Political Traction: Old age security, pensions and crime

Jaime Watt joins Power & Politics host Evan Solomon each week to look at how issues making waves in Ottawa resonate with Canadians.

Monitoring the House of Commons' question period, mainstream media and the conversation on social media, Watt and his team at Navigator Ltd. determine which issues gained the most attention in official Ottawa, and then measure how much traction those issues managed to find with Canadians outside the nation's capital.

This week's topics were drawn from the week of Jan. 28 to Feb. 3, the first week back for MPs after a long winter break.

In Ottawa, the opposition and media's attention was on the government's plans for Old Age Security, following comments the week before by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

While that issue had some resonance across Canada as well, two stories had Canadians talking mostly about justice issues: a verdict in the Shafia family murder trial and a Conservative Senator's musings about the death penalty and giving serial killers "a rope" to decide their own fate.

Here's a look at the numbers:

Read more about the methodology behind Political Traction.