Angry in the Great White North

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion will be joining Conservative leader Stephen Harper and the other federal party leaders in two election debates this week -- French on Wednesday and English on Thursday.

Stephane Dion says people will be surprised at what they'll see:

Dion, speaking to CTV's Canada AM Monday, said he's looking forward to being in the living rooms of Canadians.

"Up to now they have seen on their TV a Stephane Dion that does not exist," Dion said. "The one that Mr. Harper wants to describe to us."

He said the debates will show Canadians how much he cares and how prepared he is for the country's top job.

The problem is that people have already developed a sense of what they'll expect to see.  Even Liberals are not holding out a lot of hope:

According to a Strategic Counsel poll, conducted from Sept. 24-27 for CTV and The Globe and Mail, just eight per cent think Dion will outperform the other leaders.

Most voters (42 per cent) thought Conservative Leader Stephen Harper would out-perform his rivals.

NDP Leader Jack Layton received 20 per cent of the votes while Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe and Elizabeth May both had 7 per cent.

Unsurprisingly, only two per cent of Conservative supporters thought Dion would be the best debater. But among respondents who identified themselves as Liberal voters, the number was also relatively low:

• Stephen Harper (Conservatives): 28 per cent
• Stephane Dion (Liberals): 22 per cent
• Jack Layton (NDP): 20 per cent
• Elizabeth May (Greens): 10 per cent
• Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Quebecois): 1 per cent

The problem for the Liberals is that a debate is not a true sporting event.  In a true sport, like hockey, the winner is the team with the most goals.  Very rarely is there any real contention concerning the outcome of the game.  The measurement of success, that is, the number of times the puck got in the net, is observable and objective.

A debate is more like a faux sport, like figure skating.  Sure, sometimes the winner is obvious, because one skater fell down and the other didn't.  But if neither skater made an observable error, then the winner is chosen based on subjective impressions.  Indeed, the whole scoring mechanism in figure skating had to be rebuilt in 2004 (it now includes high speed cameras filming the position of skates after jumps and such) because judges were making stuff up based on decisions made prior to the competition about who would win.

Of course, those judges were cheating, but they could get away with it because, frankly, for two skating performances in which no obvious errors happened, it's not all that hard to find people picking one side or the other as winners.  The choice would have little to do with technical merit and everything to do with patriotism.

Judging the debate is like judging figure skating (prior to the changes in 2004).  The judges, that is, the voters, are going in with preconceived ideas of who the winner is going to be.  Short of a major stumble, it is not likely that any leader is going to be able to say anything to shift people. 

Moreover, everyone will be able to point at some moment in the debate as the key moment that confirmed their expectations.  Of course, that other point in the debate that the other guy is saying proves his guy was the winner is being blown way out of proportion, right?

So the 42% of the people who think Stephen Harper will do well will find one or more moments in the debate that shows they were right all along.  And the 8% of the people who think Stephane Dion will outperform the others are going to be satisfied that they were right as well.

Why do I know this?  Because I know people hate to be wrong. 

And unless someone trips up on a toe pick and plows right into the boards, I don't see the numbers altering all that much.  That's bad news for Stephane Dion, and for those people who think all he has to do is show up on time and stand behind the right podium to be declared a winner.