Transcript
Transcript: Reflections by Nik Nanos
Narration: Public servants, thought leaders and experts from across Canada are reflecting on the ideas shaping public service – leadership, policy, governance, innovation and beyond.
[00:00:10 The words "Leadership", "Policy", "Governance", and "Innovation" appear on the screen in sequence, followed by the words "Review and Reflection".]
[00:00:20 The logo of the Canada School of Public Service is shown.]
This is the Review and Reflection Series produced by the Canada School of Public Service.
[00:00:25 Nik Nanos is shown sitting in a chair. Text reads "Nik Nanos Pollster / Author / Founder, Nanos Research / Chancellor, Carleton University"]
Taki Sarantakis (President of the Canada School of Public Service): Welcome. We are continuing our Canada School of Public Service conversations with interesting Canadians who have made an impact in our society, and we want to get to know them a little bit better. But more importantly than getting to know them a little bit better, we want to talk to them about the things they do. And today, we have Nik Nanos who is one of the most consequential observers of Canadian society of his time. Nik is known as one of Canada's foremost pollsters, which means that he has had the pulse of Canadian society over… what are you now, three decades?
Nik Nanos (Pollster): 30 years.
Taki Sarantakis: Yeah, 30 years. So, there are very, very few Canadians who can speak to kind of what it means to be a Canadian, what we view society as or the economy or social services. Nik, welcome.
Nik Nanos: Great to join you.
Taki Sarantakis: Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where were you born? Where did you go to school?
[00:01:41 An image of Trenton, Ontario is shown next to the text "© Doug Kerr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons".]
Nik Nanos: Well, I was born in a very small town, Trenton, Ontario, which is where the Air Force base is.
[00:01:44 An image of a plane outside the National Air Force Museum of Canada is shown next to the text "© Robert Taylor, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons".]
I was not an Air Force brat. I was a townie and went to public school up till grade 9 in Trenton, Ontario. So, I really grew up in a small-town environment. You walk down the street, everybody knows everyone else. Everyone says hello to everyone else. It was really a great place to be a young boy.
Taki Sarantakis: And so, you were born here, but your parents?
Nik Nanos: Both of my parents were born in Greece. My dad was actually a refugee. He fled the Civil War. After the Second World War in Greece, there was a civil war that was going on, and he was… he grew up during the war. And just think of it this way, so he was born in 1930. So, he was nine years old when the war started, 16 years old when he left, not a great time in your life to be in a war torn or civil war area, and he basically fled. He didn't… he wasn't able to go to school. The schools were closed down, right? So, he was just a guy that left to go to a better place. And luckily, he had an uncle in Belleville, Ontario, which is beside Trenton, that he… that sponsored him and brought him over.
Taki Sarantakis: Then, you went on to university. Tell us a little bit about that.
Nik Nanos: Well, there's one thing before university that is quite important, is that my father, when he was about 46 years old, had decided that he had made enough money and wanted to retire. And at first, he was very excited about retirement, planting tomatoes, visiting his friends, fishing, and stuff like that, but retirement was actually stressful for him and he dropped dead of a heart attack, he was with me, I was 13, my brother was eight years old, dropped dead of a heart attack. And after that, we moved to Oshawa because… so, just think, so there's me, my brother John, and my mom who's a single mom, and I went to high school in Oshawa, a great school, O'Neill Collegiate and Vocational Institute.
[00:03:44 An image of Queen's University is shown.]
And then, from there, I went to Queen's, which was a big transformative experience for me.
Taki Sarantakis: When did you start thinking, I'm kind of… I'm good with numbers, I'm good with analysis, I'm from an entrepreneurial family?
Nik Nanos: Well, I knew numbers and being good with math was in the family because although my father in English was… could not write. He could read but could not write. He was able… and you know the things that young kids are impressed with when they see their parents do stuff. He could do math in his head like it was… like no tomorrow. So, just think, immigrant guy comes to Canada with nothing, can't at first read or write or even speak English, learns how to speak English, learns how to read kind of, and then… but he has this math that he's always fallen back on, and I had always enjoyed two things in school, math… well, three, math, English, and history. So, that was always kind of in the mix. And then, I was studying at Queen's, Political Studies degree, and I'm doing all kinds of different courses on Canadian politics and economic history and international and quantitative survey methods and stuff like that. One of my dad's friends decided to run for public office and he had this proposal to do a public opinion survey, and he called me up to come over for dinner. He says, "Nik, I've got this proposal from some firm in Toronto. Here's what they're proposing. I know you're kind of studying this stuff. Is this any good?" And I go, half-serious… and when you're kind of a young person, you say things, you kind of articulate your ambitions, and because they're so ambitious, usually you're so nervous you laugh at the same time, which is what happened. I said, "Don't hire this firm in Toronto. I'll do the contract for $10,000." And then, I started laughing, which is kind of like the give that maybe you can't do the work. And he said, "Do you think you can do it?" And I said, "I think I can do it," and did that first project.
