The cognoscenti not running for cover immediately began trotting out their theories to explain away these numbers. Principal among these was “the Bradley effect” – a notion first broached in 1982 when Tom Bradley, a former black Los Angeles Mayor, was given a nine to 22 point over lead in the run-up to the California Governor’s race, only to end up losing to (white) Republican George Deukmejian. The theory held that voters, responding to telephone surveys, offered a “politically correct” answer that they were going to vote for an African American candidate when in fact, that was not their intention at all.

Twenty-five years ago this theory was simply that – an unknowable and improvable supposition. Today, as pollsters begin to explore the differences between results obtained by telephone surveys, compared to those administered over the internet, we have empirical evidence to suggest that telephone research may systematically overstate “socially desirable” outcomes. Whether the question explores church attendance, extra-marital affairs, smoking pot or virtually any other behaviour or belief that carries a social stigma, these comparison have shown that voters contacted by telephone consistently offer a more socially desirable response than those answering the same questions (without the intermediary of another person being party to their views), via the Internet.

The confluence of American attitudes towards race and the social desirability bias of telephone interviewing therefore could account for some of the difference between the published polls and the actual results. But the very fact that this social interaction bias is inherent in telephone interviewing, means that these same polls cannot give us a precise measure of this effect, before election day.

Less frequently offered as an explanation for these “bad polls” is the very nature of small-state, US primary contests themselves. Notwithstanding headlines declaring record-breaking turnout, only about 250,000 voters cast their ballot in the Democratic race in New Hampshire – equal to what we might expect of a mayoralty contest in a mid-size Canadian City. Unlike the race for mayor — say in Ottawa — however, voters in New Hampshire are registered and their political affiliation is known, in advance, by the respective campaign organizations. Also, unlike municipal politics in Canada, Democratic candidates in the Granite State spent tens of millions – on mere, hundreds of thousands of voters – to identify and make direct contact with those individuals known to be most likely to support their candidates.

While we may try, polling cannot predict who will actually turnout and vote and who will not. In other words, voters might tell us they are going to go to the polls but if their babysitter doesn’t show up or if there is a massive snow storm or even if their favourite television program is on, the pollster has no ability to factor these circumstances into their findings.

Normally we don’t worry much about this and tend to ignore our own admonishments about the discipline’s limits when it comes to predicting turnout rates. And normally we can get away with this because, in general elections, no one Party’s supporters are more or less likely to turn out than supporters of the other Parties. In small population, big money campaigns however, where the spending and organization of one candidate can be superior to the other’s, differences – undetectable by the polls — in turnout can effect the actual vote result and make the polls look like they are in error.

Race and the idiosyncrasies of small state US primaries aside, the additional fact remains that, while rooted in scientific random probability theory, polling is, by definition, imprecise (ergo, the margin of error) and unable to replicate the very thing it purports to measure. Typically, pollsters will ask “how would you vote for if the election was held tomorrow” or “which candidate are you most likely to support in the election to be held on Date X”?

As if it needs to be said, these are hypothetical questions that are not asked to voters as they stand over their ballot, preparing to cast their vote. Yet we know (from post-election research conducted in Canada, the US and virtually every other jurisdiction in the Western world) that between 8 and 13 percent of voters claim this is exactly where and when they made up their minds. In fact, exit polling conducted by the New York Times when New Hampshire voters leaving the polling stations showed that among those who claimed to have made up their minds “in the last week”, Obama had a 15 point lead, but among those who decided “today”, Clinton was ahead by three percent. Clearly there was a significant shift towards the New York Senator at the last moment that went undetected by the polls conducted in the days – and even the day – before the actual vote.

What went on in those voter’s minds as they stood in the ballot box? Were they thinking about Hillary’s emotional outburst in a restaurant the day before? Were they balancing the merits and demerits of race versus gender politics? Or were they thinking about their favourite television program that was going to be over if they didn’t hurry up and make up their mind?

Over my career, I have conducted surveys in over 50 election campaigns in three continents and I have never – and as far as I know, nor has anyone else – conducted surveys while voters were in the polling booth. So the honest answer to the question of what goes through the minds of voters in this private moment is that we do not have a clue….and in this regard, I am 100% confident of the pollster’s inability to absolutely predict election outcomes, 20 times out of 20, with zero margin of error.

New Hampshire should remind us all of us in the prognostication business that we are not god-like clairvoyants, but in the words of The Godfather of modern-day polling, George Gallup, merely taking a “snaphot in a particular point in time”.

It was called a “miracle year;” but in many ways, these world-altering feats did not happen miraculously, but as part of a pattern that has been repeated throughout modern history.
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A cynic - or a student of public opinion - might have predicted that Canada’s Afghanistan mission was politically doomed from the start.

Since Lester Pearson was awarded the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize, Canadians have had a 50-year love affair with their self-image as “honest brokers,” “a middle power,” and (the most prized and emotionally charged of all) “peacekeepers.” Launching a combat mission in a country that posed neither a tangible threat nor opportunity for Canada and Canadians simply did not resonate with that self-image - indeed, the very act of fighting affronts our notion of Canada as “the peaceable kingdom.”
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Allan Gregg returns to CBC News At Issue Panel from openflows on Vimeo

As the title suggests, journalist turned academic Andrew Cohen sees Canadians as “unfinished,” a species whose insularity and self-satisfaction have prevented us from achieving our full national potential.

