There was another Ipsos Reid poll on the PC Leadership done for the Calgary Herald last week. Bloggers like Daveberta are “having at it” now.
Most of the comments on the poll results are valid but there is more to consider in any results analysis. For example the poll does not ask respondents if they are PC party members or if they intend to become one. William McBeath of the Morton campaign correctly comments on Daveberta saying who cares what non-party members say – they will not be making the final choices.
True enough but these results still have some inherent strategic value. One of the big ballot questions for PC members will about the elect-ability of the next leader. Ipsos Reid gives us some indication of the candidate elect-ability perceptions of Albertans. They do not predict by show some relative candidate preferences and perceptions.
To the public, this leadership campaign is just starting and we know campaigns do make a difference. Look at the changes in public perceptions between the “scary” Harper of 2004 vs. the 2006 guy who was seen worthy of taking a chance on. Mulroney lead the federal PC to largest majority in the history of the country and left a party able to retrain only two seats one election later. The last provincial election saw tens of thousands of PC supporters stay home and about 70,000 others voter for the Alliance Party. Campaigns matter. In election campaigns the devil is in the dynamics as much as the details
We can glean of some possible voter dynamics by comparing the two related Ipsos Reid polls of September 6 and June 23, 2006. Let’s look at the front runners and some of the results differences from both polls. The first number for each candidate is for September then June and the difference.
Favourables:
Dinning 54% 54% 0
Oberg 48% 48% 0
Hancock 44% 39% +5%
Who would do the Best Job as Premier?
Dinning 26% 28% -2
Oberg 21% 23% -2
Hancock 06% 09% -3
None of the Above
Or Don’t Know 29% 27% +2
The “best job” candidate confidence level actually falls for all three of the top choices and the uncertainty level grows to exceed any one candidate. Dinning and Oberg have been in the media virtually every day between June and September but show no growth in favourable perceptions. Hancock has been comparatively invisible in the media by comparison but his favourable perceptions jump 5 points.
One has to ask if all the hype, media fawning and big money of Dinning and Oberg are doing them any good. Apparently, not comparing these results! But two poll results do not make a trend line obviously. We know the Alberta voter is grumpy and potentially very volatile. They can, and do, turn quickly and can change dramatically. Look at the last Edmonton civic election when the distant third place long shot, Stephen Mandel come out winning handily against the two presumptive front runners. We can’t predict a damn thing on these current polls results. We can sense that change is in the air, campaigns matter - and this campaign is far from over.
Kudos to taking what I believe is an irrelevant poll and arm-twisting some potentially useful informaton out of it. You may be right in that the only useful info to be gleaned is that the presumed frontrunners - who are such because they have coveted the most media attention and name recognition so far - have maybe maxed out their popularity.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think you only touched on what I believe is greater probability at least one of the other candidates not identified as a frontrunner could make some substantial gains. As one example, some of the candidates (Hancock, Stelmach) were sitting cabinet ministers before they resigned and as such, had greater restrictions on their ability and willingness to campaign early, restrictions that I understand they voluntarily kept up to now because of loyalty to the present administration. We could have another "Stephen Mandel" out of one or both of these guys.