Taki Sarantakis: Still in university?
Nik Nanos: Still in university, and I remember he said, "I think you might be good at this. What are you doing? What's your plan?" And I said, "I'm going to law school." I'd written my LSAT. I was going to be a lawyer. I had told all my family and I had convinced myself I was going to be a lawyer all the years. And then, he said, "I think you might be good at this. You should try this out." And I kind of said, "Well, how does that work?" And he said, "Well, I'll find investors and we'll start a company." And then, you know what? The most difficult part of this was telling my mother. So, you can imagine, my mother is a traditional person. She's very savvy, very cool, but in certain parts, she's traditional, and I remember calling her because I was at Queen's and I was a student. I said, "Mom, I'm not going to law school." And of course, as soon as a child says that to their parent, they don't think about other opportunities that might be better. It's like, what's wrong? And I remember my mother going, "Is it drugs? Is it a woman? Are you failing out?" And I said, I said, "No, I have this opportunity to start a company." And I was trying to explain to my mother what it was.
And being a pollster is a little more esoteric if you're… for most people. And as I was trying to explain, I was not successful. And I said, "I'm going to be a consultant." And then, my mother goes, "You're going to be a consultant? What am I supposed to tell your aunts and uncles? Why can't you be a lawyer? Why can't you be a teacher? Why can't you be a doctor? Right? You're going to be a consultant?" And the interesting thing about this is that for the first ten years when we started the company, and we're like any new company, it was tough, my uncles would go up to me when we'd have family gatherings and they'd say stuff like, "Nik, I know you're doing this consulting thing but you'd be great at the front of the house of a restaurant, right? You've got the personality." And I remember my wife Paule would be with me and she would… I would tell her, I'd go, "Listen, this is not an insult. This is not a put-down. They're actually saying, because this is the business that they're in, that I could do a good job. So, I take that in the spirit that it was intended." But until the firm had more profile, I don't think they really understood that I could make a living and I could enjoy myself at it.
Taki Sarantakis: Exactly. As a fellow son of Greek immigrant parents, when I started university, my mother was so proud. And then, when I did my masters, she started getting confused. And then, when I started going on for my Ph.D., she was like, "What's going on? All your friends have graduated. You're still at school. Are you failing?" And trying to explain there was another ladder, I think, to the day, to this day, she still didn't believe it.
Nik Nanos: But can I just add something to that? However, the importance of education, the importance of university was drilled into me. So, think, my father had about a grade 4, grade 5 education, but he knew, go to school, learn, do things.
Taki Sarantakis: Mine was grade 6.
Nik Nanos: Yeah, so it was like university was a black box but that's all they knew, is you need that in order to prepare for the world.
Taki Sarantakis: Absolutely. Now, the world, let's fast forward. Let's start your professional journey. So, tell me a little bit about the inadvertent role that Flora MacDonald played in your professional life.
Nik Nanos: Yeah, I usually call this perhaps a situation where the shortest career in polling history would have happened. So, we were hired by the local media to do a survey in the 1988 federal campaign, that was the legendary free trade election, and we were asked to do a survey.
[00:09:59 An image of Flora MacDonald is shown next to the text "© United Press International, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons".]
Flora MacDonald was the Conservative cabinet… Progressive Conservative cabinet minister.
Taki Sarantakis: She was a big deal minister for people who are younger and don't remember.
Nik Nanos: Not only was she a major Cabinet minister in the Mulroney government, she was one of the top women politicians, elected officials in the country. She was a mentor to a whole generation of women that followed her. She spent most of her time canvassing in the ridings of other women in order to help them get elected, so yeah. So, we were hired to do a survey in 1988 and she was up against Peter Milliken.
[00:10:35 An image of Peter Milliken is shown next to the text "© Bruce MacRaederivative, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons".]
And we did the survey, and I remember looking at the numbers, and I'm partners with my brother John and I'm looking at the numbers, and I'm like, how can this be? Peter Milliken, the Liberal, is going to potentially or likely defeat Flora MacDonald. And at that time in the campaign, you remember in 1988, the Brian Mulroney PC party.
