TORIES VULNERABLE IF VOTERS SEE PM’S HAND IN DUFFY SCANDAL
Ethics don’t sway voters unless they think Harper responsible: poll project
As soon as it started again, it stopped. After two weeks of testimony, the Duffy trial has adjourned.
But we saw a tranche of revealing emails, heard often contradictory accounts and witnessed Prime Minister Stephen Harper back on his heels. It was good TV, but was it more than that? Does the trial actually matter for this election?
My colleagues Daniel Rubenson, Royce Koop and I have been fielding one of the largest-ever studies of Canadian public opinion. Starting on Aug. 27, 600-700 Canadians a day have completed a 15-minute online survey. By the end of the campaign, we’ll have surveyed 40,000 Canadians. Our respondents are provided by a leading online sampling company and we use a statistical weighting method to ensure that these individuals are representative of the Canadian adult population. (Find detailed technical information by visiting www.localparliament.ca).
Among the issues we probe are voters’ views on the importance of ethics in this election and their assessments of whether the prime minister is responsible for the Duffy scandal.
To be sure, the trial’s coverage has seeped down to the electorate. The vast majority of engaged voters will know that it’s occurring and will have some sense of the questions of the trial. But two caveats are in order.
First, the trial is rather technical — dealing not only with questions of which staffer knew what when, definitions of residency, and the arcane nature of Senate rule making — but also with a complex legal argument about what constitutes bribery and breach of trust. Partisans are motivated reasoners and can draw up their own explanations and understandings of what occurred and what’s in question.
Earl Cowan, the “Angry Tory” who accused a journalist of cheating on her taxes more than Duffy is but one example. Partisans will fit facts to desired conclusions. Only with the greatest evidence of wrongdoing should we expect much different from the Duffy case.
Second, ethics issues matter in elections, but generally, only at the margins. For example, when we ask our respondents their most important national issue, only three per cent identify ethics. This compares with 48 per cent who identify the economy, 14 per cent who choose health care, and seven per cent who select the environment.
If ethics generally and the Duffy trial in particular matter in this election, it will be because voters concluded the prime minister was responsible. A general concern about ethics won’t move the dial.
To gauge how voters attribute political responsibility for the Mike Duffy affair, we asked respondents: “On a scale from zero to 10, where zero means not at all responsible and 10 means very responsible, how responsible would you say Prime Minister Harper is for the Senator Mike Duffy expenses scandal?”
An average score of 7 suggests that voters attribute a large amount of responsibility to Harper. But just as we might expect, voters’ assessments differ depending on their partisanship. For example, among those respondents who voted for the NDP, Liberals, or Greens in the last election, the mean score is 7.9. For non-voters, the score is 7. Among previous Conservative voters, the score is just 5.1.
Scores also vary according to the characteristics of respondents. Older respondents and women are more likely to believe that the prime minister is responsible.
Scores also vary marginally by province, with a low of six in Alberta and a high of 7.5 in Quebec.
As importantly, attributions vary with political attentiveness. Voters who are paying the most attention to the race give a responsibility score 0.6 points higher than those paying no attention.
But what’s the bottom line? Do these scores matter at all for the choices voters will make on Oct. 19?
There’s good reason to believe they’ll not have much effect, not least because most voters have already formed conclusions about both the prime minister’s level of responsibility and, in many cases, whether they would ever vote for him anyway.
Our data tells a slightly different story, however, and it’s one that’s most worrying for the prime minister.
We conducted an analysis that considers the impact of five factors on Conservative vote choice. The first three factors are standard demographic ones: age, gender, and province. The other two factors are respondents’ evaluations of the responsibility of the prime minister for the Duffy scandal and whether respondents voted for the Conservatives in 2011. By considering all of these variables at the same time, we can estimate the marginal effects of each, independent of other variables, especially whether voters have voted Tory in the last election.
The results don’t bode well for the Conservative Party. Indeed, they show that past Conservative voters are the harshest punishers of the prime minister if they believe he’s responsible for the scandal.
Among those who voted for the Tories in 2011, the effect is stark. The average Tory voter from 2011 gives the prime minister a responsibility score of 5 out of 10. If that assessment increases by just one point, their probability of voting Tory declines by 10 percentage points.
Now, let’s consider respondents who told us they voted for a party other than the Tories in 2011. If such a respondent feels the prime minister bears no responsibility for the Duffy scandal, their probability of voting Tory in this election is 11 per cent. If they believe the prime minister is completely responsible, their probability of voting Tory falls to 2 per cent.
The Tories don’t rely much on these voters, but the effect is still devastating at the margin.
Attributions of responsibility aren’t likely to change much over the remainder of the campaign; indeed, I suspect the prime minister is very pleased the Duffy trial has adjourned.
But if those assessments do change, there are even stormier waters ahead for the Tories.
Past Conservative voters are the harshest punishers of the prime minister if they believe he is responsible for the scandal.