Interview with Matthew Rowlinson, NDP candidate for London West

Hurley: Unfortunately we're seeing a number of incidents involving the harassment of Muslims during this election, and you have to wonder whether these incidents have been fueled by the government's fear mongering.  

Rowlinson: Well, causality and correlation are hard to establish in this case, but yes, there has been a rise in the harassment of Muslims during this campaign, at the same time that Mr. Harper is running this campaign against people with so-called "un-Canadian values." And I want to say, Muslim Canadians' values are just as Canadian as anyone else's values.

Hurley: How are voters in your riding reacting to this use of fear? Are they buying it, or are they saying "no, we reject this type of campaigning"? 

Rowlinson: Well, I'm an optimist, and I believe Canadians are going to reject this type of politics.

I also believe that this election is going to be very bad for the Conservatives. The polling shows a close race, but I've spoken to lots of people who say they're lifelong conservatives, they voted for Brian Mulroney, they voted for Joe Clark, but they don't like where the (Conservative) party's gone.

So I am optimistic. That being said, I do get phone calls from folks who say they won't vote for the NDP because Mr. Harper opposes the wearing of the niqab during the citizenship oath. And I have to say to them at that point, I'm sorry, but it is not government's job to choose one set of cultural practices over another. And it is not the government's job to tell people what to wear.

Hurley: I wanted to change gears now and talk about the issue of strategic voting, particularly in your riding.

Based on polling conducted by Environics Research and The National Observer earlier this month, Leadnow's strategic voting campaign, Vote Together, has identified London West as a riding where the Conservative MP can be defeated if people "vote together for change."

The campaign says that the race in London West is between the Liberal and Conservative parties, with the NDP polling in third.

What is your message to voters in your riding who may want to vote NDP, but are considering voting Liberal to defeat the Conservative MP?

Rowlinson: My message is that we don't have the information to make that type of decision. The polls have been wrong before – they were wrong about the Alberta election last spring, the Ontario election last year, and they were wrong about the last federal election.

The NDP has won this riding provincially by good margins, both in the last provincial election in 2014, and in a by-election in 2013.

Hurley: I believe it's Peggy Sattler who represents the riding provincially?

Rowlinson: Yes, Peggy Sattler is our MPP. She's been elected twice, and she's won by large margins. In the by-election, we were hearing the exact same thing as we're hearing now, from the London Free Press and other media. They were saying the by-election was a two-way race between the Liberal and Conservative candidates, and that the NDP weren't in it. We won.

And there is a real crisis in the polling industry right now. Even people who generally believe in polls are telling us that there is a crisis because they've been wrong about so many elections. Not just here in Canada – they've had the same problem in the United Kingdom.

And there are lots of reasons why polling has become less accurate, but one of the reasons is they mostly rely on telephone landlines and fewer and fewer people have landlines. Plus the demographics of people who use landlines skew older, which tends to distort the results of the polls.

And then there's the fact that polling takes a lot of time. People are busy, and not all of them have time to press buttons and answer the pollster's questions. Those people tend to skew younger, and they're more working class.

So again, polling has been wrong a lot lately, and no one should use it to direct their vote.