Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowperson
In this particular case, yes, it appeared to be necessary. 
I'll take the rest to mean you've belatedly agreed with my point.
Cowperson |
Your point? I don't even remember what that was. Except that on the basis of ONE poll (and a highly methodologically flawed one) you claim that if the market crash had not taken place, Harper
would have won a majority. Your conclusion is based on a
single poll where he netted
less than 45% of decided voters--one that is contradicted by DOZENS of polls in the same date range which show him at around 38%--which is EXACTLY WHERE HE ENDED UP!!!! You tell me which explanation for these data makes more sense: one of these polls is right and ALL the others are wrong--or the single poll published in the National Post is an outlier. Or, alternately (and this seems to be the scenario that you prefer) that 6% of voters temporarily thought they might vote for Harper
and then changed their minds when the economy tanked, preferring to put the economy in the hands of a clearly incompetent Stephane Dion?!? Forgive me for finding either scenario laughable.
But it's all rather stupid, don't you think? Look, Harper might also have won a majority of pigs flew and hell froze over. Neither of those things happened. The election wasn't held in September, and if you really think that Harper lost his hypothetical majority because he couldn't convince Canadians that he was a better steward of the economy than
Stephane freaking Dion, then you have far less confidence in him than I do.
What puzzles me is why this seems so personal to you. You made the common and understandable error of looking only at the top line numbers of a single poll and drawing a conclusion from them that isn't supported by the rest of the data. People do that all the time--especially mainstream media outlets like Newspapers. I wasn't attacking YOU--I was pointing out that Harper's position was pretty weak prior to the collapse, and roughly the same afterward. I'm not making that up--why would I?
It's what the numbers say.
Dion, on the other hand, plummetted in the polls in mid-September. I notice you didn't address that tiny little problem with your argument... but I suppose since for some reason you actually care this much about a hypothetical scenario in which the election was held on a different day than it actually was, I shouldn't be shocked.
And no, being rude and childish is NEVER necessary--at least that's not how I was raised. I know this is a message board, but come on. And I'm very disappointed in those sort of antics coming from you of all people. There are many posters that I expect that sort of idiocy from--but your track record indicates that most of the time you don't behave that way.