well, i'm not going to pretend i'm a fan of this, but at least it's a bit more tasteful than the softcore porn that defines most pop music nowadays. hopefully, it kickstarts a trend for some of these young girls to focus more on their voice and less on their bodies.

if you were to do that to my computer, i would sneak into your house at night, get your password out of your temp files, go home, log into your account, change your password, delete all your videos and upload episodes of fawlty towers on an hourly basis, until i run out - when i would then block all your subscribers.

well, this reeks of desperation.

her riding is generally considered safe. it says a lot about the internal polling she's doing.

there hasn't been much media coverage of this the last few months. and, there's not really a lot of "ins" that the liberals have in rural ontario to work with. i was thinking about internet access - which the liberals should really seriously consider, as a way to open isolated communities up to the outside world. but, i could see how home mail delivery might be considered sort of substantial, if you live in a farm in the middle of nowhere.

i wonder how applicable that is elsewhere....

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-cheryl-gallant-s-claim-she-ll-save-canada-post-raises-ire-of-postal-workers-1.3272916

i would take any predictions in quebec at this point with a grain of salt. we're going to be seeing splits and upsets all over the place in ways the models are not robust enough to pull out.

but, as far as i can tell, there's really not any reason to think the conservative or bloc totals will be significantly different than they were in 2011. a point or two one way or the other.

the only big movement seems to be somewhere between a ten and a fifteen point swing from the ndp to the liberals. this will help the liberals in montreal, and the odd riding outside it. it may also help the conservatives in a seat or two around quebec city. but it's going to help the bloc dramatically, even if they only manage to get what they got last time.

the forum poll released this morning should raise some eyebrows, in it's projection of 19 seats for the bloc. that's way higher than anybody else (except me) has suggested. i'm going to expect between 10-30.

the reason is that the movement from ndp--->liberals is going to open up a lot of seats for the bloc, even with the bloc staying put or even being down a little. something that got lost in the shuffle of the ndp pulling in bloc support was that the ndp also got a hefty ten point swing from the liberals. there were a lot of close ndp-bloc races. you take away that ten point liberal swing, or even increase the reversal to 15, and these ndp seats start melting away into the st. lawerence, mostly in favour of the bloc.

the models will have a hard time with this. but, with that 10-15 point swing from the ndp to the liberals, all the bloc need to do is run somewhere in the low 20s to win a substantial number of seats back. 19 is probably about right, in terms of what to expect.

and, i'll say this again - with the liberals running ahead of the ndp now, apparently, it's hard to see how the ndp win outremont, which is mulcair's seat.

the cbc model has a clause in it that gives party leaders an advantage. it's the kind of thing that's probably true, most of the time. but outremont is one of the most liberal seats in the country. and, mulcair was of course a quebec liberal cabinet minister - which likely is a big part of the reason he was able to win the riding in the first place.

now that the dust has settled, and the liberals are in reach of a strong minority or even a majority, it seems obvious that outremont should swing, party leader or not.

and that's going to have a big effect on how the parliament operates, in the case of a liberal minority.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-quebec-split-michelle-gagnon-1.3272915

Mo
harper surging in quebec? somebody's got their hat on too tight!

jessica murray
there was a blip in the polls about the same time that the niqab thing came up. it didn't sustain itself. it was probably just sampling error.

but, it's a good lesson in two truths:

1) day-to-day polling can be erratic.
2) you can't trust the media to interpret polls.

i would have actually expected advance voters to support the conservatives in much higher numbers, because they have the highest number of decided & dedicated voters. the average conservative voter made up their mind months or years before the writ dropped. the election isn’t a period of contemplation, for the bulk of them. i would have expected something more like 45%. so, those are actually relatively good numbers for the liberals in the advance polls.

in a sense, polling the advance voters does the same thing that removing very high numbers of undecideds does. when you reduce the sample space to dedicated decideds, the conservatives invariably get the highest numbers.

to put it another way: if the liberals were clearly ahead in the advance polls (remember that there’s margins here…it’s a statistical tie), even by a point beyond the margin, you’d expect them to be on their way to a a huge majority. that would demonstrate endemic apathy in the conservative base, which you expect to dominate advance polls because they’re not deliberating anything. these numbers, as they are, suggest some pretty low levels of enthusiasm for the conservatives in their base. you may see the situation reversed (as it was in the 2014 ontario election); it may be the conservatives that end up with some turnout problems.

i mean, that’s just unusually low for a party that continually polls 75+ in terms of dedicated voter support. what are they waiting for? why *didn’t* they vote in greater numbers in advance polls?

www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2015/10/stalemate-continues

so, that means there's a baseball game on election day, right?