Taki Sarantakis: Yeah, they were going to win.
Nik Nanos: They were going to win and they ended up winning the election, and I remember saying, "How can it be that the Progressive Conservatives federally will win a majority mandate, that Brian Mulroney will win, that Flora MacDonald, who is a distinguished public elected official, could lose?" Because she hadn't done anything wrong. To the contrary, she had done everything right, and how could she lose? And I remember giving it to my media client, and it was kind of funny because they said, "Okay, so now, you're telling me that Flora MacDonald…" and no disrespect to Mr. Milliken, but they said "Flora MacDonald is going to lose to some bookish lawyer who reads Hansard in his spare time." And it's like, the numbers, these are the numbers we have. And for that media organization, they had already announced that they were doing a poll. So, it was too late for them to kind of back out. So, anyways, we… the poll was released, and I remember when we were watching, waiting on election night for, I'd say, my first big public test as a pollster, I remember turning to my brother John. I said, "We might have the shortest career in polling history." Now, that ended up not being the case because Flora MacDonald did lose to Peter Milliken because Peter Milliken worked harder and the riding had changed. So, she just wasn't kind of up with the times, but that was my first lesson that whatever comes back, if you have a scientific survey that is done properly, regardless of what your personal views might be and regardless of what your intuition might be, focus on the numbers and stick to it.
Taki Sarantakis: What is a scientific survey for those of us that don't understand it?
Nik Nanos: Well, there are a number of things that are part of a scientific survey. First of all, and most importantly, it should be repeatable, which means that if I do a study with certain questions and a certain methodology, I should be able to give it to a colleague, to an academic, to anyone, they should be able to repeat the study and also to have the same results. The other part that's part of a scientific study, especially when it comes to public opinion research, is to have randomness, have random selection. I'd always kind of say I don't want to talk to people who want to do surveys. If you want to do a survey, there's something wrong with you. So, if you don't want to do a survey, you're exactly the person that I want to talk to. So, we don't take volunteers, for example, when we do surveys. We do random selection. And then, it's the… it's being really systematic at all the steps. I'd always kind of say it's like if you're into cooking, what are the quality of the ingredients? What is the consistency of how you're doing? What is your cooking technique? That all those things add up to a scientific survey. So, you don't cut corners and you manage every single step of the research process for quality.
Taki Sarantakis: Now, there always seems to be an asterisk, the 19 times out of 20. What does that mean to us?
Nik Nanos: Yeah, we shouldn't confuse the margin of error.
[00:14:05 Text appears onscreen next to a chalk drawing of the Margin of Error that reads: "Margin of Error: The range within which the true result is likely to fall, 19 times out of 20. It reflects how precisely the numbers represent the full population."]
That's the margin of error that is accurate 19 times out of 20, 3.1 percentage points. Don't confuse that with quality. Actually, that has nothing to do with quality whatsoever. It actually has to do with how to interpret the numbers, that if you have a particular survey, say, for example, if 50% of Canadians think of one thing and 50% think of another and it's a national survey of thousand people, it's accurate plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
[00:14:20 A red bar and a blue bar are shown next to each other, both labelled 50%. The red bar changes to 53% and the blue bar changes to 47% after the text "+ 3.1% margin of error" appears onscreen.]
And you can see the results could be anywhere from 53 to 47. So, it gives you guidance as to the likely range of results, but I don't look at the margin of error because that's just… that's formulaic. I look at the questions that are designed, I look at the sampling strategy, all those things, and those are more indicative of the quality of a piece of work.
Taki Sarantakis: So, tell us what's… on the same subject, whether it's voting or buying something or confidence or anything else you choose, what's kind of a good question and kind of a bad question vis-à-vis getting an accurate result?
Nik Nanos: So, think of it this way, say we were to talk about or try to understand people's views related to national conscription, which has to do with having young men and women potentially forcibly required to serve.
Taki Sarantakis: Which is a thing around the world.
Nik Nanos: It's a thing in many countries. It might come in a country like Germany which hasn't had conscription since Angela Merkel, might come back.
[00:15:30 An image of Angela Merkel is shown next to the text "© Aleph, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons".]
