Author: Scott Tribe

Scott's DiaTribes: If younger voters had bothered to vote in Ontario, Harper would have lost.

There was some conventional wisdom out there in pundit land that in the last few days of the May election, the Conservatives and Harper bit of fear-mongering that the NDP might be elected to government caused right-leaning Liberals to turn and vote Conservative in order to stop this, thus causing the vote splits in Toronto and such that ensured a Harper majority.

According to a study by Ekos, however, that was not the case:

In his post-election analysis, which he presented to a polling conference in Ottawa last week, Mr. Graves says that his sample of 1,000 voters in Ontario did not find a respondent who shifted to the […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Big new Ontario poll – deadlocked.

Very interesting – the Forum Research president apparently paid for this poll out of his own pocket. It’s a massive sample that shows a deadlocked Ontario legislature if it holds to election day:

A Forum Research survey of 40,750 people — one of the largest polling samples in Canadian political history — has the two parties separated by only 107 respondents, each holding 35 per cent. (14,064 said they will vote Liberal, while 13,957 selected the Conservatives.) Meanwhile, the New Democrats were at 23 per cent and the Green Party at 5 per cent.

For those wondering, this was an IVR poll – an interactive voice response one, which […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Reviving Canadian history/heroes

There was a nice editorial in the Star yesterday talking about how one of Canada’s war heros from World War I, Lt-Colonel William Barker, is finally getting some modest recognition to his feats (a gravestone with a plane propeller etched in it) after years of neglect and forgetfulness. I’ll admit I’d never heard of Colonel Barker either until recently either, and I’m one that takes a keen interest in Canadian history as well as obviously political science. This to me seems only a modest first step for reviving Colonel Barker in the collective Canadian conscience. It would be nice perhaps to do something more – how about re-telling his […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: World Alzheimers Day

I just wanted to briefly mention that today is World Alzheimer’s Day. This is a disease that affects a lot of people, but doesn’t seem to be in the public spotlight as much as is heart disease or cancer. It is a disease in many ways worse for the family of the victim then it is for the victim, at least in it’s later stages. They don’t know any different what’s wrong with them, but the families see them and suffer from seeing a shell of the former loved family member, or because they don’t remember them anymore.

I decided to mention it because my mother is holding a […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Ontario’s version of the US birthers – the ‘turbine truthers’

I’m of course talking about the anti-Wind turbines folks, better known as Wind Concerns Ontario. They’re in the background of the Ontario election – allying themselves with the Conservatives who they feel will nix the Wind turbines project if they’re elected. BigCityLib has a column on them this AM, noting their book’s connection to Energy Probe, the so-called environmental group.

I won’t take credit for the ‘turbine truthers’ label; that comes from Martin Regg Cohn in the Star yesterday:

Until we stop subsidizing the rest of the energy sector, and most of the corporate world, it makes no sense to selectively pull the rug out from under Ontario’s green […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Politics, polls and personal stuff

Lots of stuff to talk about at the beginning of this week:

– The official Fall session for the federal Parliament begins today. The Conservatives and Harper will now begin the process of ending or killing everything they don’t like ideologically – which they now can do with their majority. Most governments try to create a legacy when they’re in government. Harper and his bunch will have a legacy that I predict will end up being remembered for trying to destroy everything that is Liberal or liberal oriented. It will be interesting though to see how effective the Official Opposition New Democrats (without Layton) and the Liberals (without a […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: When pollsters go after each other.

As you might know if you’re a reader of this blog, I occasionally comment on polls. Today is a slightly different setting. A polling company criticizes and takes to task other “new” polling companies. Ipsos-Reid released a highly unusual statement at their site, where they question those other polling companies science and methods, and caution the news media that use them for a quick headline. A little excerpt:

Some marginal pollsters count on your ignorance and hunger to make the news to peddle an inferior product. Others are using your coverage to “prove” that their untried methodology is the way forward for market research in Canada…Journalists are no mere […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Toronto isn’t liking Hudak right now either

Another credible pollster – Forum Research – decided to take a poll specifically in Toronto, where conservative mayor Rob Ford and federal Conservatives had major breakthroughs of seats for varying reasons. The result isn’t the same at the moment for the provincial PC’s:

The party has slipped to third place in the city, dropping 10 percentage points since June 1 to 24 per cent support. The Liberals, who hold 19 of 23 seats in Toronto, is at 39 per cent, up from 34 per cent three months ago. The NDP, which has four seats here, has leapfrogged the Tories and is at 30 per cent up from 26 per […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: The Hudak Conservatives are in trouble: polls

We had some people wondering if the Harris-Decima poll earlier last week showing an 11 point Liberal lead was an “outlier”. Well, we have 32 new polls out this evening in a matter of minutes within each other, and while the #’s are different, the momentum is confirmed by those polls for the Liberals.