*sigh*

can we sue the team for breaking the social contract? hold them liable for gross negligence? there should be some kind of rule against this. they should have to put the game off a day.

if we're lucky, it's just going to siphon out the rob ford voters. but, i hope it's not a turnout issue.

www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/blue-jays-bautista-batflip-meme-1.3273814

Eric Haskins
Right...it's the team's fault. Grow up.

jessica murray
because politics are childish and baseball is grown up. right.

they have the option to forfeit the game - and i'd argue that this is the socially responsible thing to do. it would send a powerful message. but, perhaps more realistically, i think the league has a very strong responsibility to step in and postpone the game for 24 hours. and, i would suggest that they should be viewed in a very poor light if they decide to go ahead with it.

elections are important social events that truly matter to adults; childish and silly things like baseball games, that do not matter, should never be scheduled in a way that interferes with important social events like elections. and, i would argue quite honestly that the league and the team have some responsibility for gross negligence in distracting people from things of importance, and should be held liable for it.

it was certainly tongue in cheek, but i also did certainly mean it.

the tort doesn't actually exist. i would lose the case. i'd love to argue it, though.

i've been over this before. they expect me to show up dressed like a prostitute. and i think a part of it may be trying to get them to understand that i'm 35 years old. i don't look it. i get that. but the truth is that i'm old, and i dress like i'm old, which is to be expected. i don't have any patience with this "35 is the new 25" stuff, and this refusal to grow up. i don't want to be 25. i'm happy to be out of that headspace. i don't want to walk into a doctor's office and be analyzed like a piece of meat.

it's dehumanizing.

these doctors - they're creepy old men. i'd mostly rather they didn't touch me at all, kind of thing. to have them evaluate your gender based on whether they find you attractive is - there's something wrong with this. it's like, "i'm wearing a sweater because i don't want your creepy ass ogling me, you sonofabitch.".

they honestly seem to expect me to walk in in fishnets and heels and laugh provocatively when they speak. it's really disgusting.

it's this base archetype of patriarchally enforced "femininity" that they want reflected back at them.

i had one ask "what are you, some kind of lesbian?".

like as though that might disqualify me, if it were true. (i'm asexual. just no interest in sex.)

i had another frown and clearly write me off when i claimed i was a feminist. as though transwomen being feminists is some kind of contradiction, and disqualifying.

it's 2015, guys. i know you're in your 60s. but, you could try to keep up just a little.

that week just zoomed by...

i've had some running around to do with doctors. again. they're such assholes. and often surprisingly averse to evidence-based reasoning, in favour of rigidity to strict protocol. you'd think you're dealing with the military half the time...

they've got me in this ridiculous loop. the same people that just rediagnosed me with gender dysphoria want me to go through a training program in toronto for people that have yet been diagnosed. this is ridiculous; i could be teaching the program. but, i'd do it if it's a day program and there's an easy end to it. but, it's a months long program with a year long waiting list. and, here's the bizarre part: there's an open letter on their web page requesting that doctors do not send people through this program and just assign hormones themselves.

so, they won't represcribe until they send me through a program that is telling them to go ahead and prescribe already. it's just rigidity to a set of protocols, oblivious of anything resembling independent thought or adherence to logic.

you can imagine a far side cartoon at a school for the gifted with a star on the floor beside a christmas tree and a child frowning - because there's no instruction manual.

so, i'm calling more doctors. and more doctors. until i can find one with some common fucking sense. surely, it's inevitable, right?

i mean, it's not an option to go off hormones. i can't detransition. i'm already done. i'd sooner kill myself than put myself in that kind of state. and, if i do, it will be in their front office.

i've got some things done, though, and am ready to sit down for a few days.

i'm going to take a shower this afternoon and should hopefully get some more troubleshooting in tonight.

