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Justin Trudeau - Suffering from Foot in Mouth - Canadian Style


Wetcoaster

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You are still incorrect.

When the WAC Bennett quote is used in context it is an illustration of the old adage that the race is not over until it is over.

That is quite different from using polls to track trends and analyse where a campaign that looked to be trending for a candidate suddenly goes off the rails. The postmortem in the by-election victory for the Conservatives in Calgary Centre will be looking at such things and trying to determine how much effect the McGuinty and Trudeau comments had on the final outcome.

For Liberal leadership candidates it may signal a weakness for Trudeau that can be exploited to advance their campaigns as we have already seen from Martha Hall Findlay. Also the manner in which Trudeau answered the bell on this is a test of his team and it IMHO he handled it poorly. That may give Liberal movers and shakers (and in particular donors pause for concern).

This is going to be of interest to the Liberals, Conservatives and the NDP as it was test run of strategies that could be effective during the next general election and even following the Liberal leadership results. The Conservatives have honed a strategy of early messaging and staying on a simple consistent message so this could provide them with a valuable PR advantage. And since the Liberals first task is to try to overtake the NDP both those parties will be looking at what transpired as well.

If you read the OP you would have noted that it evolved from the McGuinty thread with his Go back to Alberta theme and looked at how Trudeua's comments have played into the longheld view in Alberta of being considered rubes by the Liberal Party - just shut up and deliver the resources dollars and do not interfere with how your betters run Canada as they know best. Trudeau's weak response has done nothing to dispel that issue.

"Bashing"????? It is known as informed criticism.

So as i said, you are incorrect.

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I'm actually with Inane on this one.

You clearly started this thread with the purpose of bashing Trudeau not as some deep political discussion. You clearly (I believe even in this thread) regularly trot out your WAC Bennett quote when others discuss polls in the exact same way you did in this thread as a way of dismissing them. Now someone points that out to you, that your poll comments are worth little more than our dismissing and you tell them they're wrong.

You're a smarter man than this Wet.

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I'm actually with Inane on this one.

You clearly started this thread with the purpose of bashing Trudeau not as some deep political discussion. You clearly (I believe even in this thread) regularly trot out your WAC Bennett quote when others discuss polls in the exact same way you did in this thread as a way of dismissing them. Now someone points that out to you, that your poll comments are worth little more than our dismissing and you tell them they're wrong.

You're a smarter man than this Wet.

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Nope you are missing the point.

The WAC Bennett quote refers to it ain't over til its over argument.

Using the polls to assess what went right and what went wrong based on a timeline is something quite different. This is nothing new - we did the same thing when I was running political campaigns back in the 1980's federally and provincially. It just so happens that polling is much more refined now and usually there are multiple polls to be considered.

This poll aggregation and analysis has become much more statistically based as we saw in the last two US federal elections with the ascendancy of Nate Silver and his analytic models at his NY Times blog:

http://fivethirtyeig...or/nate-silver/

I am critical of Trudeau because of his lack of experience and his apparent ability to put his foot firmly in his mouth. And IMHO his response to criticisms of his comments by numerous sources has been weak at best.

Using the term "bashing" is beneath you and i would have expected better. When I can back up my opinion it is not "bashing" it is informed criticism..

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Yet when other people use polls to discuss things just as you're doing and not as "matter of fact" you trot out your quote. So what makes them wrong and you right?

It's not that Inane or I think you're wrong to discuss the poll in relation to the subject. It's that you seemingly can't see your own hypocrisy in doing so.

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When people declare a race over based upon a poll then the Wacky quote is applicable.

When one is using a poll post election to track the trends and changes during a particular campaign, then it is a matter of using that poll to assess and analyse what happened.

Quite different contexts. YMMV.

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And I'm telling you that that's not what I've seen a lot of the time. Rarely have I seen anyone declare a race over prior to actual results. I've seen people discuss probabilities and likelihoods or as in this case discussion post results...and yet the quote gets trotted out.

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Here is how use of the polling data differs in real life and in differing contexts.

Consider the trends identified in the Forum Research polling results of 12 November 2012 for Calgary Centre.

https://www.forumres...(Forum_Research)_(20121113).pdf

(About} one third of those in Calgary Centre would vote for Conservative media firebrand Joan Crockatt (32%), well down

from one half two weeks ago (October 26 - 48%).

Liberal candidate Harvey Locke has the support of 3-in-10 (30%), similar to two weeks ago (28%).

Green candidate Chris Turner has increased his vote from one tenth (11%) to one quarter (23%).

NDP candidate Dan Meades (8% then, 12% now)

And the actual vote? (260 of 263 polls reporting) with about a 30% voter turnout (which was higher than anticipated). The Conservatives had been concerned with a potential low voter turnout because Crockatt had not really seemed to be reaching the Conservative voters that had given the retired Conservative incumbent over 50% of the popular vote. And according to all reports Crockatt had performed abysmally during the campaign.

Crockatt captured 37 per cent of the popular vote

Locke was trailing with 33 per cent

Chris Turner captured 25 per cent

Dan Meades had only four per cent.

If I am analyzing what went on something stopped Crockatt's downward spiral and on election night separated her from her Liberal opponent who actually did about what was expected (up slightly) as did the Green Candidate.

A higher than expected voter turnout in the riding would likely benefit Crockatt more than her opponents given the past voting history in the riding - but what motivated those voters? And it seems highly unlikely that the NDP voters moved to Crockatt - likely moving to the Liberals or the Greens.

