Sunday, August 22, 2010

Kory Teneycke, Sun Media and the Numbers Game

Now personally the only numbers game I want to play with Harper's former communications chief, is what number of dollars he's going to repay to Canadian taxpayers, seeing as how we were billed for his job interview for Fox News North.

Ari Fleischer's salary, travel expenses, extra security so they could move around without an itinerary. Lunch bill for meeting with Rupert Murdoch and the cream of right-wing American journalists.

Maybe I'll send him a bill.

But his latest playing around with numbers came in the form of a Sun Media column that was as much trash as downright fabrication.

The suggestion was that Michael Ignatieff's summer tour was a flop because Harper just had a huge surge in the polls. Confusing? It should be.
According to the poll, done exclusively for QMI Agency, if an election were held today 37% of Canadians would vote for the Conservatives, 28% would vote Liberal, 16% would vote NDP, with the Bloc Quebecois and Greens getting 9% and 8% respectively. The online survey of 1,500 Canadians over the age of 18 was conducted between Aug. 2 and Aug. 4 and is accurate to ±2.5%.

As Impolitical points out:
So clearly it's not at all accurate to say that if an election were held today those would be the results. That's just plain misleading to the viewing public and it shouldn't be written that way. It should have read, if an election were held 18-20 days ago, these would have been the results. It also shouldn't be referenced as a "new Leger marketing poll." A few weeks does not make it "new." With the frequency of polls these days, even in a summer lull period, and the speed of events in a 24/7 news cycle, a few weeks can be like ancient history. As for the numbers and the substance of the report, I'm sure others will have something to say about the comparability to some other polls.

So basically we were charged for the job interview, and for our money, we are now being lied to. Good investment.

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