I think that in Ireland polls are not allowed within a couple of days of the election. The belief being that they influence voters to stay at home, (if their party is polled as a no hoper). I dont remember all the reasons but it might be worth asking. It seems that anything goes here. The thing that really bothered me was Spector and letters to the editor that were plainly in error getting headline status.
Now, that is propaganda in the musolinni and goebels tradition.
Would the tyee like to launch the Goebells awards?
Gordon should get one for the 60% rule. When is a referendum not a referendum?
Polsters have rules for conducting polls, perhaps you should find a rulebook and publisn it online. The owners and fundraisers and connections with polsters would also be interesting reading.
Brian

Today is the first day in which this G&M poll can be judged. How accurate was it?

Turns out not very. It does seem quite a good strong endorsement of the Tyee's assertion that the poll was intended to affect the outcome rather than predict it.

Bottom line - their poll was out by eight points. If the G&M isn't biased, they're just plain sloppy.

The Globe and Mail is definitely out of touch with British Columbia.

"The Strategic Counsel’s Alan Gregg once again did not return calls and an e-mail from The Tyee"

No kidding. I had a lot of respect for Alan Gregg. Note tense.

A better question: Given that the poll was so far off, and has had so much negative press (it is just a poll btw), will the Globe and CTV use the services of The Strategic Council again? I wouldn't.

They did this morning ... polling Ontario residents on the chances of Conservatives beating the Liberals if the government falls to nonconfidence.

If I were Greenspon or MacKenzie, I would be rethinking where I placed my confidence when it comes to polls.

I think they're out of touch with BC. And this is nothing like the Albertan 'western alienation' B.S. BC is a complicated place, our rednecks are different; and pollsters have to be very sophisticated and invest quite a bit of energy to claim to have a potentially accurate poll. Unless they do that; they should not be putting them on the front page.

Hey! If the Globe and Mail was right then the NDP made a TREMENDOUS comeback in only one week!

From a 13 point margin to a 5 point margin!

Probably the greatest comeback in a short peiod of time in ALL political history!

Way to go NDP!

Did we ever get to see a copy of the poll questions?

The doctored poll was a valiant effort by Alan Gregg to give the Libs an extra boost, but what was his strategy? Did he think demoralized NDP campaigners and voters would give up and stay home? Send Green voters, who were going to vote NDP strategically, back to the Greens?
Off Topic: The strangest op/ed I've ever seen written by Gregg appeared, I think,in the N. Post.It concerned the sponsorship scandal. This was many months back. Gregg argued that peoples' anger over it was way out of proportion.If public money was stolen, it was in the mere millions. Since the Federal budget is in the multi-$Billions, a few missing millions were trivial, nothing to get upset about! His piece did not even mention the principles, ethics, or laws violated! Did he think those were trivial too?
It makes me wonder what ethical skeletons he may have in his own closet from his days when he was tight with Mulroney, and worked for the Conservatives.

Regardless if there is a doctored poll, just a week or so ago I saw an interview that all polling companies don't talk about is that the respond rate(those who answer polls) is getting
to about 1 in 5.
My associate answered a poll a week ago and stated she would never answer another again.
I personally never answer them.
i will wait until they pay me as they do in other jurisdictions.

the Tyee should push this story to the Canwest Backroom boys to get them to publically anounce that someone should "held accountable" for decieving the public. Maybe phone up Mr. CTV, CKNW and invite his comment on the Tyee story. The great thing about the Tyee is that they are not spellbound into thinking that a headline was "objectively". When pundits start criticizing their editorial staff, and their news rooms, and each other,then they will be worth reading. Start the debate Tyee. Challenge Bill and Raif to a debate on fish farms and watch the Liberal ideology flow. Let David Suzuki and Vaun P. have a debate about "growth". Let the Pundit leave sophistry and critique behind, and lay bare nothing but their intelligence, or lack there of.

Allan R. Gregg should be taken with large grains of salt. He's steeped in the Conservative, business-is-right school. He has heaps of experience in polling and advising pols but, IMO, has never strays far from the lessons he learned at University of Alberta where he got his M.A. in political science (ha ha).

Measure his actual business acumen (and integrity) by checking out his stint as CEO of Song Corporation.

But he has given me an idea. New Democrats cannot afford the time and expense of launching their own daily newspaper which help so much to win elections.

So why don't they establish a polling company? Cheaper by far.

Pollster Allan Gregg's dream of an artist-friendly Canadian music giant, [Song Corporation]declared bankruptcy in May 2001. And now, with about $21-million down the chute, more than 500 creditors are in line to try recovering even a portion of the $8.2-million they're owed.

The Song catalogue included rights to works performed, written or co-written by Murray McLauchlan, Tom Cochrane, kd lang, Amanda Marshall, Junkhouse, Loverboy and The Guess Who. It also held Canadian publishing rights for some of the world's biggest pop stars ... all locked up in that crash.

Anyone see the latest Globe editorial, which tells us all those people in BC who were fired from their jobs, cut off welfare or medical benefits or were told they were second class citizens whose rights would be thrown to the red-necks for approval, should thank Gordo.

Yes the editorial says Gordo did just what he had to do, beat the living shit out of anyone or anything that doesn't fall in line during the first term in office so when he eases off a bit it will naturally feel like he's being kind.

Remember, this is the guy who offered his cabinet ministers a 10 percent bonus if they could be ruthless enough to get the job done in one term.

One gets the impression the Globe could justify quite a few of the world's atrocities as long as Bay Street keeps ripping investors off and someone is willing to advertize another super investment plan.

