Poll Results: Rylde Leading

Day 2,262, 08:41 • Published in Canada Canada • by Alias Vision

On Monday I asked for your opinion on who would make a better CP in this coming February election. Many of you took the minute required to vote and I would like the thank all those that participated.



It was a completely open poll, meaning there was no attempt at security, and so the first question I had when I opened up the results was... what would I see?

Initially I saw 136 responses... that was quite an amazing turn out. A quick scan of the data though showed pretty obvious multi voting. So I culled all those that I felt comfortable identifying as invalid and was left with a pool of 70 participants. Still higher than the numbers of votes generated by the article but an acceptable number.

The poll yielded a pool of 28 names (including "no one" and "me" which I'll be grouping together). Of those, 13 got a single mention.

Two important media articles were released in between the issuing of the poll and the end of voting. Those would be TheSmoke's and Rylde's CP campaign announcements. One of the purposes of media is to generate momentum and I wanted to see if that could be represented in the data collected.

So the first order of business was nationality. I asked respondents to self-identify as either Canadian, Expat or Non-Canadian. Members of the first group are the individuals who will actually do the voting come the fifth of the month. The other groups represent people with ties to Canada, vested interest in Canada or affection for this nation. Finally a small number are probably international readers picked up over the years of publishing and travel.



It would have been interesting to have a greater proportion of Non-Canadian participants to see what someone without a horse in the race thought in terms of who could guide Canada forward. As it stands, 10% is likely too low to draw any real conclusions.

If you are running or intend to run, it is a bonus to see your name on this list. People need to remember though that these results do not represent voting intentions, only whom readers felt had the skills needed to lead.

It is no surprise to see Rylde's name lead the parade. He has marketed himself as a man of action and as a war leader. Our immediate and medium term future will be defined by war. Canada always claims to want leaders who will act.

One little note about Rylde's lead in this poll... Rylde was the only candidate who obviously received multi voting (and before anyone jumps to conclusions, no, I don't think he had anything to do with it). How accurate any of this data is can be debated. I believe it is a real picture of who would lead in a presidential contest but not necessarily by the margins illustrated.



*receiving 2 votes each: Addy Lawrence, Chochi, IBB, Jacobi, Pat Harper (I'm giving him the Stephen Harper vote too although I'm sure the respondent actually meant our RL PM), Ralph Kline, TemujinBC.

**receiving 1 vote each: CptKaydee, Exalted Druid, Goran Thrax, Kronos Q, Lelouch VI, Mary Chan, Muglack, PimpDollaz, Plugson, Punisher 1389, The Remastered God, TheDarkRider.

Some interesting observations:

Rylde had steady support throughout the voting process and there is no evidence his CP article gave him a bump of popularity (or adversely affected him). Rylde has a solid core of supporters and that is what we are seeing here.

TheSmoke got his votes both early and late. His CP article came right on the heels of the poll launching. Debate over the merits of his campaign and open, early endorsements seem to have given him a slight push towards the end of this process. This suggests a softer level of support but one that he has the capacity to earn more (I acknowledge to be dealing with a tiny sample and very little secondary data to jump to these conclusions).

Oinyo received all of his support following his recent article calling Canada out and defending some of his past actions. He has always had a more populist approach and depending on the tone of potential opponents, he could pick up substantial support in time.

When filtering out Canadians to retain those currently without the ability to directly vote in the election Rylde would still lead by the narrowest margin (26.3%) followed by Oinyo (21%) and myself (15%). TheSmoke dropping to the bottom of the list.

This tells me that Rylde and Oinyo have the highest profile amongst leading candidates and that the people reading my paper think positively of me (thank you very much, I do this all for my own enjoyment and your reading pleasure). TheSmoke's challenge would be to raise his profile.

This is not a scientific poll, take all opinions and interpretations with a grain of salt.

Time permitting I will do a follow up poll between now and February 5th to capture a more accurate picture of the race when we have more firmly declared candidates.

Thank you for your time, feedback and your votes.