Credibility Watch

One of the good/bad things about blogs is that it's all in writing, so you can often go back and see what was written in the past by various people. Occasionally I like to take advantage of this and cherry pick some recent event, where I was right in some prediction and others were wrong, in order to highlight my superior predictive abilities.

For instance, here’s a recent post by Andrew Coyne regarding the polls leading up to the B.C. election – the post was written before the B.C. election took place, so now that the election has happened, we can assess whose interpretation of the polls was more accurate:

Andrew wrote:

I dunno. This makes no sense to me:

"Halfway through the B.C. election campaign the race for the leadership is tighter than ever. The BC Liberals and New Democrat parties are separated by just three percentage points, according to a new Angus Reid Strategies/CTV poll.
The online survey of 822 voters found the BC Liberals are holding top spot with 42 per cent, with the opposing NDP not far behind at 39 per cent. The Green Party remains in third place with 13 per cent."

The same poll shows that, by a wide margin, the public thinks the economy is the number one issue. And that, by a margin of three to one – 48% to 16 — they pick the Liberals’ Gordon Campbell as the best person to handle it. Nearly two to one — 40% to 23% — also prefer Campbell as “best premier.” Yet the Liberals are only three points ahead?

Going into the campaign, the Liberals enjoyed a 17-point lead. Nothing much has happened since. The NDP have run a scattershot, unfocused campaign. And suddenly they’re only three points behind?
Colour me skeptical.

And then in the comments:

dan in van says:

Smacks of a push-pull that was manipulated, whether accidentally or purposely, to ensure that Liberal forces are motivated to vote. It is the only poll in a few years that have shown this kind of narrow margin. But while my theory may sound a little conspiracy-like, in any event I take this with a long tall one.

Critical Reasoning says:

I never trust online polls like this one. Here’s the justification by CTV/Angus Reid:
Our polls are conducted online, and not over the telephone or through face-to-face interviews. The rationale behind this approach is simple. Canada is now one of the most connected countries in the world, and Internet access has spread to every key demographic group in the country, including seniors and people with below average household incomes.

Conversely, telephone-based research has been greatly affected by declining response rates and the absence of land-lines in the homes of many younger Canadians.
Codswallop! Online polls are only used because they’re cheap. Almost any online poll is more likely to magnify the young, left-leaning “can’t be bothered to vote” demographic at the expense of the older, more conservative demographic who always vote, but only venture online to check email.

Derek Pearce says:

Heh. Where can I online-vote that Unicorns are the prettiest of all the fabled creatures? Actually I bet that you’d get a better than 19 out of 20 result for that, so it’s a bad example. What was the methodology of survey even if online? If people had the option of clicking one party or another from a public site and meandering off, then the NDP will be over-represented by zealots who did their quick-click duty and then went web-surfing elsewhere, while those who cared stayed to answer more in depth questions will more accurately reflect the public opinion of Campbell.

bigcitylib says:

A response to the speeding scandal, which arrived plop in the middle of the polling period?

As for AR’s online polls, I’ve complained alot about them but during the last Federal they did as well as (maybe better than) anyone else’s.

catherine says:

These results are only a small shift from the last Angus Reid poll (done in March which put the Liberals at 43 and NDP at 37) and the small shifts could be fluctuations in small numbers (MOE) or due to the speeding scandals.

Mike G says:

Well, no one ever accused British Columbians of being sensible.
Here’s the thing, though: I would contribute to those statistics. I think Gordon Campbell is probably a better administrator than Carole James. I am not entirely happy with either platform; the economy is certainly the biggest challenge ahead, but I don’t actually think that the provincial government can do much about it. I’m very unhappy with a lot of the things that the Liberal government here has done over its current tenure, I think there’s been a lot of hamhandedness and ignorance on their part, and I think a bit of shakeup could be good for them. On top of that, my local MLA, Shane SImpson (NDP, Vancouver-Hastings) seems to be just fine and I see no need to boot him.

Dale says:

The 17 point lead poll is a Mustel poll. This company was started by a current MLA for the Liberals. If any poll has a tendency to bias it is that one.
The A. Reid poll is very close to Robbins Reasearch poll wich uses telephone polling. You can complain about one but it is backed up by the other. The BC election will be won or lost in each riding. Liberals are strong is some but the NDP are equally strong in others. Who ever gets the vote out will win.

Declan says:

Libs won by 4% last election. Seems pretty plausible to me that things haven’t changed much since then. I guess we’ll see soon enough.

---


Election result:
Liberals get 46.02% of the vote, NDP gets 42.06%, Liberals have a margin of victory of almost exactly 4%.

