Citizen managing editor Neil Godbout has the analysis of a pollster.
It's tough not to chuckle at the analysis media folk like Citizen managing editor, Neil Godbout offer on B.C. politics. Scribblers and columnists alike drank the Kool-aid of every pollster who assured the public of an NDP victory last May.
The same chattering class assured us the Wild Rose Party would trounce the Progressive Conservatives in Alberta, and that the Parti Quebecois would deliver a crushing landslide defeat to the Charest Liberals in Quebec.
But in reality, Godbout doesn't really understand these things any better than the pollsters do. He assumes wide swathes of voters hang on a politician's every word, that we actually change direction like sheep based on one comment a leader makes in an interview.
He forgets, or chooses to forget, that the majority of British Columbians don't vote at all, or that fewer and fewer have the cable TV subscriptions required to hear the political messages of either side, or that a drastically declining number of voters even read newspapers like his anymore.
The 2013 election result was unremarkably similar to the previous 2009 election. The only thing remarkable about it, was how spectacularly wrong pollsters and political commentators like Godbout have consistently been over that same time period - which is why it's so rich to hear them now blame the NDP for failing to capitalize on a mythical lead which clearly never existed in the first place.
So when Godbout declares with such conviction and certainty that the NDP must rush to dump their leader, as he did in his Friday Sept. 6 editorial, instead of allowing the political party the opportunity to approach this issue in a democratic fashion in accordance with its constitution... it's not difficult to see why British Columbians take his sensationalistic hollering with a grain of salt.
Aaron Ekman
Prince George
