Latest national poll median date: October 20
Projections reflect recent polling graciously made publicly available by pollsters and media organizations. I am not a pollster, and derive no income from this blog.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

EKOS: Virtual Tie; TORIES REGAIN PROJECTION LEAD

Today's EKOS update tells a different story from this morning's polls: the Liberals have a razor-thin 0.4-point lead. Québec is a complete mess: the NDP is in first place with just 25.6% of the support - that's a drop of 4.8 points from yesterday; the Liberals are also down, to just 21.9%, while the Tories and especially the Bloc shot up. Ontario, however, remains stable, with the Liberals slightly widening their lead to 8.3 points. Finally, the Tories have taken a 5-point lead in BC, with the Liberals falling all the way from first place to a 12-point deficit! (Remember that all 3 polls this morning had the Liberals on top in BC, but Angus Reid's likely voter model shows similar results as EKOS.)

Liberals lose seats in QC and BC in the projection update, where the Tories retake the lead:

CON - 129, +1 (33.2%, +0.1%)
LIB - 126, -3 (35.1%, -0.2%)
NDP - 75, +1 (21.9%, +0.1%)
BQ - 7, +1 (4.7%, +0.1%)
GRN - 1 (4.1%, -0.2%)

The unadjusted projection is:

LIB - 139 (36.2%)
CON - 113 (31.5%)
NDP - 75 (22.5%)
BQ - 10 (4.7%)
GRN - 1 (4.4%)

There will be several updates tomorrow:
- Morning: Nanos 10/15-17
- Afternoon: EKOS 10/15-17
- Night: Final projection with Nanos 10/16-18
- Late night: Analysis (and hopefully maps) of the final projection, guide to strategic voting
There will also be an Ipsos poll (and possibly a Forum poll) to be added when available.

Obviously, with the current projection so tight, tomorrow's numbers will determine the call. But in a sense, it doesn't matter: barring a huge surprise, it's going to be around 50/50 one way or the other. Moreover, even if the Conservatives eke out a small win, the next government is still likely to be Liberal. Nevertheless, with the race so tight and with Québec so unpredictable, the next 55 hours are going to be extremely exciting!

16 comments:

Gideon said...

You do great work. I bet your final seat projection will be quite a bit more accurate than most of those out there as it was in the case of the previous federal election. I still don't think the Liberals should be favoured to win (and at 80% according to The Globe's election forecast). It's still a toss-up until a major shift happens.

Anonymous said...

@ElectionWatch, yes, thanks for an amazing job! I think your latest projects are conservative and quite fair. Honestly, as long as its not a strong conservative minority, I would be happy as the Liberals would be able to work with the NDP and form a coalition. While I would love for the liberals to beat the conservatives outright even by 1 seat just to ensure Harper goes, I think if we get the above results, its still a welcome change.

Anonymous said...

You are missing the Quebec story by a country mile. The NDP may lose all its seats in Quebec. The Liberals will NOT benefit; the spoils will go to the Cons and Bloc. Expect 35+ Conservative MPs from Quebec. Trudeau not paying Quebec provincial taxes is one of three factors that will kill a liberal dream of occupying 24 Sussex; the Niqab and influence peddling 'stories' are the other two.

The influence peddling story is bubbling across the west and over the Rocky mountains. The Cons will prevail.

Ontario is still in play because Ontarians are focused on the Blue Jays.



Election Watcher said...

@Gideon: Thanks! We'll see how things turn out. Turnout adjustment is really a guess (unlike GTA adjustment last time). I'll either do better or worse than everyone else, unless the result falls exactly in the middle.

@Anonymous 5:24pm: Thanks! Indeed, in a sense, we're already pretty certain of the outcome.

@Anonymous 7:04pm: Whoa, 35 CPC MPs in QC? You must have smoked some good stuff. (I do agree that NDP could be much lower if Léger and Mainstreet are right, but the CPC vote is too concentrated in the Quebec City area to benefit much.)

Anonymous said...

As someone who volunteered earlier on in the Liberal campaign(I couldnt later because I got too busy over the summer), I can surely say that there is more to their work behind the scenes than meets the eye. I know since the conservatives are in power, and everyone has seen their work, pollsters are giving them the benefit of the doubt over the Liberals but from my work with them, I noticed one thing and that was the determination of the younger crowd and the politeness with which they worked. For sure, it wasnt to the extent of the Obama campaign but they seemed to ramp up as soon as the campaign started. I told them that their campaign website sucked but they took the message gracefully and told me they were working on a different version which they wanted to roll out later on in the campaign which they did. Also, I noticed some interesting comments from people like David Herle around August, when asked about the reason for the NDP surge, he said they were tracking it more as a Notley effect more than anything in what they were seeing in internal polling. He just left it at that. He also felt that bill c-51 had a slight effect although not much.

Personally, I think NDP screwed itself, by not just moving to the center, they made some strange choices like refusing to debate if Harper wasn't present(pollsters warned against doing this because people were reminded of Harper), and also, accepting the Stephen Harper budget as the way to go. I think at that point, the bleeding from the Liberals to the NDP stopped when JT moved to the left. JT on the other hand also took as many questions as he could from reporters and even when it came to bill c-51 protesters, he met with them and so patiently argued with them and they agreed to disagree
(Can anyone imagine Stephen Harper speaking to anyone who disagreed with him). I think at that point JT was willing to speak with anyone and accept any attention as normally everyone's focus was on the frontrunner. Then slowly, when people started looking back, they realized the only reason they were supporting the NDP was because they were ahead in Quebec and bill c-51. They didnt want Harper lite. Once the Niqab came, i think people started looking seriously at the Liberals. I know we still have to wait and see but as long as the conservatives dont win a majority or strong minority, I think we're okay.