One certainly expects more from the Globe & Mail. The Globe's efforts at covering the BC election basicly mirrored Can West's coverage in substance and slant.

Readers may be interested to know that earlier this week Strategic Council was polling on behalf of the big 5 banks and their efforts to allow sales of their insurance products in bank branches.

The poll was totally biased and the first dozen or more questions led the respondent to their desired result of responding in the affirmative to the final questions granting banks permission to sell their insurance products in their branches and to refer branch clients to their insurance brokers.

In responding, I informed the tele-poller that the poll was not legitimate and was designed to lead to a conclusion their client could use before the regulators and the House and Senate Banking Committees to relax the restrictions imposed when the Banks were allowed to enter the insurance business several years ago.

I suggest the Globe reconsider their choice of pollsters or they will just be blowing money out the window as the results will be an invalid as they were in BC and will contribute to the Globe being considered as valid a news source as Can West.

Don Scott, you make a good point about slanted polling.

What I find amazing in these post Enron days is the continuing myth that polsters are any different from other profit seeking businesses in what, at one time, would have been called "a shady business."

I don't mean to belittle all polster, but the people who hire them are seeking answers and as often as not they want the answers to fit their needs.

When you throw politics and experienced backroom political activists into the mix chances are specific interests or position will manage to slip though in the results.

We're finally catching on that too many accountants worked by simply rubber stamping financial reports and adding vague caveats that suggest the reports appear to comply with standard accounting practices.

There are laws in place to catch accountants who don't follow the rules and they can carry career-altering penalties, but polsters suffer only when their customers dislike the results.

Me thinks the Globe and Mail doth protest too much.

One important point was proven by the publication of that flawed poll devised by Allan Gregg's Strategic Counsel. It is this:

Letters-to-the-Editor do make a difference.

While the Globe and Mail still can't quite believe that the Oligarchy can be wrong [or disobeyed], they have softened their remarks about B.C., since the barrage of protest following that poll. Plus their tainted editorial of adoration for "Mr" Campbell just before the B.C. Election. The Globe richly deserved the pasting from British Columbians that followed.

I'd suggest that subscribers don't cancel their subscriptions ... but study what the Globe is saying. Then, set the goal of educating the Globe about British Columbia.

I'd hope that people keep their letters aimed squarely at the Globe's editors who, I do believe, can be educated about the fabled land just beyond the Rocky Mountains.

It also would help them overcome their self-inflicted handicap of having hired re-tread CanWesters for their sorry B.C. edition. Tacking us onto the Sport Section should be part of that backlash.

That's my opinion. With about 1,000 letters a week, a big daily obviously can't publish all our letters. But they'll note the topics, add up the numbers, and week by week they'll see that the totals point to (a) what's important in B.C., and (b) how keenly we feel about that topic.

For the voting, caring public, I figure letter-writing is going to be serious work over the next 4 years. And that's a good thing, eh?

"We take the matter seriously,'' Fast Eddie said this morning in the latest G&M update on that embarrassing little incident.

But, and I must stress, BUT it appears the Tyee has been banished to someplace where commentators and "partisans attack our credibility."

Not in the Tyee, not in a tree, not even a vague reference to some obscure website.

Maybe Eddie's waiting for an apology or until the Strategic Counsel, which designed and conducted the poll, reports back on its own self re-examination of its questioning.

Yup, you always get to the bottom of things when you re-examine our own mess.

Worry not though, 'cause Eddie suspects it may have been us cagey buggers who did in their polling.

Supposedly after reading the truth in the Globe poll three days before the election a great many of us said, we'll show you and then promptly went out and voted for someone other than who we wanted in an effort to prove the Globe wrong.

Hey, I'm not making this up. I am interpretting what Eddie says in his Page 2 perch in the G&M today.

If that is true, and why would we doubt it, then it appears Liberal supporters are dumber than we've given them credit for.

You see the Globe poll showed the grits having a 13 percent lead, yet when the vote was held that lead had been halved, meaning, if you follow Eddie's logic, a whole pack of Liberal votes went NDP, Green, Marijuana, Natural Sex or spoiled ballot parties.

Anyway the Globe has narrowed the polling issue down to either the paper being the victim of volatility or a "rogue" of some kind.

I wonder if the Tyee will get a credit should that "re-examination" prove the concerns expressed here were valid. Hey, maybe it'll get an apology and a thank you in the Globe.

The Globe's editorial after the election talked of "big unions and other special interest groups". Yes those selfish nurses, teachers and bus drivers. How come the Fraser Institute and the Chamber of Commerce are never cosidered "special interest groups"?

The problem with the NDP is they fail to define themselves and others. They have allowed others to brand them "tax and spend" when it is the right wing which has ran up the debt. They shrunk from the fast ferries when they should have played up the consideral benefits.

The fact that the NDP does so well despite the hatred from the mainstream media must scare the willies out of the establishment.

Is there doubt in anyone's mind that the Strategic Council/Globe and Mail "survey" was rigged to influence the responders to favour the Liberals?

Look at their question--asked before they asked for which party the responder would vote--"Is this election about trust or about good government?"

It demolishes any concern about broken promises, etc. The dichotomy it sets up is that if you care about broken promises, you don't care about good government.

Underlying it is the clear meaning that you can trust Carole James, but so what? Only Gordo can provide good government, so you have to put up with loss of trust in favour of the bigger issue of good government.

And the G&M says it was a fact-finding survey?

Sheesh.