“If they didn’t exist the Liberals would have to create them.”*
Only in Canada – a push poll based on 388 respondants merits national coverage.
So is Decima biased? One could certainly argue so. They have framed this poll as an embarrassment for the Conservatives, and put words in the mouths of their poll respondents in an attempt to damage a political party.
And they call blogs the “echo chamber”.
Greg Staples weighs in, too.
Of course online polls that you can spam are much more representative.
DECIMA BIASED? YOU BETCHA! CASE CLOSED.
So it’s not fair to quote what was actually said?
Only in LIEberal minds.
Two can play the same game: DECIMA’S POLL’S UNFAIR!!
They didn’t call me, or Kate, or Liz J. C’mon, Decima, I dare you. Call a few people you haven’t hand-picked, and ask us what we think of the ads.
And, while you’re at it, what we think of the natural ruling party and their naked Emperor. ROTFL.
Yup. It’s called a ‘representative sample’ kids.
Finding 388 liberal clotpoles in Queerbec is not representative because that entire province is filled with them…as is Morontario. There is a whole other country out here, folks.
🙂
More importantly, 41% say they are fair. The ‘unfair’ pond life crowd is just parroting Dion. That’s about as dumbed down as it gets.
How can the ads be ‘unfair?’ That needs an explanation, which so far, hasn’t been stated.
CTV is running CP’s version of the push poll as “Most find anti-Dion Tory ads unfair: poll” [Updated Wed. Feb. 7 2007 4:48 PM ET]
The story is originally from the CP, but shouldn’t CTV be responsible enough to rewrite the headline in a more accurate tone than the outright lie that “Most find anti-Dion Tory ads unfair: poll”? MOST Canadians haven’t even seen or heard of the ad, that’s 62%, with only about 22% (that is 59% of the 38% who *were* even aware of the ad) believing it to be “unfair”.
So surely a more accurate headline would be “Some find anti-Dion Tory ads unfair: poll” or, even more accurately, “Most Canadians unaware of anti-Dion Tory ads: poll”?
I realize that “a few”, “many”, “some”, “most”, “almost all”, “a majority” etc. can be tricky concepts to grasp, but shouldn’t a MSM news organisation be aware of the difference in meaning between them and use them accurately so that the casual reader will not be given a false impression?
And if CTV, CP, etc. do even want to maintain the anti-Conservative Party of Canada bent of the original headline and poll, then the headline should read, if honesty is a priority, “Most of the few who have seen anti-Dion Tory ads find them unfair: poll”? (Or “most of the minority” or “most of those” if they honestly believe in the name of most accurately using the word “few” that 22% is too many people to be covered by “few”.)
Obviously, the word ‘unfair’ was used in the question. This slanted the response.
The ads provided a sample of Dion speaking. Then, one ad concluded that such speech is not indicative of a leader.
Another ad, again, Dion speaking, insisting that we must ‘go back’. The ad showed that going back meant back to scandals and corruption.
If the question was along the lines of – ‘was the ad fair/unfair in its description of Dion’ – then
this begs the question. Is ‘corruption and scandal’ a fair description of the Liberals? And is non-leader a fair description of Dion?
The answer was, as pointed out, obviously along partisan lines. Those who are Liberal…..Decima could just as easily have asked people – are you Liberal or Conservative?
The agenda of the Liberals in the next weeks will be to denigrate the Conservatives – on a daily basis, using whatever fodder they have – fiction and fact mixed up. They will denigrate everything, from Afghanistan, to child care, to GST to the env’t. Everything.
They must divert attention from the disaster that is Dion, divert attention from the accomplishments of the Conservatives. It will be an onslaught of MSM linked propaganda.
Sur Decima is biased…just like any other commercial pollster in this contry since the Liberals started governing by poll….and making the poll questions lead where they want to go.
Pollsters want to please their clients so they will ger repeat business… many polls are structured to produce a desired result and the analysis of the returned data usually has a tone complimentary to the policy direction of the client…this is particualrly noticable where insufficient, small sample sizes return such concrete pronouncements in the pollster’s analysis.
So there are lies, damn lies and statistics
and there streetwalkers, whores and polling companies.
I’m no math whiz…but if 388/1000 saw the ads, and 59% of those thought they were ‘ufair’ does CTV mislead with a comment that 59% think they are unfair?
That would ‘represent’ 22% of Canadians…
correct me if I’m wrong here people!
The Liberals want an election. Soon. Before the public realizes that Dion is a disaster. They will, using the MSM, be ‘motivating’ Canadians for an election over the next few weeks.
The tactics in the MSM will be to state that it is the Conservatives who want an election. (See Glorious Galloway and Jane Taber in today’s G&M – which explictly states (from anonymous sources of course) that the Conservatives want to ‘engineer their own defeat’.
