On September 10th, Manitoba voters will head to the polls to elect their next premier. Marty Gold joins me for an update on the latest polls, and his predictions for the election. He also talks about why he thinks there's something sinister at work in the mainstream media's coverage of the election, and why it could have a big impact on the outcome.
00:03:23.180Holy moly, with the election approaching, one of the great things that you uncovered that I don't think the rest of the mainstream media really touched on
00:03:33.580was a poll in Manitoba that showed the PCs and the NDP in a dead heat.
00:03:39.780The poll was flawed, but you dug down that extra level to show that there was something a little bit more, I don't know, sinister at play?
00:04:50.140And this is how CBC portrayed this poll, by Converso.
00:04:54.140Now, the next morning, the liberals had a press release out that was getting good circulation.
00:05:02.260Before even the mainstream media had been able to look at the CBC story, they said, well, the website doesn't identify who owns, runs, or works for the company.
00:05:13.180The poll is supposedly uncommissioned.
00:05:14.960They didn't disclose their background or that there's a link between the company owner and the NDP, according to, I think it was a letter that he himself had written to the Globe and Mail, no, Toronto Star, in 2007.
00:05:28.200And this is because, here's the poll showing the NDP tied with the Conservatives, and it would, if there was a nefarious purpose to putting out a poll like that, it would be twofold.
00:05:38.600One, to build momentum for the NDP in opposition of the Conservatives to the Pallister government, and B, to deflate any hope of the Liberals rising up because of a lack of momentum for the Wab Canoe-led NDP.
00:05:52.320So, by the Saturday afternoon, like this is, you know, days after the campaign starts, and the pollster had to issue a statement saying, we didn't weigh the data properly, will we get back to you on Monday?
00:06:05.760And so, when they updated the results based on the belief, the finding, that the results were too heavily weighted, this was 1,100 and some odd respondents, that too much weight was given to northern ridings, which are universally, you know, New Democratic Party territory, like flint-flown and far-flung places like that, for the most part.
00:06:32.580All of a sudden, you came up with new poll results that were within the range everybody would have expected, except maybe the NDP, showing the Conservatives at 35% support, the NDP at 21%, the Liberals at 12%, and the Green Party at 8%.
00:06:46.320Now, this kind of backfired a bit on the Liberals in a way, because the other poll results had them, I think, closer to 15% or 16%, and there's about 20% that either wouldn't say or weren't declared.
00:06:56.980So, when you look at those kind of poll results and you distribute the undecideds or the won't-say-sos accordingly, you know, you've got the NDP sitting at, you know, more or less 26%, 27%, 28%, which is not going to cut it for Wabken, who's continued leadership.
00:07:13.160And that doesn't really result in a lot of rioting changes.
00:07:17.400So, the discrepancy was caused by an overweighting of responses.
00:07:20.720Well, now the media has to revisit the issue and say, hey, there's a poll that was put out, and now they've had to correct their results, and it turns out.
00:07:29.380So, CBC has all the heat on them, was a reporter named, I think, Bryce Hoyt, who had reported this.
00:07:36.020And, again, it's like the reporter just takes a press release, doesn't even look at the polling company.
00:07:42.380Because if you look and you see, oh, I wonder who's behind this company, how long have they existed, how many other polls have they put out, and there's nothing there, you don't go, wait a second.
00:07:51.240Well, not when you're at CBC, because, lo and behold, they, you know, generally speaking, we believe that CBC-Knicks would be delighted by any poll showing a neck-and-neck race, let alone of a conservative government, right?
00:08:04.280So, they then have to write a correction, a correcting story, and my compadre, Spirited Kenny, picked up on this, as well as a few other people and made sure to send it to me, that the headline repeated, that the, you know, poll, a correction, the poll suggesting a man of PCs and NDP are in dead heat.
00:08:27.480So, it's in the headline, it repeats in the subhead, Converso poll placed PCs at 31, NDP at 30, so repeats the false finding, then in the first paragraph repeats the phrase, well, a dead heat is now, it was, you know, a victim of a waiting issue, then the next paragraph, the usual poll suggesting the gulf had narrowed and the two parties are in a dead heat, then it repeats the 31 at 30, and the next paragraph, then one paragraph dedicated to the liberals, the greens, the undecided,
00:08:57.480and then one says, and then in the fifth paragraph, one, two, three, four, the fifth paragraph, again, repeating the poll, despite leading the polls since the election 2016, Brian Pousenberg, as the conservatives, had fallen into a dead heat with Wapkin, who's NDP.
00:09:14.240So, it refuted their original story at the same time, while repeating the falsehood five different times, plus in the headline, plus in the subhead.
00:09:26.000So, look, I have friends that have worked for CBC, I've filed things in my past with CBC, I lived in Canada's north, where CBC is absolutely necessary.
00:09:35.700But it's instances like that, where when people say defund CBC, you can see why people believe that it's, what's the term I'm looking for, Sheila, irredeemable?
