Quote:
Originally Posted by vid
No one thought they would win in 2011 or 2007, either. The PCs just keep running really bad campaigns.
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The Liberals had a reasonably good shot in 2007; they were still relatively popular back then. 2011, though, was a different story.
It's interesting to note that Nanos put out a poll a few weeks ago. For those unaware, Nanos is by far the most accurate public pollster in Canada as they use much a more effective, but more expensive, methodology. Much of the reason why there are so many "the polls were all wrong!" incidents these days is partly because as the profit margins of media have gone down, most pollsters have cut corners with their techniques, resulting in much less scientifically sound polling techniques. For example, most pollsters now use automated robocalls instead of live questions, which are more likely to be ignored/hung up on, thus skewing the sample. But not Nanos.. they still stick to high quality methodology. For this reason they don't do a lot of mid-term polling (a lot of $$$ to spend when there's little publicity generated).. but this time, they did.
Nanos polls are exciting because they often catch things that other pollsters don't, thanks to the accuracy gap.
And this one was interesting... while like the other pollsters it showed a PC lead and a low approval rating for Wynne, both were far less dramatic. Nanos reported an 8-point lead for the PCs (40-32) and a 34% approval rating for Kathleen Wynne. Bad news for the Liberals, but far less bad than the likes of Forum, Ipsos, Mainstreet, etc. which have all been claiming 15-20 point leads for the PCs and only a 10%-15% approval rating for Kathleen Wynne.
Furthermore, the Nanos poll noted the Liberals are still ahead of the PCs among voters under the age of 40 (in particular, the PCs only had 14% support among those aged 18-29), and the Liberals are tied with the PCs in the GTA (not just Toronto, the whole GTA) and among female voters.
In short, while things are looking bad for the Liberals, they're not looking nearly as bad as you'd think. In particular, the Nanos numbers seem to discount the possibility, now often discussed in the media, of a large PC majority.
That said, the Nanos poll also asked people to rank issues, and in a concerning trend for the Liberals, the issues on which people generally view them positively on (education, the environment, and infrastructure investment) were ranked fairly low in people's priorities, by contrast, health (where the Liberals have taken some beating lately) and hydro were at the top. That doesn't really bode well for Wynne.