Coincidence...Or Not!

Wonder if this has anything to do with this?

Obligatory Budget Post

Individuals are pissed today. People with grown children are mad. Apprently everyone in the media and quite a few Bloggers fit these two demographics. I am not 100% happy with the budget, but I just want to point out that people in this demographic have been targeted for the last 25 years and its time for families to get a piece of the pie. In an ideal world we should be taxed as a household, rather than as an idividual, but until then we need to tackle at least some of the unfairness in the current tax system. If I read one more story about how the average Canadian - "ordinary, hard-working folk" - got nothing in the budget I'm gonna punch something. I guess people with kids aren't average Canadians. We are the extremist fringe or something.

Complain all you want about the increase in spending, I know I have, but don't say that the budget sucks because you didn't personally get any tax breaks this time around. If we did have a fair tax system, then cuts would benefit everyone equally, but until then, just enjoy the fact that you don't have to pay for diapers or school supplies.

Hull-Aylmer AGM Tomorrow

For those of you who live in the Riding of Hull-Aylmer (with special guest speaker Pierre Poilievre)...

Hull-Aylmer Conservative Party Riding Association
www.hull-aylmer.ca

March 20th, 2007

Notice of Annual General Meeting

The Annual General Meeting of the Hull-Aylmer Conservative Party Association will be held on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 7:30 PM in the Champion Room of the Château Cartier, 1171 Chemin Aylmer. Guests are welcome.

The meeting will feature a presentation to the members and friends by Pierre Poilievre, MP for Nepean-Carleton, Ontario.

For more information, please contact Caroline Beattie at (819) 682-6801 or at bob.cab@sympatico.ca

Thank you!

CTV Officially Stupid

I was just doing some reading and found this 'gem' of a story on the CTV website: Tory memo says election could start 'within a week'. This 'memo' is an 'internal letter' by 'party heavyweight' Irving Gerstein, chair of the Conservative Fund Canada, and "was obtained by The Canadian Press after it was erroneously sent to a former Conservative who left the party but still receives its correspondence."

Wow, this top secret letter by the highest echelons of power in the CPC sure do contradict the Prime Minister and make Stephen Harper look like an opportunistic power mad tyrant, telling everyone one thing but secretly planning another. Talk about Hidden agendas.

Of course that might be true IF THIS WASN'T A MONTHLY FUNDRAISING LETTER THAT'S BEEN SAYING PRETTY MUCH THE SAME THING FOR ABOUT 6 FREAKIN' MONTHS!!!! I think this is a new low for CTV, not for bias, just for sloppy reporting of a total non-story. I wonder what the Liberal and NDP monthly fund-raising emails look like? I bet there is a lot of talk about 'urgently needing money for an election call at anytime!!!' How in any modern country could this be considered national news?

Liberals In Trouble In Latest Poll

The latest Decima poll has the Liberals 6 points behind the Conservatives, 29% to 35%. The poll confirms that the trend is continuing with the Conservatives gaining support among women and city-dwellers.

The CP story describes the one silver lining for the Liberals: the surge in support in Quebec. The poll puts the Bloc at 31%, the Liberals at 29%, and the Conservatives at 17%. If this is the Liberal's silver lining, then they are in trouble. The Quebec numbers are likely getting a boost from the current Quebec provincial election where the Provincial Liberals are in the lead and the PQ is doing poorly. Couple this with the fact that Quebec has no Provincial Conservative party, PC or CPC, and thus are not experiencing the same boost and you can see that if the Liberal support in Quebec more closely resembles the pre-election CROP polls, the national numbers are skewed by as much as a negative 1-2% for the Libs and a positive 1-2% for the Cons and you can see that this poll confirms the 36% to 27% result decima produced last week.

It will be interesting to see what the polling results will be a month or so after the Quebec election and the Provincial Liberal boost their federal cousins are enjoying wears off. Although that poll might come on election night.

Are the National Polls Wrong On Quebec?

Decima has just released their latest poll and again I have found something quite interesting.

National Numbers:
Conservatives: 36%
Liberals: 27%
New Democrats: 13%
Greens: 12%

Ok, that's not what was interesting, I just wanted to gloat a little. The interesting bit is in the regional breakdown for Quebec:

Quebec Numbers:
Bloc: 35%
Liberals: 23%
Conservatives: 15%

Now compare that with the recent CROP polling numbers from Quebec (h/t Paul Wells)
Bloc: 36%
Liberals: 26%
Conservatives: 22%

And Leger's had the Conservatives at 24%

Now I know that Decima and CROP are within their margin of error, Decima's being quite high because of low number of participants for the regional numbers, but its a trend that I have seen quite a bit. The national polling numbers for the region of Quebec usually have the Conservatives with between 15-19% support and the provincial polling firms (CROP and Leger) put support for the Conservatives between 20-25% in Quebec. I'm not complaining, they might do this with the Liberal numbers as well if I had been as interested in them. It just seems that the national pollsters' numbers consistently don't jive with the Quebec pollsters'.

My theory is that Conservative support in Quebec is so concentrated that with a random sampling you can easily miss a lot of it when a small sample is taken. Hopefully this will equate to more seats but I guess time will tell.