Canadian Election Watch

2012: The Year of Presidential Elections

2012-01-03T21:13:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! After the slew of general elections in Canada in 2011, this year will be relatively quiet at home: it is likely that only Alberta and Nunavut will head to the polls.

However, internationally, 2012 will be a big electoral year, specifically in presidential countries. The 19 largest economies of the world (by purchasing power parity) are divided as follows:
- 5 monarchies: Japan, UK, Spain, Canada, Australia
- 4 with presidents that are not popularly elected: China, India, Germany, Italy
- 1 with a president that is not the head of state: Iran
- 9 with head-of-state presidents that are popularly elected: US, Russia, Brazil, France, Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Taiwan

Fully 7 of the 9 countries in the last category will have a presidential election in 2012. This is a very rare occurrence: if these 9 countries' presidential election schedules remain unchanged (either by law or events), this only happens once every 60 years. Here's a brief rundown of these seven elections:

- January: Taiwan. Like every presidential election in this country, this one will have a profound impact on China-Taiwan relations, which may deteriorate if the pro-independence candidate Tsai Ing-Wen beats the incumbent Ma Ying-Jeou. This race is very tight. 4-year term. Legislative elections, where the ruling party is expected to hold on, will be held concurrently.

- March: Russia. Vladimir Putin will probably win, but it will be interesting to see the extent of the vote rigging, the reaction to it, and whether Putin needs a second round. 6-year term (for the first time). Legislative elections were held in December 2011, spawning mass protests over irregularities and claims that Putin's United Russia would not have won a majority in a fair vote.

- April/May: France. Socialist François Hollande will probably defeat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and take over the presidency. There is an outside chance that Sarkozy does so poorly that far-right candidate Marine Le Pen makes it to the second round. 5-year term. Legislative elections to follow the presidential election.

- July: Mexico. The incumbent cannot run since presidents here are limited to a single 6-year term. Legislative elections will be held concurrently.

- August: Turkey. This will be the first popular election for President, who is mainly a figurehead. 5-year term. Legislative elections were held last year.

- November: United States. You all know what this is about. 4-year term. Legislative elections will be held concurrently.

- December: South Korea. The ruling Conservatives are much more hawkish toward North Korea than the Centrist/Liberal opposition. The Conservative incumbent cannot run since presidents here are limited to a single 5-year term. Legislative elections will also be held this year, in April.

Bill C-20: Representation

2011-10-30T13:24:00.004-04:00

Well, moving back to Canada, settling down, and starting a new job have taken their toll, but given my past posts (see here and here) on this issue, I wanted to say a few words about Bill C-20.

My comments will refer to the following five redistribution schemes, all of which ensure that no province loses seats relative to the 1988/1993 elections:

1. Current law: divide 279 seats proportionally among the 10 provinces, and then make sure no province loses seats.

2. My proposal: make the size of the House such that Québec is proportionally represented with 75 seats. Divide the remaining seats proportionally among provinces other than Québec. Then make sure no province loses seats, and divide the remaining seats proportionally among the remaining provinces. Iterate until no province loses seats.

3. Second* Tory proposal: Québec gets 75 seats, and every province gets seats in proportion. Then make sure no province loses seats.

4. Third Tory proposal: each province's number of seats is its population divided by the electoral quotient, but no province loses seats. The electoral quotient is 108,000, and then increases with the 10-province population growth.

5. Current Tory proposal (C-20): each province's number of seats is its population divided by the electoral quotient. The electoral quotient is 111,166, and then increases with average of the population growth in each of the 10 provinces. Then make sure no province loses seats. Then add seats to Québec such that it is not underrepresented relative to its share of the 10-province population.

The first 4 schemes use raw census counts. C-20, however, uses population estimates based on census counts. The advantage is that this corrects for some people not counted by the census. The disadvantage is that figuring out how many people the census missed is somewhat arbitrary, so whoever comes up with those estimates (Statistics Canada bureaucrats, perhaps under pressure by the government) has the power to influence the number of seats.

