Why Berthier-Maskinongé voted for Ruth-Ellen

A reader writes from Québec -- he reads the French version of this blog, no doubt -- to ask Walt to explain the results of the recent Canadian federal election.

In particular, our reader wants to know how it came about that le Nouveau Parti Démocratique, which has never held more than a single seat in la Belle Province, suddenly captured 58 of the 70 available. In even more particular, he wants to know whatever possessed the voters of the riding of Berthier-Maskinongé to elect Ruth-Ellen Brosseau.

Mme Brosseau may well be the hottest-ever MP. See pic. However she speaks only a little French, which one would think a handicap in a riding which is 98% francophone. But then Mme Brosseau could be forgiven for not knowing that, since she never set foot in the riding until yesterday, a week after the election. No, not even during the campaign. She spent most of the campaign on vacation in Las Vegas. How could the nice people of Berthier-Maskinongé have voted her in?

The answer to this poser may be found in Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel. There, the brilliant political analyst, Scott Adams, writes: Most voters are ignoramuses who get all of their opinions from paid TV ads.

If you doubt this thesis, look at the "ordinary people" shopping with you at the supermarket. (If you buy groceries at WalMart, don't stare too long or you'll damage your cerebral cortex.) You will observe that many of these "ordinary people" fill up their carts with nationally advertised brands of junk food. This in spite of the availability of equivalent house or no-name brands, usually on the very same shelf.

The generic potato chips or whatever are, as often as not, made by the very same company that produces the branded junk. And the generic junk is cheaper! Yet people buy Krapped foods (thanks to Adams for that one) rather than the no-name product. Why? Because "we seen it on TV!"

Still in doubt? Many malls now have "As Seen on TV" stores! People flock into these stores and flock off with shamwows and slap-chops which are the epitome of over-priced, useless crapola. Why? Because "we seen it on TV!" And here's the thing. Those shoppers are allowed to vote!

So, to win the votes of the "ordinary people", the parties praise (or vilify) the candidates, especially the party leaders, until people vote for (or against) them. The good bourgeois of Berthier-Maskinongé didn't vote for Mme Brosseau. They voted NDP/NPD because its leader, Smilin' Jack Layton, came over on TV as "the kind of guy you'd most want to have a beer with. We seen him on TV!"

Let's give the last words to Scott Adams.

My favorite thing that politicians say is "The voters aren't dumb." This is something that voters generally believe because they are dumb. I realize this sounds harsh. But if I'm wrong, and it's true that the voters are smart, despite allevidence to the contrary, it raises some troubling questions.

How uninformed must a voter be before it's okay to call him dumb?

If all the voters have roughly the same goals and the same information, but half of the voters vote one way and half vote the other way, doesn't that mean half of them are dumb?

How can we tell which half is the dumb half?

To which Walt would add this reminder. To win an election, you need only 50% + 1.