Sunday, January 01, 2006

The upside reveals itself

Decima Research releases a poll on the numbers underlying the NDP's current support. And the party has plenty more national support than conventional wisdom seems to dictate:
The online survey of 6,380 voters, released Sunday, suggests that half of those surveyed would like to see more New Democrats in the House of Commons.

But only about one-third (note: actually 35%) would favour that if voting NDP might split the ballot and ultimately mean a Conservative victory, says the survey, considered accurate to within 1.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Consider the strategic voting question this way: what would the comparable numbers be for the other federal parties? Do any partisan Dippers or Cons (Buzz Hargrove aside) want to see the Libs increase their numbers? Does anybody voting for the NDP or the Libs think that increased Con numbers would be a positive outcome? And if the answer to both of the above is "no", what does that say about the ability of the Libs and Cons to appeal to anything but the most partisan of Canadians?

In contrast, 50% of Canadians want to see the NDP increase its numbers, even as 76% (based on the latest Decima numbers) are now counted expressing a voting preference for the Libs, Cons or Bloc. Or to cut those numbers another way, over a third of all voters already marked in the column of the Libs, Cons or Bloc also want to see an NDP boost as part of the election result. And that number only goes up for every undecided voter who doesn't also favour an NDP boost. The NDP thus appears to have far more cross-party appeal than any of the other parties to lay claim to.

Note also the importance of the 50% number in the context of what's being pitched as a referendum election. While the Libs want to highlight the proportion of votes in Quebec alone, the survey shows that the NDP is effectively the only federal party which actually appeals to a majority of Canadian voters in any way. Surely that must mean that the NDP can be a far better symbol for national unity than any other party in the race.

So what do the above numbers mean within the election itself? Consider what would happen if half of the voters who want to see the NDP increase its seat totals choose to place their vote with the party. (This would require some votes now counted in other parties ending up with the NDP - but given the NDP's apparent success with swing voters, that shouldn't be too implausible.)

With 25% of the vote nationally (which, it should be pointed out, is still 8% lower than the number of voters who want increased NDP representation even if the effect would be a Con victory), the NDP would be certain to gain a bundle of seats - likely enough to prevent either the Cons or Libs from being anywhere close to majority territory. There would be no risk of reversal of same-sex marriage thanks to the additional clout held by the one federal party truly dedicated to same-sex rights; nor would there be any risk of an aggressive right-wing economic agenda short of a Lib-Con coalition to that effect. And what's best, the NDP's added seat count would place it in position to take a serious run at government just one more Parliament down the road - meaning that the "lesser of two evils" argument could be put to rest for good.

The only problem is that Canadians aren't hearing the entire message: even the CP article in question starts off from the downside premise (that enough Con strength could hurt NDP support) rather than the upside which seems to be the far more new and significant finding from the poll. And the current media spin is exactly the type of message that could easily drive people away from their easily-achievable best case toward the worst-case scenario.

The challenge for the NDP now is to change that perception in both the media and the public, such that the will of the 50% of Canadians who agree on more NDP representation won't be ignored through the rest of the campaign. But there are certainly worse positions than to have to show the Canadian public that it should believe its own collective opinion as to where the NDP belongs after the election.

(Edit: cleaned up wording.)

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