War Raging Between Pollsters over Ontario Election Data

Ipsos Reid commits the polling equivalent of a gangland drive-by on Abacus over a poll that showed the PCs with a nine-point lead.

War has broken out among the country's pollsters, with Ipsos Reid firing off an open letter that chastizes its competitors for their questionable results so far in the Ontario provincial election. The pollsters say they're concerned with the results of polls showing drastically different results, such as one from Abacus that showed the Progressive Conservatives with a nine-point lead over the Liberals earlier this week, and ones that showed, well, just the opposite. Ipsos Reid termed their competitors “hucksters selling methodological snake oil,” a slur which hasn't exactly sat well with the likes of Abacus. The Abacus poll, which left us a little puzzled as well, tried a new methodology for the poll that gave Tim Hudak that massive lead. They asked respondents to rank the political parties on a scale of one to 10, and then translated those numbers into support as a percentage. Typically, though, polls are much more direct, asking something along the lines of “if the vote were held today, who would you vote for?” We find this little tizzy as more proof of our long-held belief that polls are great for stoking debate and providing a general overview of voting trends, but can never be relied upon to be as accurate as they profess to be. Buyer beware.