steal?

i admit i don't watch much (any) tv, but this makes no sense to me. i've always assumed that the conservative base is primarily composed of social conservatives and that, if you were to measure it directly, you'd find out that they are the least knowledgeable about basic economic ideas and terminology. the exception to this comes in the form of certain types of investors and just flat out upper class earners, but they're certainly not interested in "jobs and growth" when they vote for the conservatives on "economic issues" - they're concerned about markets and tax rates.

conversely, liberal party supporters tend to actually mostly vote on the economy - it's their primary vote driver.

i've posted about this elsewhere, but i just don't think we can draw much out of these polls as we think we can because we can't really determine what the respondents actually mean. when you have a government that is constantly barraging people with ads that claim they're best at "managing the economy" (which is an absurd concept), it should come as little surprise that they rank highly - not because people like their policies, or even understand them, but because it's what they're bombarded with. the polls become a measure of the effectiveness of the conservative advertisement. and, sometimes you have to wonder if it's even intentional - the poll questions are worded almost identically to the ads. it's the same thing with the leadership question.

so, when the polls shift, then, what are you seeing? ideological shifts? the onset of the ultra-paradoxical phase, where stimulus leads to rejection? collateral damage from something else?

essentially all data you could construct from any source at all suggests the liberals should be blowing away the competition on anything remotely related to the economy. it's really not debatable. it's in the realm of objective fact. and, my experience has been that pretty much everybody that i've ever actually *talked* to has understood this - even very solid ndp and tory supporters.

i'm just not sure this is actually what people care about, or if it's what they've been told they should care about; and i'm not sure that people actually support the government's economic positions, so much as they're constantly being told they're the best on the economy. and, if you unravel the situation with this in mind, and then you look at the polls, you're left to conclude that the opposition parties should be focusing on everything *except* what the narrative has been defined as.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/27/can-progressives-steal-the-jobs-and-growth-issue-from-the-tories-absolutely/

jh
Interesting analysis. Im going with collateral damage for something else. For example the cons marketed two things which have benefited the NDP. 1st -"Liberals have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted. They managed to balance a budget on the backs of the most vulnerable and then pretend they are progressive. Of course it boggles the mind at why people aren't worshipping the Liberals!"

2nd- Liberal performance on managing the economy is very much debatable. They did balance the budget, but how they did it it, and at what cost is what people may remember. Did the actual Canadian economy grow and jobs increase? Were people better off ? Maybe on paper but most are not going to look that up. They are thinking what they are experiencing day to day.

Arrogance, deception and corruption scandals is what led to devastating election results the last time around. This was marketed very well by the Conservatives so uninformed people did buy into that narrative.

deathtokoalas
yeah, this is another media narrative that i'm convinced is wrong.

if you look at the combined pc & reform vote in 2000, it was 38%. in 2011, he managed a hair under 40% in an election where a lot of liberals stayed home. he got 38% in 2008 and 36% in 2006 - and 30% in 2004. the reality is that he's been spending the last 15 years hanging on to the progressive conservative vote for dear life, and he hasn't cut an inch into liberal support. so, where did all these liberal voters go, when he made a big stink about the scandals?

well, they went to the ndp, eventually, although a few seem to have parked with the greens on the way there. and, if you ask them about this directly, they won't tell you anything about scandals. they'll tell you that they didn't like the idea of electing paul martin (due to his budget cuts in the 90s) and didn't like ignatieff for his foreign policy views.

i'm less pointing out the objective supremacy of the liberal economic record in the sense of it being spotless, and more comparing it to the conservatives. harper & mulroney have both been just atrocious on any metric you could possibly pull out. it's just not a comparison.

i do think the scandals may be swinging some red tories to the liberals.

but i'm broadly leaning towards the ultra-paradoxical phase to explain the polling. you have to keep in mind that harper's economic competence (in the polling public's mind) has generally outperformed his polling results. people will repeat the ads, say the economy is most important and then tell the pollsters they're voting for somebody else. it's like the information sinks in on the surface, but doesn't *actually* sink in in the sense of forming voting intentions. how ads effect us is kind of weird, right? we sing major brand jingles and refer to products by their trademark names (like "mayonnaise"), but, at the end of the day, we buy the better bargain.

i think he may have over-advertised, to the point that now people just get irritated by the ads. and, the more he spends all that money, the harder hit he may end up.

maybe he could try flooding the lab, or something. i'm not giving him any ideas, though.