I'm hoping that the only complaint from this election would be that pollsters underestimated the liberal support. While I dont know if it will happen, would be amazing if it does.

Election Watcher said...

Thanks for your input! Yes, my sense (entirely from the outside) is that the Liberals finally got their act together this time. I'm not surprised that C-51 had little effect (I'm obviously way more informed than your average voter, but apart from a general sense that it's bad, I never really learned about the details) and that the NDP surge was mostly a Notley thing (which matches the timing of the surge).

I think the NDP really didn't have much of a choice but to promise a balanced budget, since they don't have the economic credibility of the Liberals. But within the balanced budget, they could have made different choices. As it were, their program was spread way too thin - childcare phased in over 8 years with 40% funds from provinces? Really? The only large immediate budget item is the corporate income tax hike, which reinforces the perception that the NDP is bad for business. By contrast, even quite apart from the deficit-funded "infrastructure" plan, the Liberal changes to family benefits and to personal income tax rates were both large, immediate and progressive.

You're right that JT has handled himself in an exemplary way (except condemning Dan Gagnier a day late, and maybe that weird closing statement at the MacLean's debate). I also think Mulcair really didn't do his personal brand any favours by:
- treating JT with condescension at debates (the Tories just called him "Justin" on the trail; Mulcair actually did it in the debates, and spouted off some personal insults);
- repeating catchphrases like "weapon of mass distraction" so many times that it went from clever to mildly irritating to downright juvenile;
- not dealing well with charges that he's a flip-flopper and says one thing in French and another in English (which is exaggerated - he just emphasizes different things in different languages);
- arrogantly leaking polls in Papineau and Laurier--Ste-Marie when the NDP was riding high in the polls. (Ironically, Papineau is now probably safer for Trudeau than Outremont is for Mulcair, though they should both win.)
If it were just strategic voting, Mulcair's preferred PM numbers wouldn't have fallen so low. I think the more Canadians saw of him, the less we liked him. (That was certainly the case for me.)

I think it's possible that the Liberals are underestimated, though unlike the Tories being underestimated due to turnout, I think it'd be because of a last minute shift by remaining NDP supporters. That is, I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberals get more and the NDP gets less than expected on election day; I'd be surprised if they both get more.

BothSidesNow said...

Haha! what a joke , who do you guys work for? see electionalmanac.com for all the other poll of polls. the avg of all 12 of the poll averaging polls shows the liberals by 17 seats (Sun am)
...we'll see...

Election Watcher said...

@BothSidesNow: Your reading abilities must be a joke. My unadjusted projection is very close to the other projections.

Anonymous said...

Again, you are ignoring the reality that is Quebec politics. Quebec Francophones will not be voting for the Liberals. Trudeau is in fourth place among Francophones. The NDP vote is collapsing, and may mean NO NDP MPs in Quebec.

The Bloc and NDP ads are killing Trudeau's brand of faux liberalism. The niqab story has fatally harmed the NDP brand in Quebec. The Cons and Bloc will reap most of the NDP's seats.

Influence peddling is a crime. Courting Islamist extremists is from Obama's playbook; the Liberals and NDP will pay the price.

Never underestimate the power of Catholic identity politics in Quebec.

The Cons will sweep Quebec City region and beyond. The Bloc will return to Ottawa with a vengeance.

BTW, the Liberal party leadership is plugged full of investors in the medical marijuana scam. Any liberal government will be one influence peddling scandal after another. I smoke 'menthol' tobacco only.

Election Watcher said...

Why do you think Trudeau is in 4th among Francophones? The latest breakdown we got, from Léger, had the Liberals top the Francophone vote, essentially in a 3-way tie with the NDP and the Bloc.

Again, the Bloc could indeed make big gains if the NDP drops just a little further; I don't dispute that. The Tories, however, have their support very concentrated in the Quebec City area - that's what the model says, it's what Léger says (without formally releasing a breakdown), it's what people on the ground say (listen to Jean Lapierre).

BothSidesNow said...

We'll see...

Anonymous said...

Do you really believe the Liberals are going to get those Quebec NDP voters who are pissed off about the niqab? Nope.

The Liberals are dropping in Quebec, the NDP are dropping in Quebec = Cons + Bloc. Math. The drop is significant for both.

Justin can't win.

Election Watcher said...

@Anonymous: Of course they won't get those voters. But just the drop in NDP support (even if Liberals don't get any of it) will help them in many ridings in the Montréal area. I'm not saying they'll necessarily win all the 23 projected seats, but I'd be surprised if they don't get at least 15, much better than the 9-10 they were down to in August.

By most pollsters' account, Liberal support has increased substantially in QC. You'll probably be very surprised on election night (or you're just trolling) if you expect them to stay at the 14% they got in 2011.

Anonymous said...

Liberal support is concentrated in English speaking Quebec. Yeah their numbers will go up in those areas as the NDP collapses but the majority French speaking votes will go to the Conservatives and to the Bloc.

Congratulations are in order to Trudeau and his supporters for resurrecting the Bloc Quebecois.

Nothing says modern Liberalism like an agitated separatist party.

Expect anarchy because HATE trumps competence.

Election Watcher said...

We have numbers for Francophones. Liberals do worse among them than among others, but they are competitive. You're in for a shock tomorrow night if you think the Tories are getting 20+ seats in Québec.

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