NDP Internals And Knowing The End Is Coming

I Am *Mad*

What do you do when you know something is slipping away from you?

It’s a question I’m finding great fun to think about as I get further and further obsessed with Formula One, because of the battle of Mercedes and the way that some fans of Lewis Hamilton are losing their minds right now. And the answer is they’re losing their fucking minds.

After the fourth race of the F1 season in Imola, George Russell went from 11th to 4th in a shitshow of a race, while Lewis got stuck in 14th and couldn’t overtake anyone. After that race, the excuses were flying to defend Sir Lewis, blaming everything from the weather (not actually that bad) to the pit stop (definitely slow) to the car (which George drove to 4th, but whatever). The next race weekend, in Miami, George ended up in 15th after his first lap, and well, stayed there, right, given how hard it was to overtake and there’s just nothing to be done, right? Nope, he went from 15th to 5th, passing Lewis.

Last weekend, Hamilton got hit on his first lap and fell to 19th, before rising all the way to finish in 5th. The Hamilton fanclub are using this (incredibly impressive) drive to claim Mercedes is back, and Lewis’ lap times were better in some ways than Russell’s – but what wasn’t was the result, with George beating Lewis for the 5th straight race as George came 3rd. Hamilton’s fans are having a collective meltdown at the idea that Lewis might not be the best Mercedes driver these days, because they know Lewis isn’t the Lewis of old and they hate it.

At the end of the day, these people are watching the same races I am, and they’re seeing the results I am, and they’re resorting to increasingly ridiculous arguments about Lewis’ past performance to talk around the very basic fact that George Russell is kicking Lewis’ ass so far this season. You know what didn’t need a legion of very long winded explainers? Any of George’s races this year, the only driver to come Top 5 in all of them. You know why? Because fans of the guy who’s doing well don’t get their shit bent out of shape like someone who is losing.

Anyways, enter the Ontario NDP’s leaked memo about how #actually they’re surging in their private polling.

…

Let’s play a simple game about this “leak” (which isn’t actually a leak, just a planted story). Who got it, and why did the NDP give it to them? It’s Robert Benzie of the Star, the paper of choice of the Ontario left, and he was given this polling so that soft NDP-Liberal swing voters don’t do what, well, I’m urging them to do, which is consolidate behind Del Duca and the Liberals. This is so obvious to me as to not be worth explaining, but I’m a fucking psychopath and it is worth laying this out – the people talking about internal polling are the people who are losing.

If you’re winning, you quote the public polls or the aggregators, because then the work is independent, and independent work is better than private work for the simple reason it’s unbiased. Quoting PJ Fournier to urge strategic voting is a lot better than “our internal data shows we are ahead”. If you’re willing to show actual riding polling – like a handful of Liberals have in recent days – it’s at least somewhat compelling. But leaked memos? Nah, you’re fucked.

There is no NDP surge in any public data, and Benzie intimated that the party polling for the PCs and the Liberals don’t see it either – and I assume that Benzie has got his hands on more recent Kouvalis data from the PCs than what he released earlier this campaign – so we know it’s probably crap. There was a brief rally of a kind in Mainstreet around the weekend, which has now fucked off, but no, there’s nothing. The last poll to have the NDP at or above 25% before this brief Mainstreet rally was two IRG’s ago, and then the last IRG had them down from 26% to 23%. Leger has them at 24%, which is up from 23% in their last poll, but a one point surge ain’t a thing.

Yes, sometimes a party’s internal polling shows something that the public polls don’t show – but the thing is, we never know that in advance, and the vast majority of the time the public polls are better than the private polls. Also, when was the last time the NDP beat expectations anywhere? 2011 Federally is the answer, actually getting the sweep of Quebec, but the tradition of the NDP – and third parties generally, which is what the NDP is back to in vote share – is underperforming their polls. This trend exists in the US and the UK as well, and even is mostly true in Australia, as seen by the way that the chances of Pauline Hanson or Clive Palmer are always overhyped and then end up not being worth much.

The people talking about their internal polling are the people who are losing – which is also true of (I think it was Tuesday’s?) Star story with Liberal internal polling, although at least there they were admitting they were losing. This? This isn’t data, this is bullshit. It’s a message strategy because their other strategies didn’t work, and it should be viewed as such.

The NDP are clearly terrified of the exact scenario that would see the Ford government voted out – a late rush of progressives to the Liberals. It is both the only chance this province has to stop Ford, and it is the worst thing for the narrow self interest of the NDP as a party, and of course Horwath et al are choosing party over province. It’s a bitter pill to swallow from a party full of them, and it’s just yet another sign that this party that got my first ever Ontario vote is a disgraceful group of assholes.

The NDP’s internal polls are bullshit, they’re scared they’re about to get squeezed by the Liberals, and they’re lying to stop a more united progressive movement.

For that, fuck you forever.