Saturday, April 30, 2005

Canadian Poll Bias

Ed Morrisey has been doing a spectacular job of late keeping track of the "Adscam" scandal that is currently rocking Canadian politics, including breaking a draconian censorship regime imposed by a panel investigating the affair (which involves the minority government Liberal Party misappropriating hundreds of millions of dollars meant to preserve national unity and taking and giving bribes), but it looks like Ed might have fallen for some skewed polling data which purported to show lower Conservative support. Blue Maple Leaf has the details.

Any poll giving the Greens 10 percent should be automatically suspect in my book.

Related: U2 invites Prime Minister Paul Martin onstage, prompts crowd to boo him to increase foreign aid spending. Still, "he's a great leader for Canada." This came after band lead singer Bono bashed Martin on Canadian radio and told fill up his comment line with requests for more international spending to "end poverty."

And since you didn't ask, Canadian politics has always been one of my interests. The past few years have been decidedly so with the merger of two right parties, the rise of the NDP, and the ethical collapse of the Liberal party. I should also add that I'm a supporter of Quebec independence.

UPDATE: At least two Canadian MPs--Monte Soldberg of Alberta and Steven Fletcher of Manitoba--have a blog on their sites. For more on political blogging in Canada, see this from Stephen Taylor.

UPDATE: And you thought Canadian politics was boring: Conservative MP calls liberals "whores."