Whenever a dramatic new poll is released like yesterday’s Decima poll (available here) , it’s always a good idea to actually look at a detailed anlaysis of public opinion before the various blogging partisan hacks chime in.
So, before we start hearing from the Tories, Liberals, New Democrats or Greens, let’s take a look at what the polling trend lines show.
The last update to the Paulitics Polling Resource (which was yesterday) was posted just hours before Decima released their poll which suggested, among other things, the collapse of Tory support in Ontario and a nation-wide surge for the NDP.
The Decima poll had the party support as follows:
Con: 30 Lib: 29 NDP: 18 Green: 11 Bloc: 8
If this poll is indicative of future trends (and keep in mind that this poll doesn’t take account of the Tories’ recent embarrassments this week), then the political landscape is about to become very interesting.
So what does this poll and the Paulitics Polling Resource suggest about the political landscape?
Firstly, and most importantly, while the Conservatives are still tied with their 2006 vote results in the key province of Ontario, this latest Decima poll puts the Conservatives down 12% from the previous Decima poll and down 15% from the more recent Ipsos-Reid poll’s Ontario results.
Conversely, this poll has the NDP’s support up 10% in Ontario. While they are still below their 2006 results in the Paulitics rolling-rive poll average in the province of Ontario, this poll brought their average up significantly.
Secondly, as was discussed here, the NDP had previously been down badly in Atlantic Canada, however with the intervening few polls which have been released, the NDP has risen back up to be statistically tied with their 2006 vote result and they accomplished this in a relatively short period of time.
Thirdly, both the Liberals and the Conservatives are either stagnant or in decline in both nationally and in every region or province surveyed. The Liberals, who were once in the process of making statistically significant gains in Quebec and Alberta only a few weeks ago, are now statistically tied to their 2006 election results across the board in every province and region. A similar story is true of the Conservatives, except for the fact that they are outside of the margin of error with their drop in Atlantic Canada.
Lastly, the provincial breakdown for the Greens is not favourable. The Greens made impressive gains in both BC, but perhaps most surprisingly, in Ontario as well. However, the near-double-digit gains have evaporated and the Greens are now within the margin of error in BC.
The new, updated, national results according to the Paulitics rolling and weighted averages are:

For the long-term trend lines of national party support, click here
For the breakdown of party support for all the regions/provinces, click here
Chomsky on self-deception and other fun topics
Published 30 April, 2007 American Empire , American Politics , Bush , capitalism , Chomsky , current events , International Politics , liberalism , Marxism , Media , news , News, Commentary & Op/Ed , Philosophy , Political Theory , politics , Progressive , Propaganda , religion , Resistance , Socialism , TV , U.S. Politics , U.S. Politics (domestic) 11 CommentsThis video contains an excellent discussion between Robert Trivers and Noam Chomsky on self-deception that is absolutely fascinating and, given the recent revelations in the U.S. about the Bush administration, is very worth taking a look at.
It’s relatively short and a very easy listen, so I encourage everyone, even those not familiar with Chomsky or Trivers’s work to take a look.
What I found especially interesting about this exchange is their discussion of the nature of the process of internalizing information in what can be termed self-propagandization.
While neither Chomsky nor Trivers directly mention the work of either Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács or French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (possibly because the latter has fallen out of favour in academic circles since the 1970s), the shadow of these two philosophers on the topic discussed above is unmistakable and worthy of brief discussion.
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