So that we can “become a more confident, more accomplished people,” he offers a plan. To become “future Canadians,” we need to rediscover our past by establishing national standards for teaching history and celebrating historic occasions. A more “mature” relationship with the United States, in which we would no longer fear absorption but harness our mutual interests to our mutual benefit is also prescribed. Our sense of civic-mindedness and creed could be strengthened by placing a higher value on citizenship: making it harder to come by, setting more rigorous standards for its attainment and doing more to integrate new Canadians into our host culture.

Some of Cohen’s medicine would be easy for Canadians to swallow and relatively simple for inspired governments to implement: Honour past and present achievement and achievers; create a culture (and presumably a tax regime) that encourages charity; restore historic buildings, monuments and sites.

Others might be greeted with more controversy and cultural resistance: Become more accepting of both the foibles and importance of our politicians; call on all taxpayers to invest in the national capital region; launch a 21st-century project of national enterprise to spark the collective imagination, as did the building of the railway.

If guiding us to be a better people and a more enriched nation was Cohen’s sole purpose – and if he were prepared to take the time and space to catalogue how we might reach this destination – this would be a laudable and worthy journey. For example, instituting a national historical curriculum would be a worthwhile and appealing initiative, though education is squarely in provincial jurisdiction.

In the same way, the evidence of increasing isolation from the mainstream among Canada’s foreign-born is alarming, and any bold, new thoughts on how to reverse this trend would certainly get my attention.

Sadly, though, Cohen has chosen not to turn his keen mind to these challenges; indeed, re-imagining “the future Canadian,” and offering how we might get there, warrants a scant 19 pages. He dedicates the vast majority of his analysis to tilting at the windmills of Canadian myths and lecturing us about “the people we are.”
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My generation associated government with grand initiatives of national enterprise — adopting Medicare, introducing pension and income security reform, repatriating the constitution and enshrining a Charter of Rights and Freedoms or debating the possibilities of guaranteed annual income or using tri-partism to vitalize democracy.

I realized that her generation had no such touchstones and therefore no frame of reference to consider government as our central agent of societal advancement. And they had no such frame of reference not because they were disinterested, anomic slackers, but because there weren’t any.

Right there and then, it dawned on me that public cynicism towards politics and politicians may actually be rational.…that the population has been persuaded that government is bad because for a generation we have been receiving bad government. That by lowering their performance to correspond to the public’s cynical expectations, we have offered ample and concrete evidence that governments are unable (or, as I will argue later, unwilling) to be productive agents of the public good.

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For most people, increasing productivity involves little more than working harder or personal sacrifice. The perceived beneficiary to increased productivity is business, and therefore it hardly seems like a fair bargain or worthy of pursuit. Even those in government who might recognize that dealing with productivity is good policy are loath to advance the topic with any vigour.

I have moderated Microsoft Canada’s CAN>WIN conference on this topic four times since 2001 and watched some of Canada’s and the world’s brightest minds work their way through this dilemma. The consensus solutions to Canada’s prosperity problem are at once simple and deceptively complex.
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….NOW, IF I WAS THE ONLY PUBLIC AFFAIRS PRACTITIONER EVER TO APPEAR ON TELEVISION, IT MIGHT BE BECAUSE IT WAS ME WHO WAS TRULY EXCEPTIONAL – OR PERHAPS EVEN DISTINGUISHED.

BUT THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT, TODAY, THERE ARE LEGIONS OF COMMENTATORS, ANALYSTS, PANELISTS AND SPOKESPEOPLE FROM THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS DISCIPLINE WHO COME, UNINVITED, INTO THE PUBLIC’S LIVING ROOM WITH GREAT REGULARITY.

AND LET’S NOT DELUDE OURSELVES, THIS OCCURS NOT BECAUSE WE ARE SO MUCH MORE TALENTED OR GIFTED THAN INDIVIDUALS IN OTHER PROFESSIONS. IT IS BECAUSE OUR VERY PROFESSION MAKES US INHERENTLY MORE NEWSWORTHY. WE SHOULD ALSO APPRECIATE THAT THE EXULTED POSITION OF OUR PROFESSION IS A RELATIVELY RECENT PHENOMENON.
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If the British North America Act were being
written today…natural resource ownership
would most likely remain with the federal
government.

– “Policy Options,” October 2005.

It should have been a love fest.

Leading up to the March 30, 2006 Alberta Progressive Conservative Annual General Meeting polls declared Premier Ralph Klein the most popular man in the province, and for good reason. As an expert panel appointed by the former Liberal government, provincial governments, and even the Governor General, all recommended that Alberta share its bountiful riches with the rest of Canada, the tough-talking premier said, essentially, ‘over my dead body.’ It was classic Klein. For years, the premier had been Alberta’s chief defender and his record was impressive. He led the PC Party to four consecutive majority governments, enjoyed over 90 percent approval ratings each time he faced a leadership review, and could boast of a series of accomplishments envied by all other provinces. In 1993, Klein inherited a government bleeding $3.4 billion a year and with an accumulated debt of $23 billion. Thirteen years later, Alberta is Canada’s only debt-free province, the operating surplus for 2006 hovers around $10 billion, and the populist premier can justifiably lay claim to creating “the Alberta Advantage.”
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Listening to their early declarations, it is apparent that the regional, gender and generational diversity of the candidates is going to be matched by the strategies they hope to employ — first to win the contest and presumably, thereafter, the country.
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