*If you remember, the first Tory proposal sought to disadvantage Ontario with respect to Alberta and BC due to Ontario being a "large" province. Obviously, that went nowhere.

Short-run comparisons (what happens after the next redistribution)
- All of the following are estimates, based on current population estimates for July 1, 2011 (which haven't yet incorporated 2011 census data), and on the 2006 census' estimated undercounts.
- Under all proposals, provinces and territories other than BC, AB, ON and QC keep their current seat count, for a combined 63 seats.

	BC	AB	ON	QC	Total
Current law	37	30	108	75	313
My proposal	38	31	111	75	318
Second Tory	42	35	122	75	337
Third Tory	42	34	119	75	333
Bill C-20	42	34	121	78	338

- Under C-20, relative to current law, the House expands by 25 extra seats. Over half of that gain (13) goes to Ontario, with 5 accruing to BC, 4 to AB and 3 to QC.

- Under C-20, Alberta could very possibly end up with 35 seats, while BC and ON may well end up with just 41 and 120 seats respectively - this will depend on how the census plays out.

- Under C-20, relative to the previous Tory proposal, Québec obviously gains, but not all other provinces lose. Indeed, the change is roughly neutral for Ontario and Alberta, at least if census undercoverage remains similar as in 2006: it was around 4% in ON and AB, but just 3% in Canada as a whole. Thus, using population estimates rather than census counts gives Ontario 1-2 extra seats, and pushes Alberta closer to that 35th seat. This roughly compensates for the slightly larger size of the House.

- C-20 is a little worse than my proposal for Québec even though both seek to make its seat share equal to its population share. The reason is that census undercoverage tends to be lower in Québec - just 1-2% in 2006 - so using raw census data would give Québec a higher share than using population estimates. This is, of course, just a measurement issue, and in principle, C-20 treats Québec in the same way as my plan, so I view it as fair. Props to the government on that.

- Overall, I'm ambivalent towards the main difference between C-20 and my plan: the size of the House. On the one hand, C-20 makes it quite a bit bigger, with all the associated expenses. On the other hand, given that the 6 small provinces' seat numbers are fixed, the only way to reduce their overrepresentation is to have more MPs. I think I'd be willing to swallow the pill if future growth in the House size were controlled under C-20. Is it the case?

Long-Run Comparisons

All five plans have the following common-sense feature: the size of the House doesn't change if all provinces grow at the same rate. But this condition is far from holding in Canada! In each plan, the House grows if historical trends continue.

1. Current law: the rate of expansion of the House depends on the difference between BC, AB and ON's population growth rate and the 10-province population growth rate. 6-7 seats in the past two redistributions, and would probably have been 5-7 this time.

2. My proposal: the rate of expansion of the House depends on the difference between the national population growth rate and Québec's population growth rate. This difference has shrunk dramatically recently: just 0.1-0.2% per year in the past three years. That translates into a 3-to-7-seat increase in the size of the House per decade. In the late 90s, the gap was instead 0.5-0.6% per year, which would mean a 16-to-20-seat increase per decade.

3. Second Tory proposal: the rate of expansion of the House depends on the difference between BC, AB and ON's population growth rate and Québec's population growth rate. Since this difference would only affect BC, AB and ON's seats, the House would grow roughly as fast as under my proposal. (The fact that BC, AB and ON's seat shares are slightly below their population shares should be roughly canceled by the fact that the smaller provinces grow, on average, a bit slower than Québec.)

4. Third Tory proposal: essentially the same as current law.

5. Bill C-20: the rate of expansion of the House depends on the difference between BC, AB and ON's population growth rate and the average of the population growth rates of the 10 provinces. The latter is likely to be significantly lower than the 10-province population growth rate because smaller provinces send to grow slower. As a result, the House would grow more quickly under Bill C-20 than under current law or the previous Tory plan. This discrepancy was only about 0.1% in the past three years because of healthy growth rates in SK, MB and PEI, but it was 0.4% as recently as in 2007, and 0.5% from 1991 to 2001. Since BC, AB and ON would have about 60% of seats, Bill C-20 is likely to increase the House size 0.7-3% per decade more quickly than current law. This would mean a total increase of 7 to 18 seats per decade, about the same as under plans 2 and 3 above.

