I used to work for a small polling company back in 2000-2005.
When I was there this is how polling worked.
The company would get hired to poll customers or voters relevant to a specific question,product service or idea.
A script would be written,approved by stakeholders and loaded into a computer so that those trained in a call center environment would phone and ask a question.
They did not browbeat people into answering but rather were instructed to be overly nice as the competition for the consumers time was unbelievable.( It’s worse now even with do not call lists)
The caller would enter the data into the computer and from there a report was generated and sent out for statistical analysis.
The person doing the analysis was an experienced statistician who had analyzed data for a number of years for a number of different polls.
From there reports were present to clients and released to the news.
Lately we have seen polling done on the BC political climate with the pollsters telling us what people think today. The most obvious question they would have asked would have been” If an election were held today,who would you vote for?”
The most recent result on a poll done by Angus Reid showed us that 50% of the people would vote BCNDP if an election were held now.
The current BC Liberal government polled at 23%.
This means that as of today, Christy Clark and the BC Liberal Government are not connecting with 77% of the electorate.
It was reported that when asked about this, Premier Clark blasted the polling company.
I can tell you from experience that it is hardly the polling company’s fault that Ms Clark and her government is not connecting with the electorate.
Had she come out and accepted the blame ( or at least some of it) she would have taken leadership of the situation.
She didn’t and once again missed a glorious opportunity to connect with the people she needs.
I recall years ago another politician missed a chance to do the same thing.
His name was Stockwell Day. He made a grave error in a speech in Niagara Falls.
You may recall he said Canadian Jobs were flowing south like the Niagara River. When it was pointed out to him that the river actually flowed north,he lashed out and said he would get the person who wrote the speech with the wrong facts.
As you know by now he went on to lose the election because of this and other gaffes. Had he taken leadership of that,the result might have been different.
My point is that through lashing out, politicians like Day and most likely Clark lose because they don’t know how to lead.
In Clark’s case she has 12 month’s to learn.
Do you think she will? ( A clue might be that Stockwell Day is one of her mentors)
What are your thoughts?