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Rolo Tahmasee certainly spills a lot of ink in Canada doesn't he? Call it passionate debate, call it controversy, call it what you will one thing is for sure... he leaves few citizens indifferent.

66 people participated in the survey this time around which represents a 24% increase. It also represents two more random draws for $1,000. The lucky winners this time are Ola Normainn and Mann551. Thank you everyone for making these surveys a success.

The last two editions featured a question that allowed citizens to "gift" their participation donation to another citizen. That seems to be working well but I have received a number of messages asking who the anonymous donors are. Following my policy of confidentiality I have not shared that information but some a really curious. So if you feel like revealing yourselves I invite you to do so.

The sample continues to be stable when it comes the profile of activity of participants. Amongst other things this is useful to know because it means that although the precise sample changes from survey to survey, the data is comparable and does in fact represent a majority of Canadians.



I re-introduced the party membership question as I had mistakenly removed it last time. Almost all questions I might ask are political in nature and so affiliation has a good chance of being relevant. There was a major typo/mistake though as one of the categories read "Not a member of a military party"... oops. Of course it should have said "Not a member of a political party", not sure how that one got through.



We have a nice even distribution here and each segment is well represented which allowed me to do some interesting secondary analysis later on.

On a whim I also decided to ask how many citizens changed party affiliation in the past month. When I conceived of the question I had in mind the CPP take over. However, it ended up measuring something completely different which would yield interesting data of its own... keep reading.



Primary analysis.

The big question and the one around which the whole survey was constructed was the one about the Pardon. The results were very close:



Although the final stats show a reverse of the final count in Congress, it confirms what pretty much everyone knows by now. Canadians are split when it comes to pardoning Rolo. Depending on the arguments presented, the deal offered, the results could go one way or another. What the survey does not measure but what we can easily read in the media and Congress is that both poles are firmly entrenched in their position and the softer middle vacillates between one and the other.

The next question caused some confusion and well it might have, it was poorly worded and presented. What I was trying to ask is if the people would have accepted something not so black and white as a full pardon. In other words, you may be opposed to a unilateral wipe but if something was offered in return, if Rolo exhibited certain behavior, support may change. Finally I added the "Congress should not be offering a pardon" option to capture those that thought this subject shouldn't even have been started.



Following the trend, this table shows a pretty even distribution once more. So confusion about the wording of the question aside, it illustrates that the subject is complex. Those that are trying to dumb it down to its lowest common denominator are wrong to do so. Those others that think we just need to move past need to realize that we can't. This question is important and its resolution, one way or another, will have consequences felt by the community as a whole.

When I asked if Rolo and his followers were perceived are positive, negative or neutral influences, I wondered if I wasn't being redundant. Wouldn't the previous questions already speak to that?



Not quite. A clear majority of respondents feel that Rolo is a negative influence. That means there is a segment of citizens out there that acknowledge the harm that may come from him but believe that a pardon may change that.

Finally I wanted to know if Canadians felt like a pardon would end things. If the motion passed and was not vetoed, would Rolo forgive and be forgiven. I carefully worded the question because I wanted to have people think on where the potential future conflict may come from, it would not automatically come from Rolo.



A majority, 42.4%, simply thought he would not re-integrate period. And some did choose the option that scores may attempt to be settled by either side in the future. However, once more we see the yes (aggregated) and no are pretty evenly split.

Secondary analysis.

Party affiliation.

The sample being big enough, I thought it would be interesting to see how the pardon vote would break down if I crossed it with party affiliation. I expected to see two things, Norsefire firmly on the Rolo side of the ledger and likely EPIC as most opposed considering, amongst other things, the number of ex-CPP members in its ranks.



100% of Norsefire - various chapters members were in favour of the pardon. This points to a very cohesive group and one that isn't likely to abandon Rolo anytime soon. EPIC however was not the most opposed, that distinction belongs to the TCO and those that don't identify to any party.

Similarly I wanted to see what the cross-tabulation of party and Rolo's influence would yield. My initial expectation was to see a distribution similar to the one above.



Once more the Norsefire parties are 100% in agreement that Rolo is a positive force in our community. The MDP on the other hand who would have supported the pardon by a proportion of 50% don't think so.

The most telling thing the charts show us though is that independent voters are the most likely to have a negative impression and oppose unilateral moves in favor of Rolo.

Party jumping.

So when I saw so many citizens saying they had changed parties recently, I thought it would be interesting to see how their particular profile matched up against the rest of the data. My initial thesis was that those that changed parties would be more likely to oppose Rolo as I thought a majority of these would have been displaced by him.



The results show the exact opposite. Part of the reason for this is the Norsefire factor, the fact that their membership is much more likely to change parties to go and vote where their leader needs them to vote. But Norsefire only accounted for 16.7% of the sample.

Now the question becomes, does support for a full pardon become inversely proportional to how deeply a citizen has put down roots? This would make sense. The longer you are somewhere, the more likely you are to have contributed to building something, therefore there is an increased chance you may feel threatened by Rolo and what action he may take next or were a victim already.



And this time there is a correlation between the pardon, perception and party mobility. Those that did not change parties were much more likely to think Rolo was a negative influence vs. those that moved around, 47.7% vs. 71.9%.

Has all this been a giant misunderstanding? If we moved around more and were not so set in our ways, would we have the same conflicts?

The Congress vote has been followed with a veto which in turn is being tested by another vote in Congress. Like everything else relating to this question, the stakes are higher than many think and few understand everything that is going on. What should not be dismissed though is that the question was important enough that it needed to be asked. Ideally, enough citizens will put their energies to not only ask it but also resolve it.

To resolve it all sides will have to make an effort... something that has yet happened only in the most modest of terms.