What we see is that Bill C-20 combines the largest immediate seat increase and the largest House growth rate of the 5 plans. It's an expensive way to correct representational inequities, necessitated by the six small provinces being unwilling to recognize the logical consequence of their reduced population weight...

R.I.P. Jack

2011-08-22T12:04:00.003-04:00

My thoughts are with his family. Coping with the loss of any family member is difficult. But from recent experience, I can attest that when the decedent is a public figure, there are even more things to arrange and take care of.

A sidenote: the CPC is now the only party in the Commons with a permanent leader and more than one MP.

Layton Has Second Cancer, Takes Break

2011-07-25T14:07:00.002-04:00

Layton suggests that Hull--Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel be interim leader of the NDP.

Good luck, Jack.

PQ In-Fighting Opens Door to Legault

2011-06-23T00:18:00.002-04:00

A Québec provincial poll suggests that the centre-right party proposed by François Legault has 40% support against 26% for the Liberals, 17% for the PQ and 8% for the ADQ. Just like for the NDP, such a result would give Mr. Legault a commanding majority.

Of course, as Legault gets more scrutiny, his support may wane, though that didn't happen with the NDP. Still, these results imply that 74% of the Québec electorate is ready to vote for a right-of-centre party. This is consistent with the analysis that Québec's NDP vote on May 2 was for change rather than for a left-wing agenda.

Even without Legault's new party, the PQ would lose by 6% to the Liberals (29-35). It goes without saying that the recent crisis has greatly damaged Marois' party.

Note: Sorry for the lack of posting in the past month - three major life events that normally only occur every few years and lots of traveling have taken their toll. Posting will likely remain limited for the next three months, but hopefully there won't be any more whole-month gaps.

Election Results Are Official

2011-05-23T17:07:00.002-04:00

The election results from every riding have been validated, and the four recounts have been completed. As previously noted, the validation process moved one Québec riding from the Tories to the NDP. None of the recounts produced a further change in the winner.

Economy, Economy, Economy

2011-05-18T22:30:00.003-04:00

For any government, the state of the economy is of paramount importance. But it is even more so for the Harper government over the next four years. After all, it is its perceived competence in that matter that drove Torontonians to give it a majority.

The Conservative economic and fiscal platform was basically: we'll make sure the recovery continues; this will eliminate most of the deficit, and we'll make some not-too-painful cuts to eliminate the rest.

Whether the recovery continues or not is, alas, largely outside the incoming government's control. Obviously, Canada has little impact on international factors such as the U.S. recovery. But even on the domestic front, most of the story has already been determined, and we're just waiting to see how things play out.

Indeed, on macroeconomic issues, a government's performance often depends more on the previous government's actions than on its own. For example, Mulroney's poor showing had much to do with Trudeau's economic mismanagement, while foundations of the Liberal success in the 90s were laid by the Tories with the GST and FTA. Similarly, the continued success of the Canadian economy under Harper was mostly a product of Chrétien and Martin's sound policies and Canadians' sacrifices in the 90s.

In many ways, over the next four years, we will find out how good the Tories' management of the economy has been over the past five years. We will have a better sense of whether:
- the government's stimulus plan succeeded in producing a sustainable recovery;
- the Tories spent outside the country's means prior to the recession;
- there is a housing bubble which the Tories should have tried to prevent.

How these issues play out will have a direct impact on Canadians' well-being and on the government's agenda. If there is no housing bubble, the recovery is sustained, and past spending increases were reasonable, then the Conservatives can deliver on their plan to balance the budget with moderate cuts that most Canadians won't notice. However, if we find out that there is a housing bubble (through it bursting), if the recovery runs out of steam, or if the spending growth of the good times was excessive, then the government will have to introduce unpopular measures, show up to the 2015 election with a deficit, or both.

Barring major events in Québec or a major scandal, the Conservatives' fate in the 2015 election may have already been largely determined.

