EDMONTON – Observers struggled Tuesday to come to terms with their staggering failure to accurately measure the province’s political climate in the weeks leading up to the election.During the campaign, poll after poll showed the Tories in decline and the Wildrose on the rise. Political reporters wrote front-page stories saying Conservative support was in free fall, respected pollsters projected a healthy Wildrose majority, and veteran pundits wagered that after 41 years in power, the Tory dynasty was going to fall.
Everybody was wrong.
The Tories won a historic 12th straight majority Monday night, sweeping the cities and much of the country, capturing 61 of 87 seats. The commanding victory stunned observers, but Premier Alison Redford wasn’t surprised.
“All of the questions that so many of you asked me based on a lot of those polls didn’t reflect either what we were seeing or what I was hearing or feeling,” Redford told reporters Tuesday.
“I guess that really what we have said it true: It’s election day that matters.”
Tory campaign manager Susan Elliot said internal party polls painted a picture dramatically different than the one the public saw. By election day, Elliot was predicting a 62-seat majority for the party.
Elliot said the trouble with public polls and reports about them is journalists’ obsession with a single question: “If an election were held today, who would you vote for?” That question fails to capture “underlying drivers” of the vote, she said.
Internal polls probe deeper, Elliot said, and strategists are looking for trends and momentum.
“We knew that our investments in health and education” were issues that voters liked, she said. “We know that voters believed us when we said there would be no new taxes, and that was the core of our message.”
Tory strategist Stephen Carter believes the release of polls favouring the Wildrose was a campaign tactic designed to trigger a bandwagon effect.
“There is an ongoing battle with pollsters: Do we reflect what is actually occurring, or do we lead to what actually happens?” Carter said. “And we’re not sure. The science is up in the air on that.
“People are influenced by polls, and we know that because the media are influenced by polls and the media are the influencers.
“You guys know the polls have led you wrong before, and you keep falling for it,” he said, referring to journalists who write about polls. “You’ve gotta stop.”
Carter said the only solution is to commission polls from reputable pollsters, as the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald did. Failing that, reporters need to be more scrupulous in examining the polls they write about.
Carter also said controversial comments from Wildrose candidates had a substantial effect on the outcome of the election. One week before the vote, it was revealed that Edmonton Wildrose candidate Allan Hunsperger had written in a blog last year that homosexuals will burn for all eternity in a “lake of fire,” and Calgary candidate Ron Leech said he had an electoral advantage because he is Caucasian and that he would “lift up” Alberta’s Punjabi community. Smith refused to condemn the candidates or their comments.
“There is nothing more powerful than a fact to confirm a myth,” Carter said. “If you have a reputation of being intolerant, and then something happens that confirms it without a shadow of a doubt, the status of the myth is taken from low-level whispering to powerful structure that influences people.
“And that’s what I think happened.”
Ian Large, president of Leger Marketing, said those key developments were never adequately captured in a good-quality poll. The Journal and the Herald together commissioned Leger to conduct a high-quality poll in the final week of the election, but the survey was done before the controversial comments became public.
“We never got the chance to measure the last week with the Hunsperger and Leech comments,” he said. The incidents might have prompted some voters to abandon the Wildrose, and could have caused others to vote strategically — in favour of the Tories — to stop the Wildrose from winning. Neither scenario was tested by pollsters.
Finally, Large said there was the “black hole of the undecided vote.” Little more than a week before the election, fully one in five Alberta voters still hadn’t decided who they would vote for — an extraordinarily high number that weakened the reliability of the polls.
Rod Love, a veteran Tory strategist, also said the undecided voters proved pivotal in the race.
“The undecided voters broke toward the PC brand they knew as opposed to the Wildrose brand that they didn’t know, that they didn’t have that visceral connection to,” Love said.
“It shows once again that the Progressive Conservative of Alberta brand is the strongest brand in Canadian history. It can earn all kinds of hits and set backs and still earn the loyalty of Albertans.”
But all of the explanations do nothing to mitigate the simple fact that virtually every political observer in the province was eating crow Tuesday morning; even veteran politicos lost their office election pools.
“We were all wrong,” Large said. “We were all equally wrong.”
Everybody was wrong.
The Tories won a historic 12th straight majority Monday night, sweeping the cities and much of the country, capturing 61 of 87 seats. The commanding victory stunned observers, but Premier Alison Redford wasn’t surprised.
“All of the questions that so many of you asked me based on a lot of those polls didn’t reflect either what we were seeing or what I was hearing or feeling,” Redford told reporters Tuesday.
“I guess that really what we have said it true: It’s election day that matters.”
Tory campaign manager Susan Elliot said internal party polls painted a picture dramatically different than the one the public saw. By election day, Elliot was predicting a 62-seat majority for the party.
Elliot said the trouble with public polls and reports about them is journalists’ obsession with a single question: “If an election were held today, who would you vote for?” That question fails to capture “underlying drivers” of the vote, she said.
Internal polls probe deeper, Elliot said, and strategists are looking for trends and momentum.
“We knew that our investments in health and education” were issues that voters liked, she said. “We know that voters believed us when we said there would be no new taxes, and that was the core of our message.”
Tory strategist Stephen Carter believes the release of polls favouring the Wildrose was a campaign tactic designed to trigger a bandwagon effect.
“There is an ongoing battle with pollsters: Do we reflect what is actually occurring, or do we lead to what actually happens?” Carter said. “And we’re not sure. The science is up in the air on that.
“People are influenced by polls, and we know that because the media are influenced by polls and the media are the influencers.
“You guys know the polls have led you wrong before, and you keep falling for it,” he said, referring to journalists who write about polls. “You’ve gotta stop.”
Carter said the only solution is to commission polls from reputable pollsters, as the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald did. Failing that, reporters need to be more scrupulous in examining the polls they write about.
Carter also said controversial comments from Wildrose candidates had a substantial effect on the outcome of the election. One week before the vote, it was revealed that Edmonton Wildrose candidate Allan Hunsperger had written in a blog last year that homosexuals will burn for all eternity in a “lake of fire,” and Calgary candidate Ron Leech said he had an electoral advantage because he is Caucasian and that he would “lift up” Alberta’s Punjabi community. Smith refused to condemn the candidates or their comments.
“There is nothing more powerful than a fact to confirm a myth,” Carter said. “If you have a reputation of being intolerant, and then something happens that confirms it without a shadow of a doubt, the status of the myth is taken from low-level whispering to powerful structure that influences people.
“And that’s what I think happened.”
Ian Large, president of Leger Marketing, said those key developments were never adequately captured in a good-quality poll. The Journal and the Herald together commissioned Leger to conduct a high-quality poll in the final week of the election, but the survey was done before the controversial comments became public.
“We never got the chance to measure the last week with the Hunsperger and Leech comments,” he said. The incidents might have prompted some voters to abandon the Wildrose, and could have caused others to vote strategically — in favour of the Tories — to stop the Wildrose from winning. Neither scenario was tested by pollsters.
Finally, Large said there was the “black hole of the undecided vote.” Little more than a week before the election, fully one in five Alberta voters still hadn’t decided who they would vote for — an extraordinarily high number that weakened the reliability of the polls.
Rod Love, a veteran Tory strategist, also said the undecided voters proved pivotal in the race.
“The undecided voters broke toward the PC brand they knew as opposed to the Wildrose brand that they didn’t know, that they didn’t have that visceral connection to,” Love said.
“It shows once again that the Progressive Conservative of Alberta brand is the strongest brand in Canadian history. It can earn all kinds of hits and set backs and still earn the loyalty of Albertans.”
But all of the explanations do nothing to mitigate the simple fact that virtually every political observer in the province was eating crow Tuesday morning; even veteran politicos lost their office election pools.
“We were all wrong,” Large said. “We were all equally wrong.”
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