Updates! (ireland, israel, thoughts on bilingualism, and more)

In Ireland, all the poll shows FF far in the lead. And no, that's not an error, there is just one poll, but it shows FF far out into the lead.

Normally I wouldn't comment on a single poll, and, there's still a chance its that dreaded "20th poll" and that the "other 19 are correct", but comparing polling data from the same company over time, I do not tend to see drastic jumps like this.

Red C polls have, from time to time, jumped around by about 4 points for a single party, and this tends to be single-party jumps, where the other major party does not fly around in random directions.

B&A polls, and, the most recent poll is a B&A poll, tends to have even smaller jumps, of about 3 points.

The most recent B&A poll had FF and FG tied at 27. Assuming a 4 point jump for one party FG could be as low as 23, or, FF as high as 31. Instead, the poll show FG at 20, and FF at 32. This would be 'record setting' if wrong. It should, however, be noted that records can be set, and are set all the time.

My suspicion however is that this reflects a real change, similar to the one we saw when the 2015 Alberta election was called, where the NDP jumped from an average of 18 points, to an average of 30, before winning the election at closer to 40.

If true, this likely means a very strong FF minority, if not an FF majority, pending on how the votes flow in Ireland's preferential ballot STV system.



In Israel we have 4 polls now since the candidate deadline, averaging them, we get the following:

34.5 - Blue and White
31 - Likud
15 - Orthodox Parties
13.5 - Joint List
10 - United Left
8.25 United Right
7.75 - Yisrael Beiteinu
1 - Otzma

55.25 = Pro Bibi
55 = Pro Gantz
61 = Needed for government



Here at home in Canada, I saw a debate this morning about if the Conservatives need a bilingual leader to win seats in Quebec. The answer is "No." with caveats. What they do need is a 'quebec leader' to speak for the party in Quebec. They'd also really need to get that person into the French debate. If they can do these things, then they do not need a leader who speaks French. One way to achieve this is to have an extremely strong Deputy leader, and it sounds like Deltell is trying to position himself to be just that guy, with his commitment to 'contribute differently' vs being sole and full time leader.