Tories not as popular as media would have you believe

The Sage of Baltimore — H.L. Mencken — once famously noted that “For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong“. Mencken’s words seem as apt today as they were when he first penned them.

Peruse the Op/Eds of any of the major capitalist papers in Canada and you will find a common refrain:

From the Toronto Star:

Federal election: Who’s the man?

From the National Post:

Biggest Tory asset is Harper himself

Tories are well placed to win

The only problem with the deliciously simplistic media narrative, is that any attempt to paint the Tories as being well-positioned in terms of polls and popularity is simply not true. Unfortunately for the purveyors of the media narrative, the numbers don’t lie.

Having just recently completed a massive and long-overdue update of the Paulitics Provincial/Regional Polling Resource, it is possible to lay bare with the most accurate detail possible, the errors of any claims that the Tories are doing well.

In every province/region (that’s right “every”) the conservatives are either within the margin of error of their 2006 election showing or worse. Put another way, there is no part of the country, no corner of Canada, that has warmed to the Conservatives in over 2 years.

Provinces / Regions where the Tories are doing worse than 2006:

Statistically significant:

Ontario (down by 2.3% even despite a ridiculous poll released by Environics which put the Tories at a whopping 41% provincially. If we factor out that one poll, they’re down by 4.4%.)

Alberta (down by 6.4%)

Statistically insignificant:

British Columbia (down by 2.5%)

Atlantic Canada (down by 2.3%)

Prairies [MB & SK] (down by 2.0%)

For those of you keeping track at home, that’s not particularly good news for the Tories in parts of Canada representing 75% of the population.

But, don’t expect to read about that in the media anytime soon.

Detailed breakdowns from the Paulitics Provincial/Regional Polling Resource: