Is The CBC Trying To Sway Voters To The Liberal Camp?

Posted on Friday, April 01 at 10:01 by Michael Scott

So I took the Voter Compass survey on the CBC website just for kicks.  After answering the questions the application took a few seconds and then told me that my ideals most closely aligned with the Liberal Party.  To say that I was dismayed would be an understatement.  So I went and looked at where I diverged and aligned with both the Conservatives and Liberals.  I found that statistically, I diverged more than 1 degree from the Conservatives on 7 items, and the Liberals on 9 items.  I agreed completely with the Liberals on 9 and the Conservatives on 12 positions.  I diverged strongly with both parties on 3 postions.  And then I looked even deeper. 

 

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/03/31/cv-ignatieff-childcare.html

And it's not like that this position is a surprise since it was a party plank in the last two elections as well.

There were a couple of other questionable responses as well.  For instance the voter compass states that the Liberals strongly disagree with a carbon tax.  While that may be technically true, they are firmly behind a cap and trade system with hard caps backed up by punitive charges. 

http://www.liberal.ca/issues/environment-energy/

As there are many Green and NDP voters on this board, I was wondering if they also had similar experiences using the Voter Compass.  Is there a bias towards the Liberals on the CBC? 

On the issue listed as "The government should fund daycare instead of giving money directly to parents" the Liberal postion is listed as "neither agree nor disagree".  I think Iggy might find that a bit shocking since he's promising to dole out $500 million on just that program:

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Comments

  1. Fri Apr 01, 2011 5:11 pm

  2. by RickW
    Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:29 pm
    Is there a bias towards the Liberals on the CBC?
    I don't think so. The CBC is small "L" liberal in it's general outlook. But then, a natonal network would have to be, wouldn't it? Or it would simply be a propaganda organ.

  3. Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:41 pm
    Rick, in general I find the CBC to be rather balanced. I just found it very odd that statistically my results should have come up conservative and they came out "Liberal". I also found it odd that there were several answers to questions that were not in line with the Liberal platflorm - which would further skew results. Dr. Caleb's link (thank you) was very enlightening. Perhaps the bias lies with the programmer and not the host. That is quite possible, but I sent my results to CBC and have yet to get a response back from them explaining how the results could be so wrong and if they were going to correct the very specific platform alignments I provided to them. I find it very disconcerting that a program that could possibly sway some voters has either an intentional bias or has unintentional mistakes that nobody seems to be fixing.

    I'm still curious, did anyone else try this and get a result more in line with your actual voting preference or did you also get "Liberal"?

  4. by RickW
    Sat Apr 02, 2011 3:57 am
    "Michael Scott" said
    I'm still curious, did anyone else try this and get a result more in line with your actual voting preference or did you also get "Liberal"?

    Strangely enough, I landed somewhere between the Greens and the Bloc.......but I didn't dissect anything as you have apparently done.

  5. Mon Apr 04, 2011 10:36 pm
    One guy took the test three times, and got three different answers, for the same responses.



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