But so, think of it this way, so you're trying to understand. So, I'd always think of not just the question but the question order and the content that might be introduced. So, one way to ask the question would be to say things like, "Do you believe young people…" and this is a classic example, "Do you believe that young people need more structure in their lives? Do you think it's important kind of for young people to learn how to build teams?" And then, to have that type of line of questioning and then to ask about national conscription. Now, the thing to watch for is that in those two questions that I asked, it's yes or no, and I always tell my colleagues in the firm, if you see an answer that says yes or no, that is the first flag that something is a leading question. It's kind of like the lawyers that are cross-examining witnesses to get them to say something. So, that would be an example of the bad way to kind of unpack this. A better way to kind of unpack this particular issue is to… for example, usually what you'd do is you wouldn't say yes, no. We'd ask people whether they support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose, or oppose national conscription. So, the thing is, bad question, except if it's behavioural, usually yes, no, because that is leading. The question needs to be balanced in the responses so that people can either oppose or support the item.
Taki Sarantakis: Is that kind of the difference between prompted and unprompted, or is it more kind of you're trying not to guide the answer?
Nik Nanos: Yeah, usually what… you would refer to that as a push-poll.
[00:17:25 Text appears onscreen next to an image of a checklist that reads: "Push-poll: A deceptive political tactic that appears to be a survey but is actually used to influence voters through biased or misleading questions, rather than to collect genuine data."]
You're pushing in a particular direction. Now, in some cases, in fairness, introducing content can help develop a campaign because, say, for example, you wanted to have an educational campaign and you wanted to figure out, what were the best ways to engage Canadians, what pieces of information were they most interested in, what was most likely to manage the dial? And why don't we use something general like smoking, right? You want to have fewer Canadians smoke because smoking is harmful. In that particular case, what you'd do is you would introduce information related to, are you aware of these things? And then, what you'd do is kind of see what the impact of those information pieces might have. Now, you've got to be very careful because it's very easy for people to say that you're leading respondents. But the reality is, trying to understand what Canadians want to learn about a particular topic, the information that they need to make a decision, I think, is really important.
Taki Sarantakis: So, one last question on polling and then we'll kind of move to Canadians. Polling, obviously, and technology, obviously, has changed since you started way back when, way back when there was no Internet, way back when virtually all of us had landlines, way back when you had to be mega, mega rich to have a cell phone and now little kids have cell phones. Walk us through a little bit kind of the challenges, the benefits if there are any, of kind of that technological curve over time.
Nik Nanos: Well, the thing is that what technology has done has forced the industry and researchers, social scientists like me, to always improve their methods, right? Because you're trying to always reach as many people as possible. And when I started, there were no cell phones, there was no Internet. You were basically randomly dialing numbers, and we've seen that go from that to a place where surveys are done online and primarily among cell phone numbers. The proportion of landlines in our cell is now quite small, compared to the past. But the interesting thing is that even though the way we contact Canadians has changed, the different steps in terms of quality control and random sampling and also developing questionnaires has actually stayed fairly consistent. But the thing is, it's become much more expensive. There's survey fatigue, and the surveys become much smaller, shorter surveys, snappier surveys. Because think of it this way, if you're reaching someone on their cell phone, you can't say, I'd like to do a 30-minute interview with you because they're going to burn through 30 minutes of their plan. So, it's led the industry to adapt to how respondents are changing and how technology has been changing.
[00:20:27 An excerpt of an article titled "CRIC's Value of Research Survey finds Canadians have a high degree of trust in research, more likely to participate in research guided by strict rules and standards" is shown with highlighted text that reads: "The vast majority (more than 9 in 10) of Canadians and business executives had a moderate to high degree of trust for survey research: 93% of Canadians and 91% of business executives."]
But the thing is, the Canadian research industry is actually quite strong. The research industry in other countries, they've had some rough, stormy weather… but for Canada, it's actually been… the Canadian industry is recognized as one of the strongest globally.
Taki Sarantakis: That's good to hear. Let's shift now to kind of the last part of our conversation or most of the last part of our conversation, which is Canadians. Tell us a little bit about Canadians, and I don't mean like the latest survey you've done. I just kind of mean like over time, what are the things that Canadians believe in or are educated or kind of the big indices? What's kind of a Canadian? Are they a happy person? An unhappy person? An educated person? Are they travellers? Are they not travellers? If somebody were to land, like me, on a bus with you, and we're not on a bus but close, and I say, explain Canadians to me.
Nik Nanos: I think one of the most interesting things as an observer, because I'm also looking at the demographics, and it might sound counterintuitive but when you look at the educational profile of new Canadians, like Anil Arora at StatsCan did some really amazing work on this, that showed that the average new Canadian had more of an education than the average Canadian that was not an immigrant, and this is very different than a lot of other countries. Here's a little tidbit. I remember in the 2016 election, Donald Trump saying he wished America had an immigration policy like Canada where they're screening people, they're recruiting people, that there's a particular process. And so, when we think of Canada, we are increasingly becoming more educated and our educational attainment level is improving. That's the good side of the ledger. The worrisome is that there's an unprecedented level of anxiety about the future, but especially among young people, and it is converse to what has been the case since the post-World War II era where usually young people are the most optimistic. They're healthy, they've got their first job, they start getting their independence, right? Life is before them and there are opportunities. And since 1945, it's been a pretty… generally a pretty good cycle of prosperity in Canada. Fast forward now from 1945 to 2025 and young people are the most pessimistic. They're working hard but they can't get ahead. About 28% of young people are worried about paying for their groceries, a significant proportion are worried about just affording for housing, forget about buying a house, just paying for housing.
So, now, we have a world that's turned itself on its head where young people are the most pessimistic and old people are the most optimistic, and what I'm concerned about is kind of a real generational war where young people say, "Okay, mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, you've messed things up, right? Look at the debt that we're in. We can't pay for the bills. The environment is going into the tank." You look at the world and we're worried about war in Ukraine, tensions between the United States and China, superpowers bombing other powers which we've seen recently, and the thing is that everything… it's like for young people, everything is going wrong, and the thing is that the pandemic was really a scarring experience, especially for young people. They were isolated and on the front line at the same time. And I think at least from a research perspective, when we look at that sliver of demographics, the young people during the pandemic, it's going to be a lot like the stories about the Great Depression where there was a sliver of a demographic that were on the verge of being homeless, could not get ahead, were travelling around to try to find jobs and stuff like that, and they carried that with them for the rest of their lives. So, it's interesting what's happening in Canada. On the one hand, there's significant opportunity because of the talent of people that we have in the country. And then, on the other hand, there are some really big forces that speak to the tension right now in our society.
Taki Sarantakis: So, that's been a big shift over time, youth. What other things have shifted over time that you've noticed on kind of a secular level, like it's not if you ask people two weeks from now and two weeks ago, you get randomly or dramatically different answers, but more in the realm of like long-term trends?
Nik Nanos: Well, one of the other long-term trends is a mistrust of institutions, period, full stop, right across the board, and it really doesn't matter whether it's the police, the church, the Supreme Court, just pick your institution, especially political institutions are at the bottom of the trust scale, and we've been seeing a decline in the last 20 years of trust in institutions. And maybe, it's even scarier to think that we see people questioning whether democracy is a good form of government. It's kind of like first principles, right? But think of it this way, if you can't pay for the groceries and if you work hard, the social contract is under stress. I think the social contract is something as simple as if you work hard, you should be able to pay the bills. The social contract, I think, is something as basic as if you're an entrepreneur, you should be able to provide for your family. We're not talking about massive aspirations. We're talking about, I think, basics. And I think for a lot of people, the conditions for people to be able to afford to pay the bills or for entrepreneurs to be able to provide for their families are being undermined. So, should we really be surprised that they don't trust elected officials, that they don't trust the courts, that they don't trust any institutions when they feel that society is failing, not failed but failing, at providing an environment to succeed. And think of it this way, and for young people, they do everything their parents tell them to do; go to school, work hard, work through school, you'll get a job, you'll be paid off, you will reap the benefits of doing all the things that you're supposed to do, and they do all those things that society and their family tells them. And then, at the end, it's like they may have a lower standard of living than their parents.
Taki Sarantakis: Now, like anybody who's skilled at what you do, you saw some of these things before most of us did, and I think the best example for that, for me, was you wrote a book that looked at a few different places and you put a word in the title that I still remember very clearly, and that word was rage.
Nik Nanos: Yeah.
Taki Sarantakis: Talk to us a little bit about that insight. Why did you or how did you start seeing that something was amiss?
[00:28:12 The cover of the book "The Age of Voter Rage" by Nik Nanos is shown.]
Nik Nanos: Well, the book that I wrote, Age of Voter Rage… and actually the subtitle is Tyranny of Small Numbers, and kind of those two things are actually quite interesting. I started writing it right after Trump was first elected in 2016. I finished it in 2017. It was published in 2018, and what I did was looked at politics in Canada, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom and looked at leaders like Trump, Macron, Trudeau, and Nigel Farage.
[00:28:32 An image of Donald Trump is shown above the text "© Shealeah Craighead, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons". An image of Emmanuel Macron is shown above the text "© Simon Dawson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons". An image of Justin Trudeau is shown above the text "© Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons". An image of Nigel Farage is shown above the text "© Laurie Noble, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons".]