That is where a bigger pool of voters with conservative leanings pushed her up to 37% and the win. But again why?

I am sure all the parties will be doing post-election polling to try to pin down what happened to change the emerging trend in Calgary Centre. If it was the McGuinty and Trudeau comments then that could signal a problem for Trudeau in his supposed coronation. It is unlikely to stop it unless something else comes to light but it most certainly creates a problem down the road for the Liberals who first must leap the NDP and then take on Harper and the Conservatives.

One thing I would be looking at if i was analyzing results for one of the parties would be the advance polling numbers to see how Locke performed since those numbers would not be influenced by Trudeau's reported comments. The advance polls predated both the reports of both the McGuinty (November 20) and Trudeau comments (November 22) and were held on:

Friday, November 16, 2012

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Monday, November 19, 2012

http://www.660news.c...e=350458&title=

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Here is how use of the polling data differs in real life and in differing contexts.

Consider the trends identified in the Forum Research polling results of 12 November 2012 for Calgary Centre.

https://www.forumres...(Forum_Research)_(20121113).pdf

(About} one third of those in Calgary Centre would vote for Conservative media firebrand Joan Crockatt (32%), well down

from one half two weeks ago (October 26 - 48%).

Liberal candidate Harvey Locke has the support of 3-in-10 (30%), similar to two weeks ago (28%).

Green candidate Chris Turner has increased his vote from one tenth (11%) to one quarter (23%).

NDP candidate Dan Meades (8% then, 12% now)

And the actual vote? (260 of 263 polls reporting) with about a 30% voter turnout (which was higher than anticipated). The Conservatives had been concerned with a potential low voter turnout because Crockatt had not really seemed to be reaching the Conservative voters that had given the retired Conservative incumbent over 50% of the popular vote. And according to all reports Crockatt had performed abysmally during the campaign.

Crockatt captured 37 per cent of the popular vote

Locke was trailing with 33 per cent

Chris Turner captured 25 per cent

Dan Meades had only four per cent.

If I am analyzing what went on something stopped Crockatt's downward spiral and on election night separated her from her Liberal opponent who actually did about what was expected (up slightly) as did the Green Candidate.

A higher than expected voter turnout in the riding would likely benefit Crockatt more than her opponents given the past voting history in the riding - but what motivated those voters? And it seems highly unlikely that the NDP voters moved to Crockatt - likely moving to the Liberals or the Greens.

That is where a bigger pool of voters with conservative leanings pushed her up to 37% and the win. But again why?

I am sure all the parties will be doing post-election polling to try to pin down what happened to change the emerging trend in Calgary Centre. If it was the McGuinty and Trudeau comments then that could signal a problem for Trudeau in his supposed coronation. It is unlikely to stop it unless something else comes to light but it most certainly creates a problem down the road for the Liberals who first must leap the NDP and then take on Harper and the Conservatives.

One thing I would be looking at if i was analyzing results for one of the parties would be the advance polling numbers to see how Locke performed since those numbers would not be influenced by Trudeau's reported comments. The advance polls predated both the reports of both the McGuinty (November 20) and Trudeau comments (November 22) and were held on:

Friday, November 16, 2012

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Monday, November 19, 2012

http://www.660news.c...e=350458&title=

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This is the fantastic part about this. It really doesn't matter. Alberta isn't a swing province. Judging how the country will go based on the ill feelings of a province that always votes the same way is an exercise in futility. Liberals aren't trying to get the Alberta vote and the rest of the country doesn't care how Alberta feels about it.

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This is the fantastic part about this. It really doesn't matter. Alberta isn't a swing province. Judging how the country will go based on the ill feelings of a province that always votes the same way is an exercise in futility. Liberals aren't trying to get the Alberta vote and the rest of the country doesn't care how Alberta feels about it.

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Anyway, the point of this thread ought to be:

Are there any high school teachers out there that, however “good-looking, charismatic, and great with ordinary people,” could ever dream of being in Trudeau’s position if they only had a different name? And that’s the maddening thing about all this. Everybody knows to what he owes his present standing. The problem is that this is now accepted as something perfectly natural and inevitable.

This may be apropos: People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say

http://news.yahoo.co...-185601411.html

The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments.

As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, "very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is,"

He and colleague Justin Kruger, formerly of Cornell and now of New York University, have demonstrated again and again that people are self-delusional when it comes to their own intellectual skills...

We're just as undiscerning about the skills of others as about ourselves. "To the extent that you are incompetent, you are a worse judge of incompetence in other people," Dunning said. In one study, the researchers asked students to grade quizzes that tested for grammar skill. "We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students." Essentially, they didn't recognize the correct answer even when they saw it...

The most incompetent among us serve as canaries in the coal mine signifying a larger quandary in the concept of democracy; truly ignorant people may be the worst judges of candidates and ideas, Dunning said, but we all suffer from a degree of blindness stemming from our own personal lack of expertise.

Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, recently implemented Dunning and Kruger's theories by computer-simulating a democratic election. In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own. When such an election was simulated, candidates whose leadership skills were only slightly better than average always won.

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Anyway, the point of this thread ought to be:

Are there any high school teachers out there that, however “good-looking, charismatic, and great with ordinary people,” could ever dream of being in Trudeau’s position if they only had a different name? And that’s the maddening thing about all this. Everybody knows to what he owes his present standing. The problem is that this is now accepted as something perfectly natural and inevitable.

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