The First NDP Leadership Poll
So the National Post buried the lede a bit and embedded the results of our first NDP leadership poll in a story about Paul Dewar.
I mean, it’s sort of a non-poll, given that it’s a paltry sample size of 300 people who voted NDP in the last election. So, statistically, seven of those respondents are actually members. Not exactly representative.
But, like any good pundit, I will proceed to explain what the broad and important ramifications of the poll are.
Here’s the breakdown for the 163 decided respondents.
Looks like Mulcair is just dominating, right? Now let’s include the undecided voters.
So really, nobody is dominating - yet.
There’s a few interesting take-aways from this remarkably unrepresentative poll.
How is Mulcair doing so well?
You might remember that some time ago I professed the death of THOMAS MULCAIR’s campaign. This poll isn’t making me rethink that. I projected that his campaign was sunk because of his complete lack of organization. What this poll tells me is that he still leads in name recognition. That’s not his success (as he’s been a high-profile MP for some time) it’s more the failure of his competitors. If Brian Topp can’t get people to recognize his name, that’s going to destroy his chances of becoming leader.
But that’s not likely. Mulcair will not be the only recognizable name on the ballot. Voters will go to the convention knowing who the candidates are. Mulcair is simply the default vote for those who don’t know the other names.
The vast majority of those polled won’t be at the convention. Roughly 4.5 million people voted for the NDP in the last election, only about 100,000 are members. Like I said, it’s very unlikely that this poll actually contacted many NDP members.
How is Brian Topp doing so badly?
Like I just pointed out, Mulcair’s lead is probably greatly inflated. I suspect that Topp’s name, unknown to anyone not following the race, was lost on those who answered the poll. We can probably chalk up his pathetic 8% result to people simply not knowing who he is.
Given his campaign team and his wealth of endorsers, we can expect Topp to raise his fundraising limit very quickly. Assuming he does that, he can start dishing out money for ads and voter targeting. Once that happens, I think you’ll see his name garner a bit more familiarity.
Peggy Nash poised to be a threat
16% for Nash in this poll might be a fluke. 27 of the respondents said they’d vote for the Toronto MP. Those 27 may well be from Toronto and know her by name.
That said, it could represent a sign of her muscle in the race. There’s no doubt she’s emerging as a dark-horse, top-tier candidate alongside Mulcair and Topp. I won’t say that this poll shows that she’s in second place - as this poll doesn’t really show anything - but it might indicate her strength. No doubt her team will be branding this about to no end.
The Others
23% is big for the ‘other’ category. Because the National Post didn’t release the full details of the poll, we have no way of knowing if the respondents actually named one of the other candidates or whether they just said “Oh, you know, that one with the mustache.”
So let’s make an assumption here, let’s assume that no one ‘other’ candidate got more than 7% (because they would have been mentioned as being in league with Topp/Dewar.) We have Ashton, Saganash, Cullen and Chisholm (we’re excluding Singh, because I’d be surprised if anyone knew who he was) - that means each candidate would have roughly 5%, give or take. Two might have 6%, two might have 4%. Either way, that is probably heartening for someone like Chisholm, who’s campaign really should be over by now. Remember, Herman Cain was at 5% at one point (that was a joke.)
So this poll is interesting, albeit useless. Can we please, please, get a real poll done?
UPDATE: According to Ted McCoy on Twitter, Topp’s name was near the bottom. Both Mulcair’s and Nash’s names were closer to the top. I certainly don’t think that’s the main reason for the numbers, but I have no doubt that there were some folks out there that heard Mulcair or Nash’s name and said “Them!” before hearing all the candidates.
Also, here’s a picture of 300, because I obviously missed the great comedic value of the sample size.
Update 2: Thanks to Eric at ThreeHundredEight, we now have the breakdown. Looks like this:
