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...

CAtO vs. the Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail, before the election, endorsing Harper:

"Indeed, the most important characteristic Mr. Harper has shown over 33 months in office is a capacity to grow. There is no reason to think he won't continue along the same trajectory if re-elected — a good thing, too, since there is much more for him to learn.

Instead of carping about a dysfunctional Parliament, for which he holds much responsibility, Mr. Harper should throw out his previous playbook and try making the institution work. It would mean displaying the confidence to operate outside his comfort zone of near-absolute control, but it is a mission built for a true conservative. And, no, Senate reform is no substitute for getting the House of Commons operating well."

Me, before the election, not endorsing the Conservative party:

"in my opinion, the Conservative party wishes to remake this country into one much more similar to the U.S., as opposed to the 'second tier socialistic country' (in Harper's words) that it is now (in their opinion).

But in pursuing this goal the Conservatives see the traditional institutions, the checks and balances as things that stand in their way. So, far from wanting to reinforce the strength of Canada's independent institutions that check the government's power and to work within the system, the Conservative's want to weaken those institutions and remove anything that prevents them from remaking the system as they wish.

In government we have seen the Conservative party at war with the media, at war with Elections Canada, in a battle with the nuclear energy safety regulator and further Conservative government will lead, in my opinion, to more attacks on and more weakening of, the independent institutions that provide a check on the government."

So here we are, faced with a serious economic crisis, and Harper decided that it was a good time to try and weaken some of the institutions (unions and opposition parties) that keep the Conservatives from unfettered rule, and now, when he has obviously lost the confidence of the House of Commons as a result, Harper vows to 'use all legal means' to resist bowing to the will of the majority of our elected representatives, and we see newspapers articles seriously considering having Harper fire the Governor General rather than give up the reins of power.

I'd score this CAtO 1, Globe 0.


--
On the other hand, when I wrote that, "Harper has a de facto majority for at least the next two years since nobody will want to trigger another election." I wasn't predicting that Harper's second vote would be a confidence motion on bankrupting all three opposition parties, so I missed that one.

Can a Big Spender Change His Ways?

Cross-posted to Blogs Canada e-group

With George Bush soon to arrive on Canadian shores, I thought I’d use my first post here at the e-group to follow up on Don’s earlier question about what Bush would have to do for his second term to be considered a success. There’s a lot of ground to cover here, so I chose to focus on the pragmatic point of view in this post and save the moral issues for another day.

First, it’s pretty clear that the U.S.A. is a nation with incredible resources: military resources, financial resources, natural resources as well as ‘human’ resources (e.g. a strong work ethic, respect for democracy and liberty, willingness to take risks etc.), institutional resources, diplomatic resources and ideological resources (worldwide respect for the American way of life and ‘American’ values).

Second, looking to the future, the retirement of the baby boomers, the growing ecological threats (global warming, soil erosion, water table depletion, depletion of energy resources, loss of bio-diversity), rising interest rates (sooner or later), and the inevitable spread and technological improvement of various weapons of mass destruction (nuclear weapons, biological weapons, digital weapons, etc., etc.) all suggest that the U.S.A., like other nations, will need ever more resources at its disposal to meet the coming challenges.

Third, by the end of Bush’s first term, the military was almost fully deployed and arguably overstretched. Financially, the capacity for taking on new debt had been greatly used up (both at a governmental and at a consumer level), the downward pressure on the currency had grown immense (and possibly dangerous), and the role of the American dollar as de facto global currency was looking less certain by the day. Internally, the population was working harder than ever, while their levels of respect for their political opposition, the political process and their own government were still dropping. Natural resources had been depleted, destabilized and destroyed much faster than they were replenished. Diplomatic relations were strained at best and hostile at worst, even with longtime allies. Finally, levels of respect for Americans, and for their role in world affairs were lower than at anytime in recent memory, despite the outpouring of sympathy after 9/11.

Not all of this can be laid at Bush’s feet and some of these trends date back to well before his time, but they all represent areas where his policies were an aggravating, rather than a compensating factor. In short, Bush has shown that he can spend America’s resources, but he has yet to show that he can build them. In order to be judged a success, his second term will have to leave America, and the rest of the world, better able to deal with the coming challenges, not less.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, that was pretty general. If you want specifics, I think Bush needs to balance the budget (as Russil said a while back), stabilize transfer programs (i.e. social security), achieve a soft landing for the currency, restore taxation of the wealthy/corporations to historical (postwar) levels, take much more drastic action on climate change (signing Kyoto would be a start), get the army out of Iraq (and not invade anyone else), reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels in general, and ones from the Middle East in particular, make an effort to reach out to other countries via diplomacy rather than through threats and intimidation (his visit here being a decent start), and perhaps most of all, stop shooting (firing) the messenger when people tell him something he doesn’t want to hear.