And then, I started seeing some similarities, not ideological similarities but just similarities where politicians, whether they be right-wing or more progressive, were tapping into kind of rage against the machine, rage against society, and Trump is a good example of that, Nigel Farage with Brexit in the United Kingdom is a good example, but I put Macron and Trudeau in the same categories which kind of annoyed some people. For Macron… and we have to remember he created a party out of nothing and became President and won a lot of seats in the National Assembly, and that's running as an outsider, saying that the party system had failed. And I put Justin Trudeau in that category because if you remember, he was talking about the 1%, the 1% will pay. He talked a lot about the 1% but this whole idea that the system wasn't working and that people had to look at alternatives.
But the scary part about all of this, and I'd always kind of think of what we learned from the researchers, is that there's two types of citizens, and not to diminish each because they're all very important, the type of citizen that is… wants to know the facts, like tell me what's going on, tell me what the facts are, what will be the impact, but what I put my finger on in the book is that there's another type of citizen that's actually quite important, citizens that do not necessarily have the time to read up on things, because you know what? They're trying to get their kids to soccer practice and they're struggling to pay for the bills. They're not going to read the policy brief and they're going to have a reaction, just a gut reaction to something, and I'd always say that those folks are into symbolic messaging, and the interesting thing about that is that I'd always kind of say if you're an organization and you're engaging the public, you're going to do your fact-based messaging, right? Which you should do, it's very important on evidence. But then, someone has to be at the table and go, "Excuse me, if no one is interested or has the time to read the facts, how are we going to engage them so that they understand their interest in a particular topic?"
And what I realized was that a lot of these politicians that were becoming more and more successful did not do so because it was fact-based. What put them over the top and gave them the advantage is that they understood how to emotionally connect with voters, and if you think of that fueled by social media, which is… and why don't we just call social media the ultimate emotional playground? Because it's not about long-form anything, it's about short-form emojis, emotion, and you mix those two things together and the people that have rage about what's going on can clamp on to those types of politicians. The other more interesting thing is the tyranny of small numbers and it was about how super small swings and voters could have a disproportionate impact on democratic outcomes, and I looked at all of the elections, Canadian, U.K., U.S., and that was the case. The last federal election that we had in Canada is now the pinnacle example of the tyranny of small numbers. So, think of it this way, 19.5 million Canadians voted in the last election. If 60 voters in three ridings in the right place had moved to the Liberals, the Liberals would have formed a majority government. So, chew on that. We're not talking about mass movements; we're talking about micro movements and them having a disproportionate impact on the shape of democratic outcomes.
Taki Sarantakis: Now, this is fascinating because this gets us into the world of kind of efficient vote harvesting.
Nik Nanos: Yeah.
Taki Sarantakis: And when I was a little kid a hundred years ago studying political science, they taught us that the votes were in the middle and that's why Canadian political parties largely stayed in the middle, because that's where the votes are. Is that still the case today?
Nik Nanos: Well, why don't we say people are in the middle but the politicians are not, usually. When we ask Canadians to place them on an ideological scale, and we do this repeatedly, we've done it over the years where zero is one end of the political spectrum, ten is the other end of the political spectrum, I guess the good news is that still the most popular place to be is four, five, or six on the ten-point scale. In the last ten years, most of our politicians were not at the four, five, or six. They had staked out territory, but what we've gone is a system where parties have gone from being brokerage parties where it didn't matter what party you were, you need to figure out how to get votes in Newfoundland and Labrador and in Saskatchewan and in southwestern Ontario and in British Columbia, and there would be brokerage politics taking place and the brokerage politics would force parties to move towards the centre. We've gone from that model to one member, one vote.
So, in a one member, one vote, the only thing that really matters is the vote. You don't care where it is, and what we've seen is that not just in Canada but in other countries, if you want to be the leader of either, say, for example, the Democrats, if you want to be the presidential candidate for the Democrats or the Republicans, you're not appealing to Democrat and Republican voters. You're appealing to registered Democrats and Republicans, also the registered voters who are likely to vote in a primary. So, you're veering to the left or the right. The same thing occurs in Canada generally, that if you want to be the leader of the Conservative Party, a Conservative Party member voting in the leadership campaign is very different than a Conservative voter, and the same thing applies to the other parties. So, I think for Canadians, many times they feel like they've been abandoned because they're in the middle, but there's… I think there's a long-term reward to veer towards the centre when it comes to electoral success.
