But which way are the numbers heading?

 
Nanos Research, courtesy The Globe and Mail.

The Globe goes big with Nanos' latest voter pulse-taking, playing up the Tories' 10-point lead.

Couple things:

1. We got all sweaty last week that Harris-Decima had Tories at 43%. Forty-three per cent is a majority. Thirty-eight point four per cent is not.

2. I flicked at this earlier, but a little more detail this time. 

In the early summer of 2004, before the Swift-Boaters began their unanswered attacks (not unlike the Tories' unanswered attack ads on Iggy since December), Kerry was leading Bush by as much as 10 points. Kerry's the one pol I so desperatedly wanted to win (well, I wanted Bush to lose) that I got myself off to church to pray for him election night. It doesn't work that way, as even I knew at the time.

But one of the big 2004 lessons for me, courtesy the late William Safire, was that it's not the poll numbers that count. It's the direction. Late into the summer Kerry held his lead over Bush, but by ever narrower margins.

What I see in the Nanos numbers above is the Tories slipping ever so slightly, and the Grits gaining, ever so slightly. But the direction's clear enough. In an early post-writ poll, it's Tories heading down, Grits trending up.

And that's before the Grit and NDP ads that launched today, before the platforms of the three opposition parties are released, before the TV debates.

It'll be a while, if ever, that I change my mind about this being Harper's election to lose. But this race is bound to tighten up, as elections generally do.

 

Comments

[Darwin O'Connor]

"it's not the poll numbers that count. It's the direction."

No wonder business people keep falling for market bubbles.