14 Comments
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CDN's avatar

I absolutely agree that Carney did very well. In my opinion (truly fluently bilingual, no accent in either language) his French is actually better than Poilievre's much vaunted "fluent" French. He has a more pronounced accent (meh) but uses better words, knows how to conjugate and generally gets the "genres" correctly (with a few errors). So, I really don't think the French debate will be an issue for Carney. Oh, and the CONTENT of what he said had more depth - he actually made a joke about his answers being too long. This was a good showing for him in Quebec.

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Dan's avatar

Nationwide these polls have a margin of error of +/- 3%, 19 out of 20. At a provincial level this margin can go up to +/- 10%, 19 out of 20. So nationwide, if Mainstreet has LPC and CPC both at 39, and another poll has them at 45 to 33, both polls fall in the same margin of error window. And given that we have 3-4 polls a day, we should see an outlier once every 5 to 7 days.

And regarding Carney’s French and his interview last night, I believe it was just fine. It is clear he is concentrating heavily when he speaks French. At the end of the interview he relaxed a bit and was comfortable enough to make a few jokes. I would hope that people in Quebec recognize that this is a person who takes French seriously and is making a effort.

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Brigitte's avatar

Carney did better than "survive" Tout le monde en parle IMO. His French is much better than at the Cinq Chefs interview. He was solid, relatable, better on Québec questions than before. I don't see how people who had decided to vote for him change their vote based on this interview, and maybe it even convinces a handful to go his way. Poilievre was also better than I expected, better than at the Cinq Chefs. Dropped the slogans. Had a weird bit towards the end though. But. It was terribly superficial. Carney was much deeper on policy.

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fmcmurrran@cogeco.ca's avatar

I agree. I was watching the audience members behind Carney. They were appropriately neutral at the start of his interview, probably recognizing that they were on camera, but most were notably more relaxed and smiling towards the end. I've found that francophone journalists normally don't give Carney any quarter when it comes to the speed of their questions, but the interviewer last night seemed to me to pose his questions to Carney very clearly and slightly more slowly, so any "gotcha" moments would be generated by the content of the questions, rather than the language issue. I thought that was very fair.

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The Rambler's avatar

You may want to seek professional help re the drinking. It’s just an election.

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Jenn's avatar

The only “poll” that I care about is the one where people actually vote. I hate other polls because it seems to convince eligible voters that they can be complacent and not bother to actually vote.

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Mohamed's avatar

I literally joked about today’s Mainstreet poll showing a liberal majority but a small conservative lead in the PV last night. That lead in the PV in today’s release is mostly because of insane support for them in two regions where they can’t win more than a few more seats.

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Talking Pie's avatar

Well said and all of it needed to be said.

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Talking Pie's avatar

Well said and all of this needed to be said. All of it.

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Elizabeth Hayden's avatar

My own liver thanks you for this.

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Scott Tribe's avatar

As to confirm this post is the correct view to be taking, Nanos has the Liberals up 7% this AM.

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Marc-André's avatar

One of the main issues is that polling science is widely misunderstood by the public, and the media often contributes to this confusion. In political polling especially, it's the overall trend that matters—not each individual poll. Outliers are completely normal and to be expected. If their results are not confirmed by subsequent polls, they are likely to be in the maring of error.

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Steven Lloyd's avatar

I am genuinely interested in looking at your model (turning votes into seat projections is hard so I am always interested in the models that do it), do you have it published somewhere or is it just an internal model?

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Evan Scrimshaw's avatar

I’m trying to figure out a way to best present the seat by seat projections on here, but I tweet the model toplines every day

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