I'm Inclined To Call BullShit!

Tory support plummets in Ontario: poll

From Canada.com
"An Ipsos-Reid survey conducted for CanWest News Service over the weekend suggests the Liberals are at 47 per cent support in Ontario- up six points from a week ago - and the Conservatives are down six points from the same period, at 28 per cent."

I'm inclined to call bullshit because Ipsos is asking some very loaded questions...

An e-mail tip from a friend: Ipsos Reid Election Panel - On-line Polling

Last nites poll (Dec. 12) was in two parts, the first of which contained the following questions:

1. How would you rate the performance of each of the leaders so far in the campaign?
(Very Good, Good, Poor, Very Poor)

• Paul Martin, leader of the Liberal Party
• Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP)
• Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party
• Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Quebecois

2. As you may know, the high price of oil means that Alberta's provincial government is expected to have record budget surpluses. In your opinion, should Alberta...

• Keep this extra money to spend on provincial priorities
• Share this extra money with the rest of Canada
  

3. Do you think Alberta's oil wealth presents a threat to Canada's federal system?

• Yes
• No

4. In your opinion, is the federal government's overall impact on your province...

• Positive,
• Negative,
• Neutral

[My source wasn't able to copy the questions from the second half of the survey as it is aparently time sensitive and he was writing things out longhand. Going to show him how to get screen captures for the next one.]

I don't know where you folks stand but this, in my mind, is clearly push-polling. It's designed to do two things:

• Remind eastern respondants that Alberta is the nation's wealthiest province and that it's tired of sending all of it's wealth east, which in turn, generates a negative impression with said eastern respondants (because they like all that "free" money) and,
• ties Stephen Harper to Alberta thus transfering that negative impression to him and the CPC. (This was aparently the case with the second half of the questioning - need to get copies to verify)

Here's a different way of looking at it:

• Westerner = Bad (because AB want's to hoard their wealth and change health care and all that other bad stuff)
• Stephen Harper = Westerner (because he's from AB)
• Stephen Harper = Bad (because that's how transitive properties work)

What I don't understand is how the pollsters are able to get away with doing this sort of thing when they're being so blatently obvious about it.

As a side note, I showed my wife some of the CBC's (not so subtle) Liberal bias yesterday and this post this morning. She's now an avowed Alberta Seperatist.