Beware of Pollsters!

The Canadian pre-election polls taken by research companies vary greatly from one to another. Some are constantly indicating (claiming) that the conservatives are in significant lead. There are also some indicating that the conservatives are in a lead, but not as much as suggested by others. To me, some are cooking the numbers, or somehow misleading the people who have been surveyed, and the people who are consuming the survey results.

The final results might show which one of these pollsters should be ignored in the future.:

Here are a couple of example that indicate the significant difference in the results ontained by two different forms.Here are the latest:

FromStrategic Councel:
Liberals: 27%
Conservatives: 37%
NDP: 17%
BQ: 11%
Greens: 6%

From SESResearch:
Liberals: 30%
Conservatives: 36%
NDP: 17%
BQ: 11%
Greens: 6%

I feel that the result from SES more reflects what is really out there. Remember, the so-called polls results can mislead people and somewhat give direction to the way some people actually vote.

We will see after the real numbers are in.

Update:
The elections are over. The real numbers are in. Here is the actual popular vote results (and number of seats):

Liberals: 30.2%: 103 seats
Conservatives: 36.3%: 124 seats
NDP: 17.5%: 29 seats
BQ: 1o.5%: 51 seats
Greens: 4.5%: None

Well, SESResearch numbers are almost right on. It is intersting that only a couple of days before the elections, Strategic Council was claiming that the gap between Liberals and the Conservatives was about 14% and that was when SESResearch was showing the gap as about 8%. As I siad somebody is deliberately doing something wrong in order to deceive people. Never trust the poll results only becasue they are coming from well-known research companies.

I hope to write more about the elections in near future.