The same cannot be said of the Liberals and the NDP. Obviously, if the economy does well, they have little chance of winning power in 2015. But the NDP can durably squeeze out the Grits if they manage to establish economic credibility over the next four years. Conversely, if the NDP fails to do so, then the Grits could regain the position of government-in-waiting if they get their act together. Of course, since the election, both parties' performances have ranged from disappointing to laughable...

Districts of Different Sizes: Who Benefits?

2011-05-15T22:52:00.002-04:00

It is well-known that the size of electoral districts (whether measured by population, electorate, or votes) varies wildly, not only across provinces, but also within provinces. When we put everything together, which party benefited from these discrepancies in 2011?

One measure of this would be to compare a party's actual voting share to what I'll call its effective voting share, defined as the average of that party's share of votes in each riding.

For example, suppose that a country has two electoral districts, with 40 votes in district A, and 60 votes in the district B. A party gets 50% of the vote in A, and 30% in B. Clearly, that party is favoured because it's doing well in a less populated district. Its actual national vote share is 38% (38 votes out of 100), but because the districts have equal weight, the party's effective voting share is 40% (average of 50% and 30%).

For each of the major parties, below is its effective voting share, with its actual voting share in parentheses:

CON: 39.7% (39.6%)
LIB: 19.3% (18.9%)
NDP: 30.8% (30.6%)
BQ: 5.6% (6.0%)
GRN: 3.7% (3.9%)

CON: 39.9% (39.8%) in 307 ridings with candidates
BQ: 23.2% (23.4%) in Québec
GRN: 3.8% (4.0%) in 304 ridings with candidates

We immediately notice that all three main parties modestly benefit from some votes being more important than others. This may be slightly surprising in the case of the Tories, whose support is concentrated in underrepresented BC, Ontario and Alberta. However, this is more than countered by Conservative support being concentrated in rural ridings, which tend to be less populated, and by Albertans voting less than other Canadians.

The Bloc and the Greens, on the other hand, are hurt. The Bloc is disadvantaged mainly because Québec votes are worth less than the average vote elsewhere due to a larger number of electors per district, while the Greens' support is concentrated in underrepresented BC.

The lesson I take from this exercise is that this distortion is rather minimal: no party's effective voice is changed by more than 0.4% (1 seat if we had a proportional system). So while the variation of district sizes may be unfair to certain constituencies, it does not significantly affect party representation in the Commons.

Safe Seats

2011-05-14T14:20:00.005-04:00

Safest Seat in Each Province

NL - St. John's East (NDP by 50.3%)
PE - Egmont (CON by 23.3%)
NS - Central Nova (CON by 32%)
NB - Acadie--Bathurst (NDP by 53.5%)
QC - Gatineau (NDP by 46.7%)
ON - Wellington--Halton Hills (CON by 47.3%)
MB - Portage--Lisgar (CON by 66.2%)
SK - Souris--Moose Mountain (CON by 55.3%)
AB - Crowfoot (CON by 74.8%)
BC - Abbotsford (CON by 44.8%)
North - Nunavut (CON by 21.2%)

It's quite striking that the safest seat in Québec is a turnover. Also, the safest seat in Nova Scotia was projected incorrectly (though I'm in good company): MacKay was far from safe in 2006, and of course it was hard to say what to make of 2008 with May as a candidate.

Seats Won by over 50%

Outside Alberta
66.2% - Portage--Lisgar, MB (CON)
55.3% - Souris--Moose Mountain, SK (CON)
53.5% - Acadie--Bathurst, NB (NDP)
52.7% - Provencher, MB (CON)
50.3% - St. John's East, NL (NDP)

In Alberta (obviously all Conservative)
74.8% - Crowfoot
70.0% - Wetaskiwin
68.5% - Vegreville--Wainwright
67.1% - Macleod
66.0% - Calgary Southeast
65.7% - Westlock--St. Paul
64.0% - Yellowhead
63.5% - Wild Rose
63.2% - Calgary Southwest
60.8% - Red Deer
59.6% - Peace River
58.6% - Fort McMurray--Athabasca
58.5% - Medicine Hat
57.7% - Calgary--Nose Hill
55.3% - Edmonton--Spruce Grove
53.3% - Calgary East

The only riding outside of Edmonton or Calgary that was decided by less than 58.4% was Lethbridge, where Conservative Jim Hillyer won by 29.3% (he still carried 56.5% of the vote). This is the mystery candidate known for going to the bathroom when cornered by a reporter.

The median margin of victory in Alberta was 56.5%...

Addendum: The largest margin of victory for a Liberal was 31.9% in Humber--St. Barbe--Baie Verte; outside of Newfoundland, it was 19.1% in York West. The largest Bloc margin was 10.5% in Haute-Gaspésie--La Mitis--Matane--Matapédia (new MP), less than Elizabeth May's 10.7% cushion in Saanich--Gulf Islands.

Just under half the ridings went by over 20%: 106 to Tories, 41 to Dippers and 2 to Liberals.

Ontario and Toronto

2011-05-14T12:59:00.002-04:00

Despite a larger swing away from the Liberals in the Toronto area, the region remains much friendlier to the Grits than the rest of Ontario, which is a complete Liberal wasteland. Below are some telling stats comparing the 39 ridings entirely within the Toronto CMA to the 67 other Ontario districts.

Seats won
Toronto CMA: 24 C, 8 N, 7 L
Elsewhere: 49 C, 14 N, 4 L

Came in first of second
Toronto CMA: 36 L, 31 C, 11 N
Elsewhere: 66 C, 45 N, 21 L, 1 G, 1 I

[Aside: Without looking up election results, can you guess the only Ontarian riding outside Toronto CMA where the Conservative candidate failed to make the top two?]

Won, or within 15% of winner
Toronto CMA: 31 C, 29 L, 13 N
Elsewhere: 56 C, 19 N, 10 L

Clearly, even though the Liberals won fewer seats than the New Democrats in the Toronto area, they were still the Tories' main opponents. In fact, in every single one of those 39 ridings, a Liberal won, was second, or was within 15% of the winner. (The comparable figures were 31 for the Conservatives and 14 for the NDP.)

Indeed, within the Toronto area, the Liberals caught lots of bad breaks. Looking at the number of wins and the number of losses by less than 10%:
CON: 16-4
NDP: 2-3
LIB: 3-18

[Incidentally, yes, 21 of 39 races within the Toronto CMA were decided by less than 10%. The same statistic was 12/32 for the Atlantic, 21/75 for Québec, 9/67 elsewhere in Ontario, and 18/95 in the West and North. Thus, despite having less than 13% of the ridings, Toronto accounted for almost 26% of the close races nationwide.]

Elsewhere in Ontario, however, the Grits were almost completely out of it. The only ten ridings where a Liberal won or came within 15% were:

- Guelph
- Kingston and the Islands
- Kitchener Centre
- Kitchener--Waterloo
- London North Centre
- Nipissing--Timiskaming
- Ottawa--Orléans
- Ottawa South
- Ottawa--Vanier
- Ottawa West--Nepean

All of these are mainly urban, except for Nipissing-Timiskaming.

NDP Win Confirmed in Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup

2011-05-13T23:48:00.002-04:00

One judicial recount is complete. In Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup, the NDP won by 9 votes, four more than the initially validated results. The preliminary results had the Conservative candidate as the winner by 110 votes on election night, but it was subsequently discovered that a ballot box's NDP votes were mistakenly given to the Greens.

This confirms that the NDP won 59 seats in Québec, and the Tories, 5. Despite coming fourth in the popular vote, the Grits have the second-most seats (7), and of course the Bloc only got 4 seats.

Democratic Reform

2011-05-10T17:23:00.003-04:00

My guess is that the most significant democratic reform we will see under this Conservative majority is a change in the seat allocation formula for the House. Perhaps the government will prove me wrong by moving forward on Senate reform or other issues, but I doubt it. Beyond the fact that it is now in the Conservatives' interest to keep the Senate as is and to stick with first-past-the-post, there's also the fact that reformers don't agree on what the final product should look like. As often in these situations, the status quo prevails.