sampling frames / area codes

To: nnanos@nanosresearch.com, fgraves@ekos.com, lbozinoff@forumresearch.com

hi.

i don't think it's going to require much of an argument from me to have you acknowledge that provincial wide data isn't very useful to plug into riding modelling the way it's being done; the idea that a swing in vancouver might be felt in kelowna, or that a swing in montreal might be felt in sherbrooke, is not really well thought out. canadian provinces are big and diverse and often have two or three proper sample frames, as opposed to american states, which are mostly small and get away with one, or maybe two if you're being really rigorous. if people doing models are to create systems that are robust enough to handle the massive and unpredictable swings we're seeing in this election, they're going to need more targeted sample frames to begin with.

but, you don't model; you poll. maybe, if a few of you might want to think about modelling, we could get some better sample frames.

for right now, i know you're focused on what you're doing. but, releasing data organized by area code would probably be a five minute job, right? organize by area code. print. done...

in lieu of better sample frames for the models, maybe it might help people understand things a little bit better, so they're not being led astray by models that are operating well beyond the assumptions they were constructed with.

j

lol. you old progressive conservatives, you...lost in the past. you're endorsing mulroney, guys. that was a long time ago. hopefully, the generational change in media follows the generational change in governance. it's long overdue.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/the-tories-deserve-another-mandate-stephen-harper-doesnt/article26842506/

wow. this struck a chord. ahaha.

again: it's easy to understand.

the media establishment in canada is run by upper class old tories that are in their 60s and 70s. old people. old money. old stock, even. they've been living in denial since the merger, just waiting for their old party to come back. and, when they vote for harper, they are not really voting for harper - they are voting for mulroney and clark and stanfield.

but, that party doesn't exist anymore.

maybe, if they go out and try really hard, they can find a way to recreate their old party, which now only exists in their own faded memories. but, this endorsement is putting the cart before the horse. and, it's only through their disconnect from reality, their projected fantasies, that they don't see how obvious that is.

if you want your pcs back, you do this:

1) you vote against the conservatives, however feels best to you. for the liberals. for the ndp. for the greens. or not at all.
2) then you get your candidate into the convention, and you get them to beat kenney. good luck on that, though - because the west of the country completely disagrees with you, and is going to support kenney.

i don't mean to be crass. i really don't. well, i'm known to be crass rather often, but i don't mean to be crass just right now.

this is a matter of an out of touch generation passing away. and, when that happens, things change - because these memories of stanfield and clark pass along with them.

then, we can get back to living in the present.

just one more reason to hope that retirement age gets pushed back to 65.

we need to get the progressive conservatives out of the media. it's really important. they don't exist. they haven't existed for a generation. we need perspectives rooted in the existing spectrum, not the spectrum of the 1980s.

kenney will win the convention on his stellar anti-abortion credentials. then, what are you going to do? keep plugging? keep hoping? keep waiting for it to turn around?

this doesn't happen.

meanwhile, the age required to remember the pcs increases. in 2019, it will be 31 years since 1988. which means, you'd need to be in your 50s to be old enough to remember voting pc.

there are not one but two generations of voters with no understanding of the term "progressive conservative" as anything beyond a bizarre oxymoron.

this past needs to be let go. most of the country has done so. the media is trailing far behind.

even if the fantasy that you can elect the conservatives and ditch harper is somehow plausible, what's in the pipeline, so to speak, is much more divisive - much more socially conservative, much more combative, much more regressive.

it's willful blindness and total delusion to see the future of the conservative party differently.

OgtheDim
Except they do exist all over the country and would be quite willing to vote for somebody unlike Kenny.

deathtokoalas
please. it's very clear that he wins the next convention. remember: the reform party was primarily created as a response to mulroney's non-reaction to morgantaler. that's what the base is all about. it's the number one driver of donations. it's the single greatest issue that drives new tory voters. not the economy. not security. not tough on crime. abortion.

just because old tories refuse to see this, or adjust to it, doesn't mean the facts aren't as they are.

you're not going to see a moderate replacement. harper IS the moderate. or the closest thing to one...

---

well, my golden retriever can catch better than stanfield. i don't know who even gets that anymore, besides the globe staff.