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rubecube · 10-15-2015, 12:43 AM

Went to panel of UVic Poli Sci profs tonight and there were a couple interesting nuggets I took away.

- They had a prof in from Toronto whose expertise was in political psychology and has done a lot research on polling. Claims he taught most of the pollsters, wouldn't reveal which ones were the best. He said the biggest problem with today's polls is that the response rate is usually 1 in 10 or less, which completely screws with the idea of random sampling. Most of the pollsters have weighting mechanisms but these mechanisms can be incredibly flawed as well. It's unlikely that the national numbers are that far off, but trying to predict seat shares out of the national numbers or trying to get accurate numbers for ridings is pretty difficult. Also said that cancelling the long-form census has really hurt pollsters.

- The Canadian Constitution expert believes that the way Harper and the opposition parties have run their campaigns that this election is basically a referendum on Harper. He thinks that because of this, and because the opposition parties have explicitly stated throughout the campaign that they won't support a Harper minority, that it would be well within constitutional convention if they defeated the throne speech and attempted to form a government at the behest of the government. Thinks this is a very likely scenario if Harper wins a small plurality of seats

- They also talked about electoral reform and PR. One prof quipped that it's very hard for a party whose just won an election in one system to want to switch to another system. PR might only happen if the Liberals have a small plurality and need the NDP to back them on things. More likely that smaller changes are made to help with advance voting, registering high school kids so there's less wait times for first-time voters, better staffing for elections Canada.

- The topic of foreign policy came up and one of the profs brought up the fact that Canada has reduced it's foreign aid under Harper and has instead created framework wherein they give foreign aid money to private enterprises to go and set up various services in needy countries (I'm paraphrasing from memory here so forgive me if I'm being inaccurate), and that any new government is going to have a hard time dismantling this framework.

10-15-2015, 12:43 AM	#3518
rubecube Franchise Player Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Victoria Exp:	Went to panel of UVic Poli Sci profs tonight and there were a couple interesting nuggets I took away. - They had a prof in from Toronto whose expertise was in political psychology and has done a lot research on polling. Claims he taught most of the pollsters, wouldn't reveal which ones were the best. He said the biggest problem with today's polls is that the response rate is usually 1 in 10 or less, which completely screws with the idea of random sampling. Most of the pollsters have weighting mechanisms but these mechanisms can be incredibly flawed as well. It's unlikely that the national numbers are that far off, but trying to predict seat shares out of the national numbers or trying to get accurate numbers for ridings is pretty difficult. Also said that cancelling the long-form census has really hurt pollsters. - The Canadian Constitution expert believes that the way Harper and the opposition parties have run their campaigns that this election is basically a referendum on Harper. He thinks that because of this, and because the opposition parties have explicitly stated throughout the campaign that they won't support a Harper minority, that it would be well within constitutional convention if they defeated the throne speech and attempted to form a government at the behest of the government. Thinks this is a very likely scenario if Harper wins a small plurality of seats - They also talked about electoral reform and PR. One prof quipped that it's very hard for a party whose just won an election in one system to want to switch to another system. PR might only happen if the Liberals have a small plurality and need the NDP to back them on things. More likely that smaller changes are made to help with advance voting, registering high school kids so there's less wait times for first-time voters, better staffing for elections Canada. - The topic of foreign policy came up and one of the profs brought up the fact that Canada has reduced it's foreign aid under Harper and has instead created framework wherein they give foreign aid money to private enterprises to go and set up various services in needy countries (I'm paraphrasing from memory here so forgive me if I'm being inaccurate), and that any new government is going to have a hard time dismantling this framework.