Friday, February 08, 2008

Nanos Research - Hack Polling

In the past while, I've been getting increasingly skeptical about the quality and slant that Nik Nanos has been putting on his polling.

In the last week, he's published two polls that have struck me as either amazingly slanted or just so vacuous as to be irrelevant.

The first reports how wonderfully Stephen Harper is seen as a "better leader" than the other party leaders. Given the question in the poll, that's not surprising - as it was a single question poll, and one that didn't even start to scratch the surface of how people feel about his policies and conduct.

The second poll dropped in my inbox this morning was this little turd.

It does, to its credit point out that Tory support has been steadily dropping since 2002. Then it goes on to make this ridiculous statement:

Intensity of comfort for Harper majority solid but lessens


The numbers of course show a different picture altogether, with 29% saying they are "comfortable" with the idea of a Harper majority. The only way you can spin that in the positive is to roll together the "somewhat comfortable" and "comfortable" numbers.

The fact is that support for the HarperCons has been dropping overall - with the most significant change in opinion being a 6% drop in support in Western Canada over the last couple of years.

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