Mainstreet: Can We Please Stop Overreacting?

For My Sanity, I Beg

It wouldn’t have been nearly as fun if it was straightforward.

Rory McIlroy’s Sunday at the Masters - two double bogeys, 5 putts missed within 10 feet on the back nine, one of the genuinely worst wedge shots I’ve ever seen a pro hit on 13, two of the greatest shots I’ve ever seen into 15 and 17, the miss on 18 in regulation, the wedge into the playoff hole - is one of the most batshit things I’ve ever seen. It was incredible in the most literal sense of the word, which is to say if someone had pitched that final round, with all the context and history around it, as a movie, it’d have been rejected as over the top.

I’ll never forget where I was when he found water on 13, the sheer sense of disbelief and yet the complete sense that this was always inevitable at the same time. It was never going to be easy, and we wouldn’t have wanted it to be. In the moment, obviously, the missed putts and the bogeys hurt, but with the benefit of the result it’s clear that this means more for the nature of it.

I’m thinking about all of this because in so many ways it is the only thing I’ll ever think about again, but also because there is more discourse about Mainstreet’s polling. I must confess I find it all fucking nauseating, and the way that people treat it is genuinely evidence of mental distress, but it is objectively true that Mainstreet has swung left in the last few days. It’s also entirely unclear why it’s worth caring about.

There have been 12 national pollsters who have released in the last week. That means that every individual poll is worth, in my unweighted average, 8.5% of the average. It’s just not that big of a deal if one pollster moves a few points, which is what’s happened. If today sees Angus Reid move left and Pollara (if we get it), then sure, maybe this matters. But Nanos and Liaison’s Sunday polls didn’t show a rightward trend and Franky isn’t seeing it either according to his tweets so who fucking knows. But the idea that one poll should matter is laughable.

The freakout over Mainstreet this weekend is actual derangement that should be dealt with by psychiatric care. It is insane, and a truly horrific state of affairs that so many people immediately overreact to a handful of tweets, not even the data itself. It’s even concerning that so many people think that I am supposed to care, and that somehow flooding me with the news of the tweets of the Mainstreet CEO is an acceptable thing to do.

The problem for many on the left is they refuse to take yes for an answer. If the polls are good, they want reassurance they won’t ever go down. If they’re bad, they won’t accept any option other than it’s over. It’s a heads you win tails I lose approach that is incredibly counterproductive with election polling in general and tracking polls in specific. Because Mainstreet, Liaison, and Nanos release every day they end up getting hugely more attention than, say, Leger, but there’s no real reason why the trackers are better just because they’re more frequent. Tracking polling is a smart bet because we’re all addicts who need our fix, and because it keeps political reporters and junkies tweeting your name, but that doesn’t imbue your data with magical properties of correctness - nor, for what it’s worth, would anyone at any of those three firms claim it does.

The problem with all of the Mainstreet discourse isn’t the Conservatives crowing about it - you’ve had some bad weeks, enjoy this. If you want to think me losing my fucking mind is copium, sure, why not. It’s not, but I don’t expect them to view my words with good faith attached. But I do expect something more from Liberals and progressives who cannot be rational about this. The day the campaign started, the Liberals projected for 185 seats in my model. Now, after the Monday released Mainstreet but before Nanos and Liaison today, it’s 197. Ontario and BC fucking swung left today. And yet people are acting like the sky is falling. It’s not.

The answer to most questions in this and every other election is that it’s not meaningful until there’s a trend, and so far there’s not a fucking trend - except the trend of me wanting to go insane, which is here for the second straight election. What people want is certainty, which is why people like my work and Fournier’s and in the US Nate Silver’s and whoever else’s. Many people don’t want to have to form opinions and do the work themselves, they want in effect literary criticism - they want to get the gist of the work and a take at the same time. That’s not a diss - Lord knows there are things I take that approach to - but I listen to the smarter people.

If there is something to panic about we’ll know it first. I don’t mean to be an asshole - actually, fuck it, I do. I can guarantee you I’ve spent more time thinking about this election and how it could go wrong for Carney than the vast majority of people reading this, so trust me, if I could be spooked by 1 poll I’d have already checked myself into a mental institution by now. The fundamentals of this race that I’ve been banging on about for weeks now are not radically changed by Quito Maggi’s tweets, and frankly they’re not changed at all.

Carney survived Tout Le Monde En Parle Sunday, which is to say that there’s nothing that will be leading the JdM this morning from the interview. It was good enough at a time when we’re up 20% in Quebec. But somehow this poll - which by Mainstreet’s own model would be a Liberal majority - is going to lead to a chorus of terrible takes. And the worst part is this is far more knowably stupid than the terrible takes about Rory being a choker that were floating on Twitter before he won the Green Jacket.

We are two weeks out from the election. I have no idea how I am going to survive it, because there is not enough bourbon in Kentucky or Crown Royal on the shelves to get me through it if this nonsense continues. Mark Carney is the overwhelming favourite to win a majority government. I cannot find a path where Poilievre actually wins. Nothing has changed in a weekend, except I’ve got significantly less in my bottle, and that’s not because of Rory.