Coming Soon

I understand the need and the desire to sell newspapers, especially those of the digital variety. I really do.

You are also not likely to find a bigger fan of strategic polling than yours truly.

However, the polls on Friday hours before the Liberal Leadership Convention and on Monday hours after were immature and premature respectively. Friday's poll was designed to influence. Monday's poll, while not billeted as such, hinted of prediction. Both polls were more newsy than purposely effective.

Monday's poll must be accepted for what it was; a snapshot from in-the-thick-of-it, not something tempered

December 5, 2006

As political landscapes go, this one's got some settling to do

or a well considered indication of where opinion is necessarily heading as political landscapes shift and settle. Don't get me wrong, I ate-up the data just as much as the next person, and I am darn grateful for the cozy relationship between Globe/CTV and Counsel. We got our "I wonder" fix.

However, in accepting Monday's data for what it is, no pollster can say with the usual degree of confidence this is what the future holds. It's simply too soon.

The future may very well pan-out to a similar set of numbers, but with all due and very well earned respect to my friends behind the data, this would be dumb-luck more than it would be some sort of super-duper statistical model able to cement the future based on Sunday's data collection. It's not simply that things can and likely will change. Rather it's that sentiment hasn't even begun to sink-in and settle given how the weekend's events unfolded.

Granted, the average Canadian won't ever know or care, but the outcome was nevertheless manufactured by the Gerard Kennedy move. And while a Stéphane Dion victory was contemplated by some, the opinion market has yet to factor this into its collective thinking. It can't. At least not until the Media and the Digital Democracy gets farther along in feeding and interacting with Canadians on the opinion they will eventually come to have.

On this score, the Media is working overtime and trying to play catch-up. 'He's French, from Quebec, incomprehensible in English, green, hated by Quebec's elite, adorned by federalists, an ideological pit-bull, an academic, factually prepared and brilliant, uncharismatic,...etc.' and it is by no means over.

All of this matters, of course, for the right reasons. Scour the editorial pages, attend to the news and talk to family, friends, and acquaintances. Everyone has opinion, is influencing opinion, and is forming an opinion. Strategists too are working double-overtime dusting off a Plan C they never really contemplated, and are having to formulate a new Plan C because the original plan was flawed in its assumptions. To borrow a phrase from John Ibbitson referring to the Quebec Nation announcement, nobody - and I mean nobody - saw the Gerard Kennedy move coming as early as it did.

The direction in which it appeared matters were unfolding on Saturday afternoon, momentum was with Bob Rae. Mr. Rae was one of two outcomes most analysts, reporters, and advisors were braced for. Subconsciously or otherwise, the media is still getting used to the fact something else happened.

In the meantime it's game on. All the key players and all the people behind them are, just like public opinion, trying to figure things out, including their next move(s).

Advice to Canadians? Think hard - think really hard - about what's truly important to you personally, locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. Then pay close attention to the messages you were hearing from political figureheads before last weekend versus the messages you will soon begin to hear. He/she who sounds most like they did before is likely the person least interested in playing political games, and is likely the person most interested in effecting real positive political change for your benefit, not theirs.

So long as the message is genuine and matches what is truly important to you, that's who you should support, not simply the person or party the media and polls will soon enough be telling you is right, wrong, winning or losing.