Modeling Journey

A very interesting little poll by Nanos (June 6 2009) has a few nuggets of interesting information for us as our MPs debate whether they can attract support from the NDP and Bloc on a non-confidence motion, and defeat the Harper Tory government.

The overall results of the latest poll are positive for Liberals, but show we have not opened up a large enough gap over the Tories to ensure a minority government, much less a majority government.

The voters clearly reject the thought of an election over unemployment insurance, by large majorities. If Liberals ride this one-horse wagon into an election, we can expect voters to revolt and punish us by either staying at home (the Dion-syndrome), or voting for the Dippers or Tories. That much is clear.

But examine the graphs closely, and another two patterns become apparent.

The first is that neither the Liberals nor the Tories have shown since 2002 that either party can break out into majority territory. Note that the Tories have clawed their way into the plus 30% of total votes territory at the time of the inept 2004 Liberal election campaign, and since then have bounced around between roughly 30% of the vote and 38%. The graphs do not show much upward momentum for them beyond their high water mark of 38%.

The Liberal vote has shown a massive loss of 12% of total vote from Q202 to today. Since the 2004 election the Liberal vote has dipped below 30% twice, and reached a high today of 37%.

If you examined the two segments (2002 to 2004 and from 2004 to today, 2009), you could assume that the Liberals have much more growth potential than the Tories. However, this begs the question: why did the Tories increase their share in the polls over that period, and then stabilize in the 30% plus range? The Cat believes a lot has to do with two things – the consolidation of the Tory party as the sole party of the right, and the higher favourability of the Tory leader compared to the various Liberal leaders in recent years.

The second interesting inference one may draw form the trend lines in the Nanos graph is that the Tories beat the Liberals when it comes to campaigning during an election campaign. If you take the election results, and move back a calendar quarter or so along the graphs showing each party's support, you see that the Tories pick up about 4% of the vote, while the Liberals drop around 4% and the Dippers around 2%.

This seems to indicate that the Tory election machine is better than the NDP and LPC at fighting elections.

So, if this is true, how can the Liberals overcome the better Tory election machine in the next election (most likely to be held next year some time)?