There is an op-ed in the Toronto Star today penned by Nelson Wiseman,  politicial science professor at the University of Toronto which asks a very good question: “What kind of country has a ruling party that mounts an assault on its election watchdog?”

A question that is difficult to answer. Even in Zimbabwe, where the tyrannical Robert Mugabe and his party rule with an iron fist, the country’s electoral commission wasn’t attacked when it finally released results showing Mugabe had lost his parliamentary majority.  Canada and its governing Conservatives are in very isolated and dubious company indeed.

More importantly is the observation by the professor that such things as this attack on Elections Canada, the Mulroney-airbus affair, and the stonewalling of the parliamentary enquiry on the Chuck Cadman affair by the Conservatives will reinforce the publics cynical view of all parties, if not the electoral system in general.

I can’t help but think that is what the Conservatives want to happen. They want the electorate to believe that “everyone does in-and-out financing”, and they want to make the general electorate cynical towards the whole electoral process.

Why? Because, it will blunt anger toward them, and it perhaps will even depress turnout  in a future election, in a country that is already experiencing falling participation rates in elections.  The combination of low turnout and a cynical electorate, plus using these attacks on them as a way to rally the Conservative base to come out and vote to save them from the federal civil service/Liberal Party/media conspiracy (and the base of the Conservatives will come out and vote, as they believe these bogeyman stories) may prevent the Cons from getting deservedly booted out of office.

It is that  Cons. strategy that needs to be fought against both by the opposition parties and the progressive blogosphere in order to prevent this cynicism from developing amongst the voting public. The job on the anti-Conservative side is to stoke the anger of the public against the acts of this Cons. government, to make the public or the majority of the public want to remove this government.

UPDATE@9:30AM: A reader from the UK informs me in comments that since the release of the election results, Mugabe and his police have started harrassing and arresting certain election officials with the eye of being able to influence the results of the presidential runoff, so post-election, Zimbabwae is obviously attacking its electoral body with much more venom then Canada’s Consrvatives are.  It still doesn’t say much for Canada’s government when they share places with Zimbabwae in attacking their own country’s electoral commissions, even if Mugabe is more extreme in his case of doing it.

…at least not yet, and at least not in this newly released poll from Quinnipac, which shows that Clinton’s lead on Obama from their last poll remains unchanged at 50-44.

Ironically, it might not be Pennslyvania where Obama’s comments hurt him - but in Indiana. A new poll there shows that Clinton has increased her lead from 11 to 16. That being said, a loss in Indiana won’t really hurt Obama all that much, particularly when it’s cancelled out by Obama’s sizable lead in North Carolina, which is unchanged.

My take on this remains the same. This is a totally overblown comment that will affect the race minimally - particularly when this analysis of PA delegate totals shows Clinton is hardly going to make a dent in Obama’s lead in delegates.

Decima has the Liberals up by 1 nationally, with them leading in Ontario (though by a smaller margin then Nano’s poll) and also tied in Quebec. I doubt you’ll hear this poll get mentioned directly by Hebert either. We’ll also see if the talking heads on TV bother to mention either one… because it surely destroys the meme of the Liberals being in dire straits… and pundits don’t like it when evidence suggests their opinions aren’t correct.

UPDATE: Added the Decima link for Angelle.

UPDATE 2@ Saturday, April 12, 10:15AM: Antonio of Fuddle Duddle, who like Chantal Hebert, tells me all the time how the Liberals are doomed in Quebec, criticizes me for not mentioning the Segma Poll in that same Star article which La Presse used that shows the Cons up 36-30. I’ve never heard of that firm, but I’ll mention them for fairness sake, and also say I won’t be surprised if Chantal uses THAT poll as the truth, rather then the other 2 polling firms.

The first thought I have is to muse whether Chantal Hebert will talk about the new Nanos poll that shows a dead heat (and Liberal support rising, though the Cons. support rose as well), or will she simply ignore it like she did the Decima poll a week or so back, because it doesn’t fit in with her meme of the Liberals and Dion’s certain doom (and we can throw in that question to Jim Travers of the Star as well, since he’s been a close second since December 2006 of bashing the Liberals and Dion).

