NDP Numbers Don't Add Up

[Quick note off the top: this mostly abandoned blog is not at all associated with my work life and shouldn't be taken as such, but I've got no other quick outlet so I'm going to post this here for now.]

So the federal NDP released their new membership numbers today and it was widely reported that they received a solid 13% boost in membership, from 83,800 members in October to 95,000 members in November.

This bump is exaggerated for a few reasons. In reality it's probably about half that amount.

First off, the NDP previously had a separate category for 'federal' members that weren't tied to any province, which totaled just over 3,000 people.

This category was dissolved when they decided to allocate each federal member to their respective province. Fair enough. But when the chart was released today there was no mention of this. Instead it just showed the October breakdown by province and the November breakdown, and let reporters do the math. Reporters weren't told that a separate category of 3,000 members had been quietly re-allocated.

So that alone brings "new" memberships down from around 11,000 people to around 8,000, or 9%.

But there's more. The new numbers show NDP memberships doubled in Nova Scotia from 1,300 to 2,600. That's a pretty impressive leap, considering the provincial party is coming off of years of minority government that concluded in a sweeping NDP majority (memberships are shared amongst the provincial and federal parties).

When I checked on the numbers back in September I was given the 1,300 figure federally and then a number of around 2,500 provincially. After asking about the discrepancy I was told provincial staff keep closer track and the gap was likely due to the federal ranks not being updated yet.

So now we're in the midst of an NDP leadership race and all eyes are on the membership numbers because we all want to see how big the Quebec surge turns out to be (Quebec has no provincial wing so it's starting from damn near scratch). Lo and behold, there's a healthy boost across the country!

But is there really? Did Newfoundland's ranks really jump from just 200 to 1,184 last month? Did they not get the memo that the populist uprising was six months ago? Maybe it's a time zone thing. My guess is that, like Nova Scotia, the numbers hadn't been updated in a while and many months of growth were only now being factored in.

Add the Newfoundland discrepancy to Nova Scotia to the federal book cooking and your 13% growth is already close to cut in half before we even get to the big provinces. So were the numbers today really an accurate reflection of the party's growth? I report. You decide.

...Ok, I'll decide too. It's kind of bullshit. Look I get that the NDP has had a tough few months. They have an interim leader who isn't exactly setting the world on kindle, let alone fire. They no more look like a government in waiting today than they did the day after the election. They'd really like some momentum and a strong membership turnout in the midst of a leadership campaign would certainly help.

And to be fair, they didn't capital-L Lie at any point. The NDP never claimed to have 13% growth, they just put the stats out and let journalists do the math. Also when I asked questions I was given a prompt and honest response.

But this isn't quite good enough. News stories didn't report "The NDP claim to have 13% growth," they reported it as fact. There is a certain element of trust when we report what a federal party tells us is going on internally, if just because we don't see the numbers first-hand.

I think the chart released today was a breach of that trust. Maybe it was all an accident. Maybe the news organizations that reported the 13% figure have been privately corrected. But when we take a party at its word there's an expectation that 3,000 members (at least) aren't being coyly added in.