The first of the Liberal Leadership polls I’ve been dreading has been released. You can read the article for the results and the four “frontrunners” score surprisingly close.

But I won’t post the results from this poll, or any other similar ones, because these are dangerous polls that people should completely ignore. They are based on nothing more than name recognition, and most Canadians know very little about the big names, never mind the hidden jewels of the race (no…not you Joe…not either of you…). It’s one thing to have someone say, in a gut reaction when a pollster asks them, “sure, I might vote for that guy”. It’s another thing to have that person vote for them after they see them as a Liberal, talking about Liberal policies, debating, debating en francais, and running in an election campaign. Kind of like how a Red Sox fan might like Roger Clemens, until he puts on Yankee pinstripes.

These fictional polls are, in my opinion, one of the worst ways to decide who to support for leadership. Some may point to “the scream” as the reason Howard Dean lost the Democratic primary in 2004 but, in reality, it was because of polls which showed John Kerry would do the best against George Bush in hypothetical elections. Democrats, desperate to beat Bush, decided to put their faith in hypothetical election polls and jumped to Kerry, not realizing what a dreadful candidate he was. Paul Martin used to get projected out to 200 seats on these polls and he certainly was far from an unknown at the time.

Voting on electability is perfectly legitimate. If you think a candidate has stuff in their past or lacks a skill set which will make them unelectable, that’s a perfectly valid thing to base your decision on. But to base it on polls like this would be sheer insanity.