The next thing I will say is that certain Liberal bloggers who jumped on this poll as vindication for the abstaining policy the Liberals have been doing should be careful on trying to make a correlation with that strategy and these numbers. This poll was taken by Nanos after Flaherty’s bashing by Ontario over its budget (which Jim, who is no Liberal, points to as a probable reason for the steep decline in the Conservatives Ontario numbers), and since the Tom Lukiwski video surfaced. I think those 2 events are far more likely the reason we see Liberal numbers rising, and Green and NDP numbers falling back, then any great endorsement of the abstaining policy that the Liberal Nervous Nellies have instituted (Nik says the same thing at his blog, by the way).

read more from "Nanos poll: Some thoughts."

Apparently, according to some readers, I only bring up polls I like on this blog. First off, I’ll mention that Angus Reid released an (online) poll for the Toronto Star the past couple of days that showed the Cons. up by 10 over the Liberals, had the NDP near 20%, and which seemingly put Chantal Hebert into overdrive mode at the Star in her op-ed columns claiming this poll showed that the Liberals and Dion were dead in Quebec; she was already doing this after the CROP/La Presse poll came out earlier that had the Liberals down by 10 to the Cons. and BQ in Quebec.

This was done a week or so after another column where she played down other polls which showed Conservative strength much lower in Quebec and had her arguing those polls didn’t match what was heard and seen on the ground (which curiously enough, is what Antonio over at Fuddle-Duddle has been claiming as well to me as well - coincidence?). So, I’ll be very interested to see if the new Harris-Decima poll gets mentioned by her - or others - that shows another polling deadlock:

read more from "Libs and Cons deadlocked in new Decima Poll. Will Chantal Hebert mention it?"

I am pleased to see a Nanos poll out so soon after the last one he did - mainly because of all the contradictory polling results we’ve seen since then. The latest results? A dead heat between the Liberals and Conservatives, and the NDP falling quite substantially:

Federal Ballot: Liberal 34%(+1), Conservative 34%(+3), NDP 14%(-5), Bloc 10%(nc), Green 8%(nc)

At this particular point, the Liberals compromise on Afghanistan they crafted has not hurt their position from the last Nanos poll, while the NDP has surprisingly dropped during this time period. As others have said, perhaps it’s because they and their position has been marginalized by the media over this debate. Perhaps in an election, they’d get more people to pay attention to their position.

Just one addition to this, I know there are many still in the Federal Liberal caucus who don’t like Warren Kinsella (leftover from the Martin-Chretien battles) but I do think in the wake of this poll what he says makes a lot of sense, and some of our Nervous Nellies MP’s in the Liberal caucus (as well as our leadership) would do well to listen:

..as the private negotiations about Afghanistan started to become public, various Liberal MPs started to speculate - out loud, when microphones were in the vicinity - about what THEY thought should happen, or would happen. In a matter of days, there were as many positions on Afghanistan as there were members of Liberal caucus, it seemed. Having lived through the Chretien-Martin wars (if barely), I learned many things. One of them, believe it or not, is that it is never a good idea to have MPs sit in caucus, Blackberrying the proceedings to grateful reporters, waiting outside those padded doors. Another thing I learned - call me crazy - is that, if the leader and the caucus take a position, you stick with it…To me, the (election) strategy is simple. Just remind everyone that the minority Conservatives aren’t what the majority Conservatives will be like. So, to avoid any further confusion and worry, elect a Liberal government. Will they do it? Who knows. Ask the Liberal MP at the back of the room, sending Blackberry messages about the internal strategy discussions, okay?

I don’t want the Liberals or Dion turning into Stephen Harper 2 with his clampdown on what MP’s or even Cabinet Ministers are allowed to say, but I would like to see a little more media and message discipline from this Liberal Party in Ottawa, so we dont have 24 people saying 24 different things, and I’d like to see the leaking of what are supposed to be private internal discussions stopped. Perhaps the Liberals leadership should come up with a rule that no Blackberries are allowed to be turned on or used during caucus meetings.

If these numbers are true, and if they hold during an election, rather remarkable for the Green Party:

In its two most recent surveys of party preference in the GTA, Harris/Decima has found that the Green party is thriving in the mainly suburban, 905 area code – 16 per cent support in polling carried out over the last week, 17 per cent in a survey carried out toward the end of December. That’s virtually the same support, if not better, than the Green party enjoys in the mainly downtown, 416 area code in the GTA. For the past month, Harris/Decima has been tracking the Greens with support ranging between 11 and 15 per cent among Toronto’s urban voters. There are many implications here for the other, more mainstream parties, especially the New Democrats, who are now routinely placing well behind the Greens – by as much as seven percentage points in December – within the 905 area code…If this trend continues, it will mean the Greens are actually displacing the NDP as the third party behind the Liberals and Conservatives, at least in Toronto’s suburbs.

