As Harper and Layton Bask in the Glow of Their Egos, They Might Want to Read This

Over on Twitter Harper supporters are all encouraging Jack Layton to go for it. Attack those Liberal ridings. And Jack is buying into it. The Conbots love him. He's a star. He's doing their work for them and they're giggling in the corner.

What an idiot.

Spurred on by a survey suggesting he could win 40-50 seats (with no seat projections of course and by a firm I never heard of) Layton thinks he can be the Jane to Harper's Tarzan. Leader of the Opposition.

He might want to read this: Up, down, no change? Conflicting election polls confusing, headache-inducing

A new poll suggests the NDP is on a roll, surging to a second-place tie with the once mighty Liberal party. No, wait.

A new poll suggests the NDP is running slightly behind its fourth-place finish in the last election. Or maybe it's slightly ahead. Or maybe nothing's changed. Voters trying to make sense of the raft of contradictory daily public opinion polls during this federal election campaign are likely to wind up with a migraine.

So who among the plethora of pollsters should they believe? "Nobody," says veteran pollster Allan Gregg, an outspoken critic of his own industry and chairman of Harris-Decima, which conducts polls for The Canadian Press.

As far as Gregg is concerned, the election campaign has magnified problems with political polling: methodological issues that are skewing the results of both telephone and online surveys; commercial pressures that are prompting pollsters to over-hype their surveys; and an unholy alliance with journalists who routinely misconstrue data and ignore margins of error.

Well how about that? Layton is either in second or fourth place. His effort to be leader of the Opposition with Harper as King may not materialize after all. But the Conbots had a bit of sport anyway.

It's just frustrating that all of our efforts to get rid of this corrupt and anti-democratic government could go up in smoke because of ego. I want the NDP to do well but I don't want the left vote split to give Harper another mandate. It's that simple.