Home stretch

The election campaign is entering its last weekend, and all indications are that we're headed for a minority Conservative government, with each of the three Opposition parties holding a balance of power. In claiming the other day that the Tories had dramatically widened their lead, and now claiming that their lead has dramatically shrunk, The Globe and Mail and CTV are guilty of irresponsible journalism. Given the margins of error in their Strategic Counsel polls, there's no reason to believe there was any shift toward and then away from the Conservatives. The fact that the second result is in line with what other polling organizations have been reporting in recent days suggests that the first result was an anomaly. Whatever the truth may be, and whatever the results on Monday, The Globe and Mail and CTV had no justification for making a mountain of speculation out of a molehill of questionable information.