Taki Sarantakis: Now, one last thing on kind of the electoral system and data. We're at the point now and we've been at the point for a long, long time where a political party can say I need two more percent in this riding, I don't care about that riding and the reason why I don't care about it is I'm either going to win it or I'm going to lose it no matter what I do. So, everybody is kind of micro-targeting the specific ridings, specific messages to get you that little incremental that you need one way or another.
Nik Nanos: Yeah.
Taki Sarantakis: Tell us a little bit what that does to our politicians and the messages they deliver to us and the types of things they put before us. And again, across the spectrum, I would think it's largely the same left to right, etc..
Nik Nanos: Well, it's absolutely the same across the spectrum. The only difference is whether you're successful or not at that. The interesting thing is that technology has been a powerful enabler of segmenting and dividing voters into groups, and this goes back into targeting on social media where you can decide you want to micro-target a particular group based on their habits, hobbies, newspaper media habits, and stuff like that. And as a result, just think in the… why don't we say in the olden days, because that information did not exist, you actually needed a unifying strategy, your unifying strategy being, well, we don't have the data to know how to talk to everybody so we need to figure out a strategy that can cut across the country, that can appeal to as many voters as possible, and that is more of a unifying force, and what we had, especially for the two main parties, is different visions and competition for what that unifying vision was. Fast forward now and I would hazard to say… this is where I might get into a little trouble, is that a unifying vision is not necessary to win.
Taki Sarantakis: It could even be harmful.
Nik Nanos: It could be harmful. So, we've gone from a unifying vision to bring a country and people together to what… I'll say the mad scientist, right? Why don't we call it the bad mad scientist, who's saying, "Let's add a little bit of 18- to 23-year-olds who are of this particular demographic and live in this type of community, and then let's have 45- to 50-year-olds who have cats, and we can connect those two groups together." So, I think part of the problem is that technology has created a culture of division within political parties because the data exists to divide people because there's so much specific information out there on voters that it's not necessary to have the… to have kind of that unifying vision, but here's the sad part. It's made technology easier and easier to reach voters but it's undermined the ability to create communities where people who are very different actually can agree on something when it comes to vision. So, we've… that's been under threat, just our ability to have politicians stand up with a national vision has been under threat just because of technology.
Taki Sarantakis: Two last questions. The first is kind of… I'm going to reformulate what you said or what I think you said in a much more blunt way, and tell me if I'm right or wrong for the benefit of our viewers. We know that the vision can be very profitable. Like in some ways, Facebook, Twitter, and on and on and on, they make their money from division. They make their money from kind of putting people into different groups and then watching those groups kind of exhibit the division and live the division. Would it be fair to say that the same dynamic is true in politics? Again, not just Canada but the United States, Germany, Greece, on and on and on, which is to say, is division an electorally profitable thing for parties to do?
Nik Nanos: Yeah, absolutely, division and rage, because if you have people… so, think of it this way, if someone's angry, you don't need to remind them to vote, you don't need to give them a drive to the voting station, because they're angry, if you become that vehicle. Many people blame Donald Trump for a lot of things. My view is that he's a symptom of a broader problem. Donald Trump did not create populism. He did not create all these other problems, but you know what? Love or hate the guy, he's taken advantage of these for his political betterment, and the thing is that when we look… and it's not just politicians, it also includes the media. We read the news and conflict sells eyeballs. It always has. So, think of it this way, if the only way a lot of these social media and media platforms can monetize themselves with tension and division, and if that's all that you're reading, is that… it's interesting. I've been reading lots of… don't laugh, I do these during elections. I read stoic meditations in the morning just because of some of the things that are posted about things and because someone might not like a particular data point that reflects Canadian society, and I remember one of the stoic meditations had to do with… it's kind of like if you think of your personal, your physical health, that whatever you consume impacts your physical health, either for good or ill.
And then, the stoic observation was, think of your brain and your mental health in exactly the same way. If you put garbage in, that will make you unhealthy and it will impact your rationality. It will impact all those things, and you know what? If we apply the same standards to reading things that we did to eating things, people would change their behaviour because they're like, "Well, I'm not sure if we're going to read that, that could be dangerous for my health, that might be bad." It would be like, who produced this? Like, think of it this way, people spend more time reading the ingredients on a label of yogurt than they do fact-checking things that are important and impact their lives, and we have to… so, we have to kind of turn almost the world on its head to say, you know that same type of responsible behaviour that you have in terms of your eating? And you know what? Every once in a while, it's okay to have fast food but you know that you can't do that all the time, and I think we have to apply, we have to get people to think in the same way, that whatever they read is nourishment, not just for their brain but for their health, and you reap whatever you sow on that front.
