Wednesday, February 06, 2013

This Day In Snookland (ctd)...If A Poll Falls In The Forest...

AllTheStenographicHands
ThatSuddenlyStoppedClappingVille

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Please note: A follow-up to this post can be found....here
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This was then (i.e. last Tuesday)...

BC LIBERALS CLOSING GAP, POLL FINDS

VICTORIA — Premier Christy Clark's B.C. Liberals have narrowed the approval gap with the New Democrats to just 10 points, a new
Mustel poll has found....

Released Tuesday, the poll put support for the New Democrats at 43 per cent, followed by the Liberals with 33 per cent...


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This is now (i.e. today, this Wednesday)...

BC NDP WIDENS GAP, POLL FINDS

LOTUSLAND - Opposition leader Adrian Dix's B.C. New Democrats have widened the approval gap with Liberals to 22% a new Justason poll has found.

Released Wednesday, the poll put support for the New Democrats at 48%, followed by the Liberals with 26%...


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Now.

Here's the thing....

The first bit, above, was up on the Vancouver Sun website almost before the Mustel poll was released last Tuesday, and its message was soon trumpeted all over the proMedia landscape and the Twittmachine by such luminaries as the VSun's own Mr. Fazil Milhar.

As for the second bit...Well, as of late Wednesday, it's crickets.

Surprised?



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The real thing, here, of course is that in both polls the 'changes' were within the MOE, which means that nothing changed...
And, as we noted last week in a 'credit-where-credit-is-due' post, at least one member of the local Lotulandian proMedia actually got the Mustel Poll result right...Seriously, you'll never guess who...


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4 comments:

Ian said...

RossK,
Little known fact: Barb Justason got her start at MacIntyre and Mustel, the early version of Mustel Research.

And only one number is really out of wack in all these polls. Mustel's 43% for the NDP is beyond the margin of error of Angus Reid, Ipsos and Justason, which are all in the 46-49 range.

Funny how the Sun jumped on the Mustel poll. And sometime let me tell you a very funny (weird, not ha,ha) story about Milhar.

Tony Martinson said...

In fairness, Justason has very little standing in polling, even less than Forum.

Having said that, our friends in the media tend to give equal weight to Angus Reid and Mustel, irrespective of the former's significantly better history and the latter's direct ties to a sitting Liberal MLA.

What this all says is the media do an absolutely terrible job of reporting on polls, their import and their impact on voting patterns. They should either smarten up, or quit reporting on polls altogether. Of course they won't, because it's so easy, and the media is drawn to easy stories, partly out of laziness and partly out of lack of resources.

spartikus said...

And sometime let me tell you a very funny (weird, not ha,ha) story about Milhar.

Oh come on, don't leave us hanging!

RossK said...

Ian--

Fair enough about the actual levels of support...Regardless, even if you just look at the trends, the point I was sloppily trying to make is that there was no real change between the last two sets of results from all three firms...which is why I found the stenography (followed by the extreme wurlitzering by a whole bunch of media outlets) in the wake of the last Mustel result so egregious.

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Tony--

Don't disagree at all - see above...Puts me in mind of that front page VSun story in the run-up to the last CoV election that was based on a last minute snapshot from an internal NPA poll...Was a different stenographer that time, of course.

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spart--

Ya...I can only do the flexed arm hang for so long before all the ParticipAction action drains from my body entirely.


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