It appears that less than a third of British Columbians approve of Christy Clark鈥檚 performance as premier, according to a recent Angus Reid poll. It鈥檚 an interesting tidbit, but neither Clark nor British Columbians should get too worked up about one poll. Public opinion is a shifting wind, and the breeze could be blowing from a different direction tomorrow.
If the wind continues to blow from the same direction, though, it鈥檚 time to pay attention.
If Clark is laughing at the most recent poll, she has good reason 鈥� 10 polling companies failed to forecast the resounding victory of her B.C. Liberals in the 2013 election. As in recent election polls elsewhere, polling companies took a beating for their inaccurate predictions.
Polling isn鈥檛 what it used to be.
鈥淧ublic opinion surveys assumed an immense importance in Canada in the 1980s,鈥� wrote Claude Emery when he was a research analyst for the Library of Parliament. 鈥淣ot only did they become a familiar and seemingly indispensable feature of political campaigns 鈥� with various professional polling agencies being commissioned by different media outlets and political parties 鈥� they became an important aspect of public policy-making. Polling today is to the politician and policymaker what the stock market is to the financial analyst.鈥�
But Emery wrote that in 1994, and much has changed since. Then, the majority of polling was done by telephone, contacting people in their homes. Now, a third of 91原创s no longer have land lines. Most have the caller-ID function on their phones, and many won鈥檛 answer unfamiliar callers.
Polling companies have turned to the Internet to contact people, but that method comes with its own limitations. These and other developments make it more difficult to get a good representative sampling of the population.
While any one poll is merely a snapshot of public opinion at a particular moment, a trend is harder to dismiss. Clark would be wise not to ignore the trend revealed by Angus Reid鈥檚 periodic approval-rating polls; her rating has been more or less in a decline from a high of 45 per cent in June 2013, a month after the election that saw her party return to power with an improved majority.
Incidentally, Angus Reid鈥檚 poll in March 2013 showed her approval rating at 25 per cent. Her party garnered 44 per cent of the votes in an election in which 57 per cent of those eligible voted 鈥� which comes to 25 per cent of the voting-age population.
Coincidence? Perhaps, but it points out the importance of voter participation. Critical fingers are too often pointed at parties that attain majorities with the support of a minority of the population, but that鈥檚 the fault of the voters, not the parties.
鈥淎lthough governments have other means of gauging public sentiment 鈥� party activists, members of caucus, public servants and their numerous client groups, legislative debates, the print and electronic media 鈥� polls are now acknowledged to be one of the most significant communication links between governments and the governed,鈥� wrote Emery.
Polls still have their uses, but Emery鈥檚 statement is much less true in 2015 than when he wrote it in 1994, thanks to digital media. A poll should never substitute for interaction between the people and the politicians, and that interaction is easier than it has ever been.
The premier might shrug off opinion polls 鈥� it鈥檚 much harder to shrug off a steady storm of messages that come straight from the voters. You don鈥檛 have to wait for a call from a pollster to register your approval or disapproval. That鈥檚 what MLAs are for.
