Campaign Day 16 (cont'd).....Are The Dippers Really Down By Three...

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....Or Up By Six?

What the heckfire am I babbling on about now?

Well.....

Sean Holman, as he must be doing a lot these days with most of the Pols gone from LedgeVille, got to thinking about a poll released by Angus Reid yesterday that showed the LINOs and Dippers in a statistical dead heat.

As a result, he decided to ask Angus Reid when they collected their data.

Why?

Well, if I understand Mr. Holman's thinking correctly (which I have been wrong about a number of times in the past - so take the following with a grain of sodium and chloride) he was thinking that maybe the reason for the big upswing in NDP support in the Reid poll compared to other recent polls was caused by all the negative publicity for the BC Liberals in the wake of the John van Dongen revelations last weekend.

Thing is, it turns out that much of the data collection was completed before the former Minister-In-Charge-of-Street-Racing made his announcement late last Friday afternoon:

"...In an interview with Public Eye, Angus Reid public affairs research director Hamish Marshall said, "Clearly, from everything else we've seen, people aren't paying that close of attention (to the election). And the level of engagement in this election is very low."

Moreover, "We actually completed most of the surveys on Friday. So I actually don't think (those stories) would have had a big effect on the people doing the surveys on Friday. It might have had a detrimental effect on BC Liberal voters for people who filled out the survey on Saturday and Sunday...."

So.

Two things.

First, the most obvious.....Which is that if the electorate is so easily swayed, one has to wonder if, say, by yesterday, after the onslaught initiated by Vaughn Palmer on Saturday was complete, the numbers might actually have swung even more towards the James Gang's side of the ledger. Thus, the rationale behind the somewhat snarky header at the top of this post.

Second, the most conjecturous.....Which is just this weird tingly feeling that maybe the BC Liberal War Room knew that AReid was sampling last week. And, if that was, indeed, the case would it be so unreasonable to assume that maybe the Liberal brain-trust may have come to the conclusion that it would have been to their advantage to hold off any bad news for as long as possible.

Like until.....

Late last Friday afternoon?


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