Credibility Increase:
Angus Reid, Me, Catherine, bigcitylib, Dale and Mike G.

Credibility Decrease:
Mustel, Andrew Coyne, dan in Van, critical reasoning and Derek Pearce

That is all. Just trying to enforce a little accountability around here...

B.C. Election 2009

B.C. will be having an election on May 12, 2009, 8 days from now.

If you want more info on the parties, their platforms, the polls, etc. I recommend Sacha's excellent site.

Personally, I'm not too enthusiastic about this particular election. The Liberal (in name only) party has been in charge for 8 years and although they've moderated some of their more unpleasant views (on aboriginal relations and the environment for example) and they have certainly accomplished a fair bit in terms of infrastructure (albeit by committing the province to a large stream of payments over the next 25 years or so), I'd certainly be happy to see them removed from power.

Under their watch B.C. has seen some of the fastest rising inequality and poverty levels in Canada, and has failed to take care of all of its citizens. Furthermore, the Liberals seem increasingly corrupt and willing to sell off the province's resources to their friends and party insiders and to big business.

Given the huge housing and construction bubble, the perilously low savings rates and the rising inequality, B.C. can be expected to be hammered extra hard by the economic downturn - if the Liberals do win this one, they may get to reap some of what they've sown.

The only alternative likely to be elected is the NDP party. The NDP platform has some good ideas, such as raising the minimum wage and ending/taxing the flaring of natural gas. Still, I can't bring myself to vote for a party that is campaigning on increasing the province's carbon emissions and contributing *more* to one of the greatest threats that mankind currently faces. It is funny in a way that so many people viewed the revenue neutral carbon tax as a tax increase, but even though repealing it will produce just as many losers as putting it in did, you don't hear, for example, residents of downtown Vancouver up in arms about the tax/debt increase they'll have to face due to repeal of the carbon tax that currently benefits them.

The other killers in the NDP platform are the promises to lower hydro bills (again, a move that will increase emissions) and to kill the plan for smart meters. After all, peak oil is another huge threat to our future, so obviously we should cancel plans to modernize our electrical grid and give ourselves a greater capacity to make efficient use of our electricity resources.

It's a great plan really, cancel plans for new electricity production, lower prices to encourage more consumption and kill measures designed to encourage conservation. I don't see any problems with that agenda at all.

Whoever wins will deserve what they get trying to govern this province from 2009 - 2013 (Olympic perks and a whole lot of economic headaches, I predict).

So yeah, I think I'll vote Green. I thought I might vote for the Marijuana party, since legalizing marijuana is one of the most positive changes that could be made by our politicians, but I see that they are endorsing the Greens rather than running their own candidates.

The main thing that will bring me to the polls is the chance to again vote in favour of scrapping our antiquated electoral system and replacing it with one that can actually function in a province with more than 2 political parties - STV. But more on that in another post perhaps - or just visit the blog I wrote back in 2005 the first time we voted on electoral reform. Maybe if we can fix the electoral system we'll have more palatable choices when the next election comes around.

Decision Time

Andrew Spicer had a good post up a few days ago talking about some of the different possible motivations for voting and coming up with a list of possible strategies:

"I could vote for the local representative...

1. ...of the party that I feel would do the best job if they form the government
2. ...of the party that I feel would do the best job if they form the government, but limited to those parties likely to the form the government
3. ...of the party that I feel has the best policy platform
4. ...of the party that I feel has presented a policy platform that best points the direction we should be moving (in order to send a message)
5. ...of the party that I feel has presented a policy that best addresses a very important single issue / set of issues (in order to send a message)
6. ...of the party that I feel is led by the best* potential Prime Minister
7. ...who I think is the best* among the candidates in my riding
8. ...who is most likely to beat the local representative of the party I want to prevent from forming the government

(* - I can think of many ways of defining "best" in this context, but the list is long enough already. Note that the numbers in the list are for reference only.)"

It's a pretty thorough list but the one thing I would add is the concept of looking beyond just the riding you live in and thinking about the results in the province (jurisdiction) as a whole.

For instance, here in B.C. I feel that the Liberal party is too far to the right in a number of areas but I still like the fact they generally want to make things work and get things done which can be important, especially when even clearly beneficial ideas face strong 'Not-in-my-backyard' challenges. Meanwhile I trust the NDP to do a better job making sure the laws aren't tilted too far in favour of corporations, ensuring public services are adequately funded and taking care of the poor and more vulnerable - but I don't trust them to keep spending growth to moderate levels, to make smart business decisions, to have the political will to make important projects happen or to avoid creating a lot of counter-productive unnecessarily complex regulation. Finally the Green Party has a lot of great ideas and makes for a nice break from the business vs. labour divide which plagues B.C. - but they also have a lot of really poor ideas which show that they haven't thought through all their policies (i.e. reducing tuition to 0).

