Suchergebnisse

This note examines the consistency between Canadian public opinion & public policy over the period 1968-93 by matching responses to national survey questions on 348 issues with enacted public policy proposals on the same issues. Multivariate tests are used to explore the opinion policy relationship in regard to the impact of issue salience, the extent of majority opinion, the type of issues (redistributive vs. nonredistributive), various policy domains, & the partisan composition of government. There is little evidence of direct influence of public opinion on policy. Unlike previous results on the opinion-policy relationship in European countries, there is no evidence that organized elite groups & "bourgeois" political parties have been an obstacle to government enactment of mass preferences on redistributive issues. However, the findings strongly suggest that the change of government from Trudeau to Mulroney had an impact on consistency in regard to the economy. 1 Table, 30 References. Adapted from the source document.

We identify frequent inaccuracies in journalistic interpretations of the horse race ("who is ahead?") and of change over time ("who is gaining?") in poll reports during the Canadian election of 2008. We test two explanations. The "mistaken mindset" hypothesis holds that journalists exaggerate the horse race because they systematically miscalculate the margin of error. The "follow-the-pollster" hypothesis holds that journalists follow the horse-race interpretations that they find in pollsters' reports. We find strong support for the "follow-the-pollster" hypothesis in the data and in interviews with pollsters and journalists and conclude that pollsters' reports should be a key element to consider in any attempt to improve the level of accuracy in media reports of the horse race. Adapted from the source document.