Taki Sarantakis: Last question, and maybe feel free to analyze it or talk about it philosophically. When you and I were younger and somebody gave data to a politician or to a public servant, and assuming it came… it was done in a scientific way, etc., overall, we wouldn't argue about the data. We would argue about what to do given the data.
Nik Nanos: Yeah.
Taki Sarantakis: And an example is something like unemployment is X, homelessness is Y. And then, people would say, well, to fix unemployment, you do A, B, and C, and to tackle homelessness, you do X, Y, Z, and we would argue about those things. Now, it seems like we almost don't get to that stage because we're arguing about the underlying data, and you're a data person. Tell us what that does if we're arguing about the underlying data instead of moving towards the solutions, because it seems to me that it… we can't even define problems if we don't agree on the underlying data.
Nik Nanos: So, the team got me… there is something that I used to say to clients repeatedly, and the team told me they got me, as a gift, a little plaque to put on my desk. It sits on the very front of my desk, if you sit at my desk, and it says, "The numbers are the numbers." And I'd be in meetings and clients would… they'd have a question, and I'd say, "Listen, hey, maybe you don't like what's coming back but we have to recognize the reality that we're in right now and the numbers are the numbers." So, we've gone from a world where the numbers are the numbers, right? And treated… because they still are objective today and 20 years ago. They're both objective data points. In the past, they were objective data points and they were treated as objective data points. And then, what happened was, what do we do now? Now, not in all instances but many instances, some people treat the numbers as another subjective element to debate over. And if we cannot even agree that the sky is blue, if we can't agree on that, then how can we have a discussion about whether… or whatever you want to talk about? And the thing is that in a world where there are so many things that we need to fix, we're quibbling over what the facts might be, whether crime exists or not, whether… what is climate change, and stuff like that, and the thing is it's kind of like a family that has a big challenge and you're bickering over the curtains and the house is on fire. And then, it'd be like, "I think those are tassels." "Those aren't tassels, those are long strings." "That's a sheer." "How sheer is that?" And then, the reality is that the house is on fire when you should be thinking about, what are the solutions to put out the fire?
And that's what I worry about the most, because the thing is that we should just take the data and the evidence and say, okay, let's diagnose the problem. I think we need to on the diagnosis. Once we agree on the diagnosis, let's debate what the treatment is. And then, let's also talk about the trade-offs for the treatment, because you know what? Someone might say… and many times when I'm dealing with clients, they'd say, "Well, if you want to have a certain public policy objective in this time horizon, this is what you have to do. If it's a longer time horizon, then you could do it like this, but these are the trade-offs. Are you willing to make certain sacrifices or do something a little differently because you want to accelerate an objective?" But what's happened is that it's a distraction. Even having that discussion is a distraction. It's just better to start off, these are the facts, now let's think about moving forward, and I think that's what Canadians want. We should not confuse what entertains Canadians with what is important. Can I tell you, a lot of political things entertain Canadians and they're very entertaining, but they're still worried about paying for their groceries and whether their kids will be able to afford to live in the same type of home. And yes, the entertainment exists but we need to focus on diagnosing the problem and thinking about the path forward. And if I was to sum up like 30 to 35 years of listening to Canadians and what they would say to elected officials, it's quite simple, don't mess things up. Don't mess things up. Create an environment for me to succeed and to thrive and to realize my hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
Taki Sarantakis: Nik Nanos, pollster, author, chancellor of Carleton University, and officer of the Order of Canada.
[00:48:25 Text appears onscreen: Correction: Mr. Nanos is a "Member" of the Order of Canada, not an "Officer".]
Thank you so much for spending some time to demystify a little bit of your craft for the benefit of our viewers, and thank you so much for the work you've done over the years in helping Canadians and politicians and public servants understand their country.
Nik Nanos: Thank you.
[00:48:48 Text appears onscreen: Blooper moment]
To say along the lines of…
[00:48:49 A ringing sound is heard offscreen.]
Oh. Ok.
Taki Sarantakis: A little interruption.
Nik Nanos: Is it the Amazon…
Taki Sarantakis: Keep going. But it sounds so cute.
Nik Nanos: Is it the Amazon order?
Taki Sarantakis: Yeah, maybe.
Nik Nanos: Do you want me to start from the beginning?
Unidentified Speaker: We're are going to have to pause. Sorry.
Taki Sarantakis: Who's the guy?
Unidentified Speaker: It's Amazon.
Taki Sarantakis: Is it really? [laughs]
[00:49:15 The CSPS logo appears onscreen.]
[00:49:22 The Government of Canada logo appears onscreen.]
