Thank you for proving my point in your response or attempt to defend the practices of the polling companies in Canada, especially when related to poli

Thank you for proving my point in your response or attempt to defend the practices of the polling companies in Canada, especially when related to political/public opinion sampling.

The facts are, your industry does not apply much in the way of demographic profiling for the calls you make.

And yes, I have been involved in the political opinion polling industry from the political campaign, media and government relations, and political communications side now for 32 years. I have seen changes in the industry, and unfortunately in the majority of cases not for the good.

Your industry may only use French or English, but that does not reflect the reality of Canada. Therefore the results of telephone surveys return bad numbers of data to those wanting to know what the average Canadian voter is thinking.

How can you, when you use less than 3,000 people in a poll to determine what is up in a federal election? Yes, some use a larger number; this does not help when you do not track the change or inertia of the groups’ opinions and intentions for voting.

Apportioning that number out according to the importance in the make up of the House of Commons, and practical electoral strategies is not done. The information returned would not tell you the real mood of an area like Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, an area in the last Federal election that could have put one or the other of the main line federal parties in a secure power position.

Yes, 'pollsters tend to set quotas for various demographic groups,' but ultimately because your callers are paid by the call and answered survey, I doubt the demographic groups are adhered to by the end of the night when a quote is needed to be met. Your statement, 'as the poll progresses and pollsters try to fill their demographic quotas, they will not accept responses from whoever happens to be home, ' is untrue. They will and have, by the very fact that the people who are home and answer the phone will be the ones to answer the questions. Those that are not home and are at work, don't answer the phone when they cannot identify the caller via Caller I.D., are using cell phones, or do not answer the phone because they do not speak English or French, will be missed. In doing so, you skew the results. No matter how many, 'multiple calls,' you make to locate these people.

If you call a home at random in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, or Surrey in British Columbia you will find out how untrue your statement, ' People who answer calls from pollsters (or the ringing telephone) in Canada usually do speak one of the country’s two official languages,' is.

The 'issue of polling cell phone users,' and the fact your industry does not, means you miss most of the generation under 30 to 35. You quote a number of 50% for the penetration of the cell phone in Canada in 2005. This gives the wrong impression, as it would be more like 80% of the under 35, and 20% to 30% of the over 55 to 65 year old demographic.

It is not that this part of the market remains sufficiently low, it is the fact that most people in the demographic are not home to answer their land line if they have one, but are out and about with their cell phones, not reachable by the surveying industry. This is the reason why so many political campaign strategies do attract 80% them to the voting booth.

Yes, 'political polls do ask people about their levels of political engagement, the likelihood that they will vote, and how strongly they are committed to the opinions they have expressed.' These numbers are not reported and if they were would put a whole new light on the figures referred to.

There are three or four changes to your industry in the area of political polling that you could make that would improve the accuracy of the results, and their usefulness.

One would be to increase the size of that numbers in a polling sampling.

Second, record and track the change of the opinions or solidification of the opinions, of the same people throughout an election period. This would provide far more accurate information to the political strategists than what is now done. If you call 1,500 people today across Canada, that does not represent Canada, and if you call another 1,500 people next week, their opinions may be different than the first 1,500, but you have no idea if that is due to what the political communication's messages are saying, or whether they thought that way from the beginning of the campaign.

You are right that, 'someone expresses an opinion in a telephone interview doesn’t mean that that position will be borne out in a voting booth.' It is vital that a communicator for political campaigns find out if they are getting the results from their strategy to see that person adopt the position of the party asking the questions in the poll. If you can identify enough in a riding that are starting to follow or fall in line with a party's policies, then you can also change tactics and work in the areas of a country that are starting to swing your way.

The questions that should be asked in addition to the mundane are:

Will you be voting in the upcoming election?
If not, why?
What would you need to hear from the candidates or parties to get you to the voting booth?
If you were promised what you want to hear from the candidate would that get you to the voting booth to vote?

Clustering is long over due in Canada and could move the polling industry into the 21st Century if it was implemented properly, as well as properly designed and implemented on-line polling systems and efforts.

Yes, Statistics Canada does conduct all sorts of sample surveys between censuses. They use a far more in-depth method of sampling the proper demographics of the country, and in many instances use the same group to track an issue over time. In fact I spent close to $2,000 in a year on their research products.

Unfortunately using the American political system as an example of how good polling can be in politics, when talking about Canada, is like comparing apples to oranges.

Yes, 'in polling, as in all things, caveat emptor,' but that should not stop the polling industry in Canada from improving so it can compete with foreign companies that have honed their skills in the blood sport known as politics in places like Washington D.C.

I disagree with your statement that, 'people are not mechanical.' They are and are predictable. When you are able to get a good handle on what they are thinking. If they are not, then why survey them? Marketing is all about making educated assumptions based on the information before you, and the better the data, the closer the assumption will be to reality.

Same thing in political campaigning, political communications, and winning the big chair in the P.M.O.

I understand that being the President of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association you do have a certain position you must maintain, and respect that.