something, he just wasn’t having a good day. 

Warning Sign #7:  Constantly referring to what worked in the past

Anybody recall that offshore oil agreement thingy?

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Margin of error defined #nlpoli

Corporate Research Associates November 2011 omnibus:

If a provincial election were held today in Newfoundland and Labrador, for which party would you vote?

Progressive Conservative Party  60%

CRA August 2011 omnibus:

If a provincial election were held today in Newfoundland and Labrador, for which party would you vote?

Progressive Conservative Party 54%

Provincial General Election, October 2011:

Progressive Conservative Party:  32%

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PPM: Controversy, Accountability and Disclosure #nlpoli

On October 3, Liberal leader Kevin Aylward issued a news release in which he claimed that the second MQO poll released the Friday before had been “bought and paid for by the Tories.”

In the release, the Liberals also claimed that “[t]he Dunderdale Government has bought and paid for this online survey.” 

The Liberals had no evidence to back their claims that the poll was fabricated.  They offered no evidence to refute the polls findings.

In 1989, faced with a partisan poll scam, the Liberal campaigned released its own internal data that proved to be far more accurate than the one released by the Conservatives’ pollster.

In 2011, the Liberals didn’t have polls, let alone ones that could give numbers different from the ones MQO produced.  The release served only to keep alive a bad news poll for the Liberals for the third week of the campaign. The release looked much like a desperate effort by a disorganized campaign fumbling about for anything that could stave off collapse.  The release reeked of desperation.

That desperation became all too apparent as NTV, Environics and then CRA polls appeared all conducted around the same time as the MQO one and all showing numbers that showed the Liberals in more or less the same place as MQO.

Industry controversy, too

After the campaign, CRA president Don Mills complained publicly about campaign poll reporting.  The Telegram quoted Mills:

“There’s a lot of people who say online research is just as good as telephone research. That has not been proven to be true and we have recent examples in Atlantic Canada where a competitor of ours has used an online methodology and have not got it within the margin of error they quoted” he said.

Of course, Mills’ poll didn’t come any closer, but his comments did point to problems with the publicly released polls.

Industry Standards

The Market Research and Intelligence Association represents Canadian market research and public opinion firms.  MRIA has established standards for the public release of polls by firms.  The standards include these provisions:

1) Please include the following key facts in the report:

• Sample size, and population surveyed (who was included)
• Sponsor of study (who commissioned the research)
• Survey method (e.g. telephone, on-line, intercept)
• Timing (when the survey was done)
• Statement of sample error/margin of error (i.e. "+/- 2.5% 19 times out of 20")

2) Please make the following facts available to the public upon request (if not included in report):

• Name of practitioner (company conducting research)
• Sampling method (e.g. random, custom list)
• Weighting procedures (statistical weights, if used)
• Exact wording and order of questions

3) Always differentiate between scientific (most public opinion polls) and non-scientific studies (reader/viewer polls or other "self-selection" methodologies). 

4) Where appropriate, use the caveat that research is not necessarily predictive of future outcomes, but rather captures opinion at one point in time.

What’s the problem?

Both the Aylward and Mills criticisms are rooted in one problem:  a lack of disclosure of details of the polling not just by MQO but of all the firms that released polling during the election.

MQO only confirmed its research was done independently of its clients once Aylward raised the issue.  But even for the sake of its own public image, MQO‘s two releases didn’t offer a great deal of information that would have avoided that controversy or the issue Mills raised.

How do the firms stack up?

A simple reading of the first MQO release suggests that it meet those MRIA standards exactly, as limited as they are, with respect to what must be included: 

The poll was based on a sample of 413 Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, with a margin of error of +/- 4.9%.  It was conducted between Friday, September 16 and Sunday September 18, 2011.

The release did not indicate the type of survey (telephone, online etc).  It did identify the company that conducted the work  - part of the “on request” information but didn’t release any of the other information in the same section.

If this release complied with the MRIA standard, the poll was a sample of all people in the province regardless of whether they could vote or not (“Newfoundlanders and Labradorians”). That would make it difficult to compare the poll to any others or even to the voting population as a whole.

There’s no indication of how MQO selected the sample, either.  Was it a randomly selected sample or was it something else?

The second MQO disclosed some additional information but that just raised questions about whether or not the second poll could be  compared to the first:

The poll was based on a sample of 464 residents of Newfoundland and Labrador, with a margin of error of +/- 4.6 per cent. The research was conducted via phone and online between Wednesday, September 28 and Friday, September 30, 2011, using MQO’s research panel iView Atlantic. The sample was weighted regionally to ensure proper representation of the province as a whole.

Again, the sample appears to have been drawn from people resident in the province, regardless of age.  The second release includes information on how MQO collected the data – “via phone and online” – but it isn’t clear how the sample was selected if MQO a previously screened research panel.

The other firms aren’t necessarily any better, though. Consider how Canadian Press described the Environics poll:

Unlike traditional telephone polling, in which respondents are randomly selected, the Environics survey was conducted online from Sept. 29 to Oct. 4 among 708 respondents, all of whom were chosen from a larger pool of people who were recruited and compensated for participating. Environics then adjusts the sample to reflect a broad spectrum of the population.
The non-random nature of online polling makes it impossible to determine statistically how accurately the results reflect the opinions of the population at large.

More information in many respects right down to the fact that participants in the panel were recruited and paid for participating. And to be fair to Environics, this is the CP version, not necessarily the exact description the polling firm gave of its sample and population (who they were studying).

And then there’s how CRA typically describes its quarterly omnibus:

These results are part of the CRA Atlantic Quarterly®, an independent survey of Atlantic Canadians, and are based on a sample of 400 adult Newfoundland and Labrador residents.  The survey was conducted from August 15 to August 31, 2011 with overall results for the province accurate to within + 4.9 percentage points in 95 out of 100 samples.