That’s a stunning percentage for the Green Party, and it’s probably why the NDP wishes to do the Greens no favours on the national stage (ie. not supporting May being in any leaders debate during an election campaign). It’s understandable to try and protect your position, even if it means attacking a party that is basically an ally on the environment. It makes sense though that the Greens would do well in the suburbs - this is an area that has some remaining bastions of “Red Tory’ism” in it, and those voters, who might be socially liberal and who believe in protecting the environment, but are economically conservative, might prefer the Greens to the left-of-centre social democratic/socialist NDP.

All of the mainstream parties, not just the NDP, will of course point out that until the Greens show they can maintain their strength during an election campaign and win some seats, this is nothing more then “parked votes”. That’s a good point, but for the Greens to have such strength now shows that voters in suburbia are seriously considering them as an alternative.

Santa.. er.. Decima..put some coal in Stevie Harper’s stocking:

A new poll suggests Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have lost their big lead over the Liberals in the wake of recent controversies, plunging six percentage points in popular support in just one week. The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey puts the Tories at 30 per cent support, in a statistical tie with the Liberals who are up four points to 32 per cent. Support for the Tories dropped across all regions and demographic groups.

I’m less inclined to believe Mulroney/Schreiber had anything to do with this plunge. I’m more inclined to believe that a) Canadians did not like Baird and Harper’s stance at the Bali climate change talks, and did not like as a result of that being cast as the obstructer/bad guy of the world, and b) Canadians took a dim view of the Chalk River nuclear nonsense, where Harper was casting blame at everyone but his government for its shutdown.

I didn’t see the original last paragraph in question of this blogpiece here which caused a senior VP at Ipsos to threaten legal action against Paulitics: Paul’s Socialist Investigations, (it was changed “gratuitously” (without admission of guilt or wrongdoing) to appease the Ipsos folks to avoid legal action), so I can’t say whether the fellow had a case in saying it was libelous. That said, I do find what he’s been leaving in the comments section over here with regards to this article at Saskboy’s place to be rather …well.. unbecoming of a senior Vice-President of a major polling company. There must be a lot of free time at Ipsos HQ at the moment.

It’s also kind of humourous and ironic to me that while he’s charging that these nasty bloggers are impugning his firms reputation and integrity over questioning his firm’s rather large Conservative lead on everyone else when no one else shows that, he then goes on in that comment section to malign another pollster’s showing of solid Green Party support as being akin to believing in the tooth fairy.

Physician, heal thyself.

A news headline a week or so ago in the Toronto Star read more or less “Harper to Cities: Drop dead”. That set off a round of indignation in the right-wing blogosphere bordering on hysterics, with some suggesting the Toronto Star could or should be sued for daring to interpret Harper’s brush-off of helping to fund cities infrastructure in the manner in which they did. I am waiting to hear some equal outrage from those folks over Sun Media’s title of Greg Weston’s column today that reads: True Grits or twits? Ontario loyal to federal Liberals, despite qualms about Dion.

That is in response to the SES poll yesterday that showed the Cons and Liberals were in a virtual tie, despite the earlier SES leadership poll that gave Harper a decided advantage, and left everyone at Sun Media, including Weston, chortling about the death of the Liberals and how Dion was done. If the standard of outrage is to be applied objectively, our friends on the rightwing blogosphere should be taking the Sun and Weston to task equally harshly for calling a whole province of voters an insulting name. I won’t hold my breath waiting for folks like Steve Janke to do so however.

Getting back to our friends over at Sun Media, I wondered aloud if we were going to see columns from anyone at the Sun acknowledging that the new poll numbers didn’t fit to their “the Liberals are dead” narrative from a couple of days ago, and Weston to his credit at least acknowledged those numbers and admitted they didn’t fit in with what he had said a couple of days ago (not everyone at the Sun who joined in the Dion bashing in columns over there has yet to do so). But, the poll results were obviously disappointing to him, as he had to not only lash out at Ontarions for not embracing Harper, but also took a shot at women too, because they preferred Dion and would elect him and the Liberals to a minority government if it were only up to them.

Maybe, as Jeff over here suggests, Mr Weston should be looking at the root causes of Harper and the Cons. inability to attract Ontarions, or women, or urban voters for that matter, instead of calling everyone who doesn’t want to vote for the party of his choice “twits”.