We're often told that the first casualty of war is truth.

And since elections are a war of sorts (except the weapons are ideas instead of bombs), I was not surprised to see a full-page ad that appeared to be the front page of the Waterloo Chronicle last week with bizarre "information."

I used those quotation marks on purpose, since what's on there can only really be described as "disinformation.

"Only Mulcair can beat Harper" says the headline, referring to Canada's Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. This quote is attributed to Jeremy Bird, who is described as "Obama Field Director."

And what, you might well ask, is an Obama staffer doing up here, concerning himself with the Canadian political scene? Doesn't he have Republicans to embarrass back home?

Further research reveals that Bird was Obama's national field director in 2012, helping to identify and motivate voters at the grassroots level in the U.S. He did indeed make that prediction. But how odd for the New Democratic Party to quote someone with an American background on Canadian issues. Couldn't they have found a Canadian to say it?

Even more problematic, though, is the graph that's on the front page. "NDP has the momentum!" says the headline. The bar graph shows the NDP ahead of the Liberals by 10 points.

That graph, though, isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

It compares two different kinds of elections as if they were apples and apples. The 2014 provincial election results, when popular NDP incumbent Catherine Fife won, is contrasted with the previous 2011 federal race, which the Conservatives won.

This is a misleading comparison. Canadians don't necessarily vote the same way federally as they do provincially.

Presumably the New Democrats were looking for a way to show that they are Waterloo riding's best chance to beat Harper.

Unfortunately for them, there is a lot of evidence, which is much more solid than this ad, that suggests the opposite.

The widely respected websites of threehundredeight.com and the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy (lispop.ca) have each prepared seat projections based on national polling. Both websites project the riding is leaning to the Liberals.

In addition, an Environics poll in the riding, done in September for an anti-Conservative strategic voting group called Vote Together, showed the Liberals ahead of all the other candidates, although the New Democrats were on the upswing.

It just goes to show how fierce the struggle is in these volatile "swing" ridings.

New Democratic Party candidate Diane Freeman says she insisted that the ad be "transparent" by including the sources of information that were used to create the graph.

Her campaign team in Waterloo and at party headquarters in Ottawa prepared the ad and "I leaned on them to show all the information," she said.

Freeman said she doesn't "put any stock in the polls" and doesn't think people distinguish between the federal and the provincial elections. "There is just one NDP vote," she said.

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This is a difficult riding in which to make a decision.

As individuals, each of the three major candidates are a credit to their party. Freeman is an engineer with experience on Waterloo council. Liberal Bardish Chagger has incredible contacts in the community and ran the constituency office of former Liberal MP Andrew Telegdi. Conservative Peter Braid is a genuinely decent person; he's well-spoken, accessible, and politically progressive.

The decision of which candidate to choose is hard enough without the additional irritant of funky statistics coming to your door, masquerading as a newspaper.