00:09:48.800When you've got a story that they got completely wrong, they were the only ones to bite, they did absolutely no research into the poll at all, and then instead of apologizing, instead of explaining, how did this happen?
00:10:01.380How did we fail? And look, stories will get past you, and you've got to play catch-up.
00:10:07.220They doubled down on it. Like, hoping the guy would say, hey, wait, we reweighted it wrong. We were right in the first place.
00:10:14.760They repeated that, the flawed result, basically, in every damn paragraph.
00:10:19.380Now, another poll that came out, and this one was CP, Canadian press coverage, that was really interesting, because they had to find a nice way of explaining something,
00:10:28.660that something being, how unpopular are Manitoba's political leaders?
00:10:34.320And so, to try to get this on the table, and I'm not complaining about the writing, just to show how convoluted political coverage can be,
00:10:44.040NDP leader Wab Canu was less unpopular than the others, which is just a funny way to have to explain things.
00:10:52.760Even this morning, I was at a press conference held by the Liberals, we'll actually talk about later,
00:10:58.700and one of the assembled ink-stained wretches asked the Liberal leader, Dougal Lamont, about the fact that he's less unpopular than all the other leaders.
00:11:10.640And Dougal had a good laugh about it, because, you know, he recognizes that sometimes people don't care about party platforms,
00:11:18.300they just vote strictly on the base of the leader, and in that regard, Canu gets off better, at a minus 6%, compared to minus 15% for Brian Pallister.
00:11:29.640Now, by comparison, Andrew Scheer's and Angus Reid poll, federally, released at the end of August, showed the Conservative leader federally, Andrew Scheer, minus 14%.
00:11:38.640So, from this, we understand that, relatively speaking, more or less, Brian Pallister and Andrew Scheer are equally unpopular, I guess a way to put it.
00:11:48.880Canu, a lot less unpopular than his federal leader, Mr. Singh, who's at minus 19%.
00:11:56.380Prime Minister Trudeau, a minus 32% approval rating.
00:11:59.560So, in that regard, comparing the Angus Reid result, which, granted, is national, not weighted for Manitoba,
00:12:04.800generally speaking, it's fair to say that the Trudeau anchor is not weighing that heavily around the neck of the Liberal leader, Mr. Lamont.
00:12:14.260Now, one thing that does hang around his neck a little bit is it's hard to get fair media coverage for a third party at the best of times.
00:12:21.320In this case, you know, they luckily, with his by-election victory, attained party status in Manitoba,
00:12:27.320well, the first time since, I think, since Sharon Carstairs' day.
00:12:31.960I don't know that they might have attained party status in the early 90s, briefly.
00:12:37.520But even when you are an actual third party, as opposed to just a group of opposition members,
00:12:42.780it's hard to get reasonable press coverage.
00:12:45.340And the flip side of Canadian press trying to discuss the favorability and unfavorability of the leaders in a literate way.
00:12:53.940They ran an article, as did many of the media here, slamming the Conservatives for skipping.
00:12:59.540There's been various town halls and such events the Conservatives have not sent representatives to.
00:13:05.460Generally, the excuse being if they're organized by the anti-poverty industry.
00:13:10.020These are, a lot of them are NDP activists.
00:13:12.020We don't want to walk into a lion's den, so to speak.
00:13:15.600So, a Canadian press article from August 23rd that Spirited Kenny picked up on,
00:13:21.940Tory incumbents accused of ducking debates in Manitoba election,
00:13:26.160and it gave the example of the anti-poverty forum and said a liberal candidate was also there
00:13:32.440and didn't name the liberal candidate.
00:13:34.580Well, you know, media-wise, that's not fair.
00:13:36.840If you're going to slam the Tories or any other party for not showing up,
00:13:40.020if a party sends a representative, they deserve to get their name in the paper,
00:13:44.420you know, so that people know that this person's put in the effort.
00:13:49.660Another thing that Spirited Kenny has done, and he's at Spirited Kenny on Twitter,
00:13:54.420he was my senior producer, grew into that role when we were on,
00:13:59.320when the Great Canadian Talk Show was on Kick FM in Winnipeg,
00:14:02.000and he was one of the first, along with myself, to do news podcasting in Winnipeg.
00:14:08.500He had his own radio show on Kick FM as well.
00:14:10.960Kenny's been surveying, it's funny, I almost said foreign media,
00:14:15.520out of Winnipeg media, foreign to Winnipeggers.
00:14:19.360You know, when I was on radio, I used to make a point of looking beyond,
00:14:22.420we have a condition in Winnipeg, it's called perimeteritis.
00:14:25.240We don't tend to look beyond the perimeter highway,
00:14:28.280unless it's a complaint about how good Headingley has it since they seceded,
00:14:32.120and how Blaret and these other bedroom communities are growing and prospering.
00:14:36.840But he's been keeping an eye on coverage outside of the province,
00:14:39.580and the Thompson citizen in particular had quite a scoop,
00:14:43.860where Premier Pallister made a visit up to Thompson.