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The provincial election is in full swing here in B.C., so when I answered the phone tonight and was asked to take a political survey my Spidey-sense immediately started to tingle. My first reaction was to determine who was conducting the survey (Ipsos-Reid? EKOS?), but she politely told me that it was confidential to prevent introducing bias on the part of the surveyor. It turns out that wasn’t necessary.

The questions started off innocently enough. “What issue facing BC concerns you the most?” “Do you vote regularly?” “If the election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for?” “Who would be your second choice?” But shortly after rating the three major parties’ leaders, the questions took a sinister turn.

I was first told a “fact” about a local candidate and then asked to rate my opionion of them. The Liberal candidate’s “fact” was clearly negative (relating to government patronage of her business) while the NDP candidate’s “fact” was quite positive (successful business leader devoted to social equality and the environment). This was followed by more rating questions that contrasted negative aspects of the Liberal government/platform versus positive aspects of the NDP agenda.

I hate seeing survey results that pick a negative from one side and compare it to a positive from the other.

“97% of voters support Candidate X’s promise to improve health care over sending all children under the age of 8 to the salt mines.”*

Come on, who are they trying to fool here? Of course I would prefer expanding social programs versus setting taxpayers’ hair on fire, or increasing military spending over forced labour camps! The questions aren’t fair — they aren’t meant to be — it’s just verbal sleight of hand to get you to think, “Hey, this party’s ok!”

So at the end I told her who I thought was behind the survey (hint: NDP candidate Gregor Robertson**) and exactly what I thought of biased survey questions. I understand the need for campaign offices to conduct polls to gauge their popular support. I also understand that they want to get their message out. But don’t combine the two into a phony survey and then compound the underhandedness by not revealing who is behind it. That’s just disingenuous and a terrible way to promote your party/candidate being trustworthy.

* = not a real quote, but you never can tell these days
** = Gregor, if you’re such a nice guy why you don’t you just run a campaign that reflects this?