this is a more believable report, although the methodology is basically the same as the report i ripped apart yesterday, which just goes to show you that online polling essentially gives you whatever you design it to give you.

as per usual, i would temper any deep conclusions by pointing out that the movement is well within any reasonable concept of error....except there aren't any meaningful error bars. these "credibility intervals" are really screwy concepts.

the reason i'm posting this is that i think that the narrative here is more likely to turn out to be the right one, so long as the country doesn't find itself fished out by these fake tory polling firms and herded into quarters by the media. the liberals are at a dramatic disadvantage in terms of media control in canada, and they don't seem to be fully cognizant of it. this narrative is the idea of the liberals falling apart and leaking in every direction, while the conservatives hold their base.

and, look at the importance of the environment to voters - the top issue for everybody expect the right. way to go, canada. we should be proud of that, especially in comparison to the narrative in the united states. now, we just need to get it in serious motion.

there is a small liberal-tory swing in canada that i've argued hit it's maximum size in the 2004 election, when joe clark endorsed paul martin in order to thwart stephen harper. it's around 4-8%, depending on turnout (it's higher when turnout is low, as these are dedicated voters). but, these people are fundamentally red tories, and not liberals, and their support for the liberals rests very strongly on their opinion of the reigning conservative party - they essentially don't like the kind of social conservatism pushed by the reform party, and are willing to compromise with a fiscally responsible liberal party, if it is actually so. the liberals did not hit their maximum support levels in 2015, which is in the mid 40s, but they did seem to hit them in the polling that immediately followed. so, they eventually got the red tories on board. during this period, trudeau was cozying up to mulroney, and the liberals even put kim campbell in charge of the chief justice nomination, which remains utterly baffling to me. since then, the liberals have run large deficits and the conservatives have made a strong attempt to appear modern regarding the broader social treatment of women, at least. it is very hard for the liberals to maintain the red tory vote while they are in office. so long as scheer and his mps don't step in it - which they are historically prone to do - there is reason to think the conservatives should get some or most of that clark swing back. for the liberals to hold this, they need to present the conservatves as socially backwards, which has been the usual approach, but may run the risk of backfiring in a country with an increasingly powerful voting bloc of recent immigrants, who tend to be somewhat shockingly socially conservative in the canadian context, and especially so when it comes to women's rights, which are still somewhat exotic and novel in most of the world. so, the flip of this conservative strategy to hold the red tories is that the conservatives may actually be alienating their own religious values voters by relying strongly on this pretty face of modern female business normality. if canada's demographics are changing, and they are, this small swing in the middle may be turning itself on it's head. this is speculative; for now, if the tories are eating very slightly into liberal support, that is not surprising, as they are taking back their own, so to speak. but, there should be a brick wall there; while it is true that if it starts crumbling then the liberals are in huge trouble, i don't see any evidence of this happening or any reason to think that it is likely. and, the conservatives need to be aware of being exposed on their right flank.

speaking of which, i pointed out from the start that bernier struck me as more likely to eat into liberal support than conservative support, and if this is some kind of hare-brained stalking horse campaign then you shouldn't be surprised to see it backfire. the thing conservatives need to be concerned about is the development of some kind of coalition between evangelicals and muslims that wants to run against modernity, which has long been my fear around immigration - i don't want an influx of muslims to strengthen the political power of the evangelical right. if muslims were liberals or socialists, they wouldn't bother me; the fact is that they aren't, they're natural conservatives. by stoking fears of poor integration, bernier is actually running directly counter to this in ways that are more appealing to liberals than conservatives, and that tap into fears that exist on the left, rather than fears that exist on the right. i wouldn't consider it because i don't like his economic positions, but an economic libertarian that is skeptical about immigration and leans liberal on social policies would be likely to see bernier as the ideal protest vote. the data isn't here yet, but it is increasingly upholding my analysis - by siphoning out libertarians, the ppc is really just turning out to be yet another way to split the vote on the left.

so, if the more interesting question is where the liberal vote is scattering to, which is the question i've been asking for a while, then what is the answer? this poll makes some attempt to look into it, methodological flaws notwithstanding, and seems to suggest that it's just bleeding everywhere, equidistant - to the conservatives, the ndp, the greens, the bloc and the ppc in more or less equal amounts, and then to nowhere at all in the biggest amount. the conclusion is that we're tuning out on the liberals, rather than tuning in anywhere else.

this is both an opportunity for the other parties and a potential catastrophe, because if the situation holds then it is a recipe for a majority conservative government.

can somebody capture the country's imagination, stop the bleed and reverse the apathy? not the current slate of candidates, i don't think.

the best tactic is turfing trudeau, but we're running out of time.

http://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019.03.26-federal-release.pdf