the narrative is that the gap has closed, or that this is an outlier poll.

my analysis is that this is actually consistent with what reliable polling has suggested they've been at the whole time.

however.

forum is sketchy, and i don't know why. they fluctuate all over the place - sometimes they're dead on, and sometimes they're completely wrong. so, pointing out that this is about what i thought isn't that relieving given that we're talking about forum.

the same thing happened in the last election. the tory media pumped out all of this panel analysis - which is more like a focus group than a poll - claiming the liberals didn't have a chance. they then mislabelled these things as "polls". this was designed to frame the narrative around a certain liberal loss, to influence public opinion in their favour. but, the reliable polling was...reliably close...for pretty much the whole campaign.

then, when the liberals won a majority, everybody claimed they were shocked. but, they shouldn't have been, at all - it was what the actual polls said the whole time.

if decided voters are putting the conservatives around 36-37%, then they're likely running around 32-33, and the liberals have a better than decent chance - not because the budget has saved the day, but because her unpopularity was always exaggerated in the first place.

but, i would like to see more reliable polling, please.

http://poll.forumresearch.com/data/6db584c0-cdaf-446b-b79a-6c7d54cb6c4bOntario%20budget.pdf