The other MSM tactics will be for the Liberals to use the MSM, their propaganda machine, to smother Canadians with anti-Conservative garbage. Daily, hourly. You can see that in print, on CBC, on CTV already. Everything is heavily slanted against the Conservatives. Gross errors by the Liberals (eg, Mark Holland’s desire to nationalize the Alberta Oil Sands) will be covered up by the MSM.
Everything the Conservatives have done, will be subject to smear allegations. We’ve seen that already with the ‘allegations of prisoner abuse’ by the Canadian military in Afghanistan. Remember, these are allegations; by a Liberal; and ALL Al Qaeda tactics are to claim ‘abuse’.
Utopian fantasies of The Perfect World of the Liberals will be spread by the MSM, contrasted with the Apocalyptic Hell of the Kyoto-ignoring Conservatives.
Already, we’ve seen a Liberal Senator screaming on CTV that The Conservatives haven’t actualized the Accountability Act!!!!!
He ignores that the Liberal Senate held up that Act for Six, yes, SIX months. Rewrote it to remove a great deal of its accountability, and just handed it back to the House when they left for their Xmas break.
We are going to see an intensive Liberal smear campaign against the Conservatives, run within the MSM – and – a constant reiteration that the Conservatives want an election.
They don’t; they want to govern, responsibly. The Liberals are not interested in Canada or Canadians. They aren’t interested in good government. They aren’t interested in operating within this gov’t. They have only one agenda. Power. That’s all. And they will do anything and I mean anything – to get back that power.
The problem, vf, is the sample size.
If you poll 1,000 people, which is the normal size for a reasonable representation, then, the only valid statistic you could come up with is that 388/1000 saw the ads. That’s all you could reasonably say – that 38.8% saw the ads.
You could also ask where they saw them – on the SuperBowl, as an advertisement, or within a MSM discussion, or online.
I don’t think you could validly do much more with those numbers (388).
Now, to deal with the CONTENT of those ads, you’d have to poll some more, until you reached about 1,000 who actually saw the ads. Then, you could start to ask questions about content. You can’t do it before then; your sample size is too small.
Thanks ET…you have analysed one step further than I did, proving the bunk of the Decima poll.And we all know MSM would not present the poll the way you have.Your post at 11:01 sums it all quite well. ….andycanuck is making the same point(22%) …bottom line CTV should not state “59% think ads are unfair”…that is very misleading.But who will call them to account? I know too many who will take the CTV report as fact, without digging further…(again your 11:01 post)
TO Sun is asking a similar question in their poll today…results already are far different than Decima.
I watched the Super Bowl in Vancouver … I can’t remember any of the ads playing … maybe I’m good at tuning out ads. Did any one watch for the ads and not see them? Were they played equally everywhere?
So liberals believe the ads were “not fair”. Give me a freakin break. Liberals invented dishonest, unfair, dirty, sleazy campaigning/campaign ads. Add any other expletive you want. There’s no dirtier campaigner than a liberal. Period. It must be a defective gene in their brains. They can’t help themselves.
Oh those poor liberals. Cue the violins and cry me a river. Sheeeeesh.
What this poll tells me is that not very many people saw the debates. These videos of the liberal debate were not produced in some ad company office. Commenting on the poor quality of the video says these people actually think these ads were productions,like the guns in our streets, not the actual event. So, I gather that liberals think it is unfair to tell and show the truth re dion. The media immediately jumped on the videos as attack ads, not re-runs of the debate. That fact alone tells me they know they would have an effect and they were scared. Our mistake was not calling them re-runs, and allowing the media to get the unfair attack ads out there. It wont happen again. Watch for more re-runs of liberals telling lies.
So, 87 people thought the ads were unfair. CTV, of course, has a media guy saying the ads were done because Tories were “sliding in the polls.” Which polls? Last one I saw (funny we haven’t seen anything is last 2-3 weeks) was only 1% off their election result, so within margin of error.
I wonder if big four can keep this up right through an election. Maybe they’re the ones who want a Spring election. G&M (did fair, balanced article on rumours today) will fall off the Dion bandwagon first, followed by CTV. TorStar and CBC will go down with the ship, just like last time.
The real Superbowl commercials are fun and entertaining, having tory ads showing the wanna be king of faux pas would be down right depressing.
Speaking of ads, maybe Dion could share a Snickers with Bryson? bound to get the GTA vote that way. (appologies to Mississauga Matt)
ET: “They must divert attention from the disaster that is Dion, divert attention from the accomplishments of the Conservatives. It will be an onslaught of MSM linked propaganda.”
Correct.
All your radio are belong to us.
~
as is Morontario
Jim, you from Newfberta????