Some information is missing – presumably it was a random sample – but CRA appends to the release a table of data, the wording of questions and comparative data for several previous polls.

Even with industry standards and even considering the firms involved  are all MRIA members – MQO and CRA are Gold Standard members – the polling firms don’t follow the same practices in how they report polling information. 

Why Disclosure is Important

For those who might think Mills’ criticism about the online panel are accurate, check Geoff Meeker’s post on the controversy.   Meeker put the question of the panel to MQO and got a written reply.  Included was this description of the panel composition that – from MQO’s standpoint – justified including a margin of error while Environics did not:

iView Atlantic is a probability-based panel, meaning that every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected for participation.

These are not esoteric issues.  The MRIA news release accompanying the disclosure standards included these comments by the past president of MRIA’s predecessor organization:

"All of these reporting items create transparency in the polling process and help the public establish an informed opinion about the results of a poll…If we want people to take part in the democratic process, we must be certain they have confidence in the way we conduct our business, from the time they answer our questions through to the results being published."

Ensuring public awareness of opinion research techniques and issues also fulfills objectives set out in the MRIA Code of Conduct. Members of the public should be able to have complete confidence in the poll results they see as well as in their ability to compare results from different research methods.

Given both the controversy in the recent election and the variation in the amount of information polling firms released – even with established standards -  the MRIA has some work to do.

The American Example

With a larger polling industry, more election polling and a much wider experience with controversy, the American polling industry has much more stringent disclosure standards than those of MRIA. None of the polls released during the Newfoundland and Labrador election came even close to the American standards. 

Few Canadian polling firms typically come close to the American standards, but then again, the local controversy is merely one part of a much larger issue in the Canadian industry.  Perhaps it is time for MRIA and its members to review their existing standards with an eye to making them more prescriptive.

The American Association of Public Opinion Research also promotes education for journalists on polls and polling in order to improve knowledge of industry standards and practices. AAPOR has also developed an online course for journalists run in co-operation with  the Poynter Institute.

The National Council on Public Polls has also compiled a list of 20 questions journalists should ask about polls.  The information contained in the questions and answers includes plain language discussions of margins of error and sources of error.

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• 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”
  

An excess of chutzpah: pollster attacks colleagues over methods, accuracy #nlpoli

Corporate Research Associates president Don Mills is criticising his professional colleagues for their use of online surveys to conduct opinion polling.

CRA uses telephone surveys. In two election polls released in September, MQO reportedly used a combination of telephone and online surveys to prepare it’s results. Environics used an online method and Telelink used telephone surveys.

According to the Telegram:

An in-depth poll by CRA conducted for The Telegram came closest to election night results, Mills said.

The Telegram noted:

CRA, using a telephone poll based on a sample size of 800, predicted 59.5 per cent support for the PCs among decided voters, 24.7 per cent for the NDP and 15.8 per cent for the Liberals.

The actual election results were 56.1 per cent for the PCs; 24.6 for the NDP; and 19.1 per cent for the Liberals — a total difference of 6.8 per cent from the poll prediction.

The only problem is that claim isn’t true.

Like all of the opinion polls released during the campaign, Mills and CRA polled eligible voters.  They did not report screening for voters only nor indicate any method by which they determined whether those opinions they surveyed related to people who would vote only.

By surveying all eligible voters, Mills and CRA should have reported all their responses, including those who indicated they would not vote or had no opinion.

That’s what the Telegram did in it’s front page story on Thursday.  The numbers cited in the Telegram on Saturday disregard some responses and therefore  present a distorted and misleading impression of what CRA’s polling found.

Here’s what the Telly reported compared to the actual reported vote result on Tuesday as a share of eligible vote:

	Telegram Sept 30 - Oct 3	Actual Vote Oct 11	CRA Apparent Error*
PC	44	32	+ 12
LIB	12	11	+ 1
NDP	18	14	+ 4
UND/Will not vote	26	42	- 16

Note:  The figures do not add to 100% everywhere due to an apparent minor rounding or typographical error in the results as reported by the Telegram.  SRBP adjusted the UND by one percentage point from what the Telegram reported.  When SRBP contacted the Telegram for more information on the poll, the newspaper management refused to discuss the results at all beyond what was in the published stories.

Even allowing for that one percentage point, the published CRA results are significantly different from the actual result.

SRBP compared most of the polls in a pre-election post.

Compared to CRA, MQO** was off by about the same proportions using its hybrid method. CRA was off by the same country mile in 2007.

Environics was closer to the final actual result than either of those two.

Of all surveys released during the campaign, Telelink came closest to the actual result, just as they did in 2007.

SRBP will have more on the polls in the recent general election in a series starting on Monday.

We’ll look at:

• the polls themselves, what they reported and how they reported it,
• compare the poll findings with the actual results,
• tackle the comments by Liberal leader Kevin Aylward,
• look at poll reporting standards in the news media and in the polling industry, and
• and look at the way the local media used polls in the past two elections.

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Related: 

• “Comparing polls”  By Horizon Research, a New Zealand opinion research firm that uses online polling.  Horizon questions the validity of discounting upwards of 30% or more of responses when reporting survey results.
• “Two wrongs and you get a news story”  discusses the way CRA’s reporting of decideds produces a misleading impression, in this case from 2009, of an increase in support for one party when it actually declined.
• CRA has been known to engage in controversial practices, like releasing a poll just before a by-election vote, significantly ahead of its usual schedule for releasing its omnibus for that quarter.

*  Apparent error refers to the discrepancy between the CRA poll result reported by the Telegram on the front page of its Thursday edition compared to the actual vote result. 

All polls contain error. Researchers strive to reduce known and possible sources of error. 

** Edit to correct the comparison.