When Pollsters Attack

I have had just about enough of nouveau media celebrity Frank Graves, EKOS kingpin and suddenly a frequent correspondent on Canadian televised media, and pollster of choice for the Globe and Mail and the CBC. Do you think something is wrong when the king of all outliers is now drawing conclusions about the emotions of Conservative voters based on erroneous polling that favours the Green Party more than any other polling firm?

Jane Taber at the Globe and Kady O'Malley at the CBC are making careers out of dissecting EKOS polls. A new poll was released today with extremely detailed information. I do intend to wade into the math to verify his seat projections against vote projections later, but for the meantime I would like to address the freedom of 2nd choice. A very big deal was made by Frank about voter 2nd choices. Evidently it is a measure of bitter partisan alienation that more than half of Conservative voters don't have a second choice, where as the open minded opposition are more ready, willing, and able to vote for someone else. There is not a lot of loyalty in Liberal ranks, with 74% ready to jump ship at a moment's notice. However, Jane of the Jungle draws a different conclusion.

And he has found some underlying troubles for the Conservatives – only 9.3 per cent of respondents picked the Tories as their second choice compared to 16.6 per cent for the Liberals.

What's interesting about that result is that 18% of Liberal voters list the Tories as their 2nd choice, as do 14.5% of Dippers. Heck, even 10% each of the Greens and Bloc list the Tories as their second choice. So how does he drag the national 2nd choice number down to 9.3%? The only way that is possible is if you include existing Tory voters in the national numbers, and obviously people who already vote Tory don't list the Conservative party as their 2nd choice. It should be noted that the Tories received almost 2 million more votes than the Liberals in the last federal election. And Mr.Ekos then extrapolates the following conclusion.

This poll also examined the question of voters’ second choices among the parties. Interestingly, a majority of Conservative supporters said they had no second choice – a measure of the alienation these voters feel towards the opposition parties.


Although most opposition party supporters were able to express a second choice, relatively few pick the Conservative Party – more evidence of political polarization among the electorate. Liberal and NDP supporters were most likely to choose each other’s party as their second choice. Bloc Québécois supporters favour the NDP and the Greens over the Liberals, and in last place, the Conservatives.