{"id":14824,"date":"2012-04-27T12:42:32","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T17:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14824"},"modified":"2012-04-27T12:42:32","modified_gmt":"2012-04-27T17:42:32","slug":"colby-cosh-on-the-alberta-election-results-versus-the-pollsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/04\/27\/colby-cosh-on-the-alberta-election-results-versus-the-pollsters\/","title":{"rendered":"Colby Cosh on the Alberta election results versus the pollsters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most of the national press live and work in either Ottawa or Toronto. Neither location is a good vantage point for figuring out <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.macleans.ca\/2012\/04\/27\/wildly-off-the-mark-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">what is happening in the rest of the country<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One point three. Twelve. Fourteen. Seventeen. Eight, seven, seven, six, eight, seven, ten, nine, nine . . . two.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a word picture of the polls taken in the run-up to April 23\u2019s Alberta election, starting with a Leger survey for which interviews took place April 5-8. The numbers represent the Wildrose party\u2019s estimated province-wide lead over the incumbent Progressive Conservatives. No public poll taken by a respectable firm during the campaign had the Wildrose behind the PCs. All pollsters agreed that at least a narrow Wildrose majority government was likely. Reporters in Eastern Canada dutifully filed \u201cWildrose wins\u201d copy for the April 24 morning papers, believing that the outcome was certain.<\/p>\n<p>And then came the shocking result of the election itself, arriving at the end of the mathematical sequence like some indecipherable symbol from a lost language:<\/p>\n<p>Minus nine point six.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most of the national press live and work in either Ottawa or Toronto. Neither location is a good vantage point for figuring out what is happening in the rest of the country: One point three. Twelve. Fourteen. Seventeen. Eight, seven, seven, six, eight, seven, ten, nine, nine . . . two. That\u2019s a word picture [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28,53],"tags":[542,188,213,289,101],"class_list":["post-14824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","category-politics","tag-alberta","tag-electionwatch","tag-newspapers","tag-polls","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3R6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14825,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14824\/revisions\/14825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}