So what does this have to do with voting? Well, just looking at my riding, I might be tempted to vote Liberal. But looking at the (expected) results for the province as a whole, I think that the Liberals are already likely to be overly represented in the legislature vs. how much I support their policies. So I am likely to vote for balance - that is, I will use my vote like a counter-weight, trying to move the overall result in the right direction, rather than simply voting for exactly what I support.

That still leaves the question of NDP vs. Green¹. Right now I'm thinking Green. Partly because they seem more like a forward thinking party, but also because I believe a multi-party system is healthier than one with two big parties squaring off against each other since that can lead to the kind of polarization we've seen in the United States in recent years. But maybe I just like to vote for the underdog and would be better off voting for a party with a better chance of winning my riding (since it appears it may be close). I probably won't make a final decision until I'm in the booth.

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¹I should note that I also considered the Democratic Reform party as well, but they seemed a little too unsettled for me. Beyond platitudes and pragmatism, I wasn't really sure what they stood for. Of course as far as I know they have no candidate in my riding anyway, so that part is easy.

B.C. Election Prediction

So, despite not having had a chance to pay proper attention and this being my first B.C. election (as a resident), I figured I'd take a crack at predicting the outcome.

Before I get started, here are some useful sites if you're into prognostication:

The Tyee's Battleground BC
Election prediction project
UBC Election Stock Market

I know Sacha at Double Blind said he was going to make predictions as well, but I don't want to look at his site until after I've made my own predictions so no link for now. Update (an hour later): OK, here's the link - predictions promised for 11 pm...

All right, on with my likely-to-be-way-off guesswork. The general outcome seems clear, a majority government for the Liberals, although I guess stranger things have happened than an upset tomorrow. Still, with commodity prices up across the board and the real estate market in good shape it would be a surprise to see any incumbent government get defeated. Time will tell if Campbell follows the Mulroney/Harris 'two right-wing terms and then toast' approach or of they are able to build something longer lasting in their second term.

For popular vote I'll say 11% for the Greens, 38% for the NDP and 47% for the Liberals (leaving 4% other).

I'm not going to try and predict the outcome of the STV referendum (can't even maintain a pretense of objectivity there - vote yes!) so all that leaves is predicting the individual seats. I'm not (alas) predicting any victories for anyone except the NDP or Liberals so I'll keep my typing to a minimum and just list the ridings I expect to go NDP:

(Note: the total comes to 57 for the Liberals and 22 for the NDP)

Alberni-Qualicum
Burnaby North
Comox Valley
Cowichan-Ladysmith
Esquimalt-Metchosin
Malahat-Juan De Fuca
Nanaimo
Nelson-Creston
New Westminster
North Coast
Port-Coquitlam/Burke Mountain
Powell River-Sunshine Coast
Surrey-Green Timbers
Surrey-Whalley
Vancouver-Burrard
Vancouver-Hastings
Vancouver Kensington
Vancouver Kingsway
Vancouver Mount Pleasant
Victoria Beacon Hill
Victoria Hillside
West Kootenay-Boundary

My own riding (Vancouver-Fairview) was actually one of my toughest decisions, but I'll give it to Virginia Greene by a nose. Surrey Newton should be an interesting race as well. It will also be interesting to see how Tom Merino does on the Malahat. Of course, now that I've made my prediction I have to decide how I should vote...

Out of Town

This is just a light/no blogging warning since I'll be out of town for the weekend. Should be nice to take my mind off the circus our federal parliament has become and may also give me some time to think about who to vote for in the provincial election. Or maybe I just won't think about politics at all for a couple of days.

Anyway, have a good weekend all, if you live in B.C. or know someone who does, remind them to vote yes on Tuesday - or better yet, get out and vote 'yes' in the advance polls which are open noon until 9 pm today (Friday) and Saturday.

B.C. election televised debate

If, like me, you didn't watch the debate last night (I don't even have cable at the moment, plus I figure that TV and politics shouldn't mix - what's your excuse?), or you just want to see some commentary on what you saw, try here, here or here.

To me, televised debates always seem like a triumph of medium over message and the media coverage of them generally makes me feel sad for the state of our country so I tend to avoid them even when I do have cable. But at the same time I typically find all-candidates meetings to be fascinating and very worthwhile. I don't know if being there in person makes a difference or if it's just that the cautious, stick to the party line, try to get your opponent off their game approach which being on TV enforces makes leadership debates dull and irritating.