First off, we have a poll from Ipsos-Reid;

According to a new Ipsos Reid poll conducted for Global News, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals have 38 per cent support, compared to 37 per cent for Tim Hudak and the PC party. The New Democratic Party under Andrea Horwath trail with 24 per cent… the McGuinty campaign has […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Miscellaneous Ontario election campaign tidbits

A couple of things here and there this AM:

Eric Grenier of threehundredeight.com has a piece in the Globe and Mail about his seat projections for the Ontario election. If the election were held today, based on recent poll results, he gives the Conservatives and Liberals each 44 seats, with the NDP holding the balance of power at 19. Yes, that is still a sizable seat loss for the governing Liberals, and it still might put their hold on government in jeopardy if that result were to pan out, but considering where the polls were 2-3 months ago, and considering they seem to have Tim Hudak and the Conservatives […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: A stunner of a new Ontario poll, if accurate.

Wow:

A newly released Harris-Decima poll shows Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario Liberals have an 11 point lead over Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives – the first time the governing party has bested it’s main rival in many months.The Ontario poll has the Liberals in the lead at 43 per cent, the PC’s with 31 per cent, the NDP at 21 and the Green Party trailing with five per cent. The 43 per cent support for the Liberals, if accurate, puts the party in majority government territory.

Even though I thought Tim Hudak’s abortion stuff would not go over well in mainstream Ontario, and the Liberals have fought back against the immigrant […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Conservatives of all stripes hoping Ontario voters have short memories; are mean-spirited

Last year, ‘Progressive’ Conservative leader Tim Hudak presented a bill that would give a 10 per cent wage subsidy for employers who hire skilled newcomers. Now he’s out there attacking the Ontario Liberals for proposing something very similar – tax credits for businesses that hire immigrants.

A few months ago, the federal Conservatives appealed to the ethnic communities in Canada’s big cities, with a proposal to provide loans for “skills training and accreditation”. Yet all of a sudden, Dean Del Maestro, MP for Peterborough and Harper’s secretary is attacking this as being discriminatory – apparently towards “young white males” if you read his reference to himself. I’m not sure […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: The Ontario election (un)officially starts today (and it’s a horserace)

I’m fairly confident in saying that other then political junkies, not a lot of attention was paid to the Ontario election campaign by potential voters in Ontario. With Labour Day come and gone and a month left until Election Day, that officially changes.

Conveniently, we have a new provincial poll out from Nanos Research, conducted on behalf of CTV and the Globe and Mail, showing a tighter race. When rounded, it’s basically PC’s 35, Liberals 32, and NDP 23. Comparing to the previous Nanos poll, it appears that voters aren’t too enthralled yet. The PC’s and Liberals are both down between 5-7%, while the NDP made some gains. […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: ‘The Jack effect’ scares the Conservatives

A new poll is out that shows the Conservatives and the NDP in a virtual tie – unsurprisingly linked to the recent death of Jack Layton:

The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey pegs support for Layton’s NDP at 33 per cent — tied with the ruling Conservatives and well ahead of the Liberals at 21 per cent. That’s almost a three-point gain for the New Democrats since the May 2 election, which vaulted the party into official Opposition status for the first time in its 50-year history. The Tories are down almost seven points while the Liberals are up two. Harris-Decima chairman Allan Gregg said the NDP gain is most […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: All options should be discussed at least – not thrown away arbritarily.

I see that we have some stories in the media about “merger talk growing” between the Liberals and NDP again after the funeral of Mr. Layton. We even had a couple of Liberal MP’s come out (Justin Trudeau notably) saying that while he wasn’t convinced it was the way to go, he was willing to listen or be convinced otherwise. There was then others such as Mr Rae flatly rejecting it.

Some say this is just media driven, and perhaps it is. Personally though, when you’re a party that has been losing votes over the last three elections, and losing seats, including your worst showing ever in the […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: ‘Je me souviens’…..

I thought I’d reflect a bit on yesterday’s funeral service of Jack Layton. I could go into a bit more detail of why I think certain right wing media columnists are lashing out at the public reaction or Jack’s farewell letter, but I think I’ll leave that for another day next week. Today, it’s about reflection.

Certain things that stood out yesterday for me include:

-seeing the personal side of Mr. Layton through his 2 children. -seeing the political side as orated by Stephen Lewis -a very powerful political statement that may have made some uncomfortable, but I don’t think could or should have been avoided. -seeing some of […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: On that Blatchford column

There has been lots of ink, tweets and blogposts written and spilled over Christie Blatchford’s rather controversial National Post column about the public and media reaction to Jack Layton’s death and/or his farewell letter.

What I’ll say is this; she of course has the right to say whatever she wants – we live in a free country after all. Some are questioning if this was the proper time to say it, but I’m looking at it more from the angle that if this had been a Conservative high ranking politician, or a high ranking General or Policeman who had died far too young and who had left words of […]

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