Take Senate reform, for example. You'd have to decide on at least the following issues:

1. The form of the Senate:
a) Appointed
b) Elected
c) Abolished

2. If you answered a or b to Q1, the seat allocation principle:
a) None (PM appoints from anywhere, or pure nationwide proportional voting)
b) By province
c) By region, as is
d) By region, some other way

3. If you answered b to Q1, the voting method:
a) Nationwide proportional
b) Proportional by province/region/large constituency
c) First past the post
d) Something else

And of course, your answer on these might depend on what we do with the voting system for the House. I'm pretty sure that no single combination of answers to just these three questions would be picked by a majority of Canadians, and my guess is that none would come even close.

My question to you: if you could change the way in which we choose are MPs and Senators to your liking, what would you do? (My preferred solution involves abolishing the Senate and moving to a sort of MMP system, modified to make majorities easier to achieve.)

One Person = One Vote: What Is a Person?

2011-05-09T09:27:00.005-04:00

Before reading the rest of this post, ask yourself: when we say 'One person = One vote', what should we mean by person? Do we mean:
a) resident of a constituency;
b) eligible voter; or
c) actual voter?

In the debate about seat distribution, it has been assumed that the first definition is the one to use. It is indeed the current basis for seat allocation at the federal level. But is it fair that a citizen's vote counts more just because he lives next to more people that can't vote (e.g. immigrants, children)?

I suspect that at least a few of you believe definitions b) and c) make more sense. Even if you don't, I hope that you agree that they are not crazy.

So let's take a look at the Conservative redistribution bill (C-12), which will likely be reintroduced and passed in the new House, under the lens of definitions b) and c).

We know that under Bill C-12, Ontario will likely have at least 119 seats, Alberta 34, and BC 41. (These numbers could be as high as 122, 35 and 42, but let's just take the low numbers, since they work against the argument I'm making here.) Here is the number of electors per riding:

QC: 81,479
BC: 74,739
ON: 74,729
AB: 72,865
National: 72,204

And here's the number of valid 2011 votes per riding:

QC: 50,646
ON: 46,481
BC: 45,650
National: 44,339
AB: 41,098

As you can see, Bill C-12 is extremely unfair to Québec voters, singling them out for unfavourable treatment. Québec voters would be worth 9% less than voters in any other province.

The reason for this inequity is simple: Bill C-12 reduces Québec's weight in the House, but Québec votes and voters are already undervalued! Indeed, in the 2011 election, Quebecers accounted for 25.5% of the country's eligible voters, and 25.8% of actual valid votes. Yet, Québec's weight in the House is only 24.4%, and would be reduced to 22.3-22.6%. That's below even its population share of 23.2%.

Now, look at our current system. Here's the number of valid votes per riding in the 2011 election:

ON: 52,182
BC: 51,991
QC: 50,646
AB: 49,905
National: 47,794

Compare these to the numbers above. Which are more equitable?

The Albertan self-righteousness in this debate would put Duceppe to shame.

It's Not a Good Sign...

2011-05-08T16:39:00.004-04:00

... when the featured article of Québec's main federalist newspaper's website is titled, "Newspapers in English Canada Demand the Marginalization of Québec".

Columnists like Lorne Gunter might consider that, in fact, that a majority of Canadians outside Québec voted for what he calls a "hysterical approach to the environment." Indeed, if he truly wants various groups' influence on policy to be proportionate to population, well, 60% of Canadians voted for left-of-centre parties.

I've blogged about this before (yes, part IV of that post is now obsolete), but at this point it's relevant to remember that Bill C-12 would make Québec's seat share in the House of Commons disproportionately low. It'll be interesting to see if the NDP puts up a fight, now that it is the main custodian of Québec's interests.

(Here are the facts: taking into account the most recent population estimates and census undercounting, Bill C-12 would likely give Ontario 13-16 extra seats, Alberta 6-7, and BC 5-6. This means a House size of 332-337, implying a Québec weight of 22.3-22.6%. Under current law, Québec's weight in the House would decrease to around 23.9%, while its population share is 23.2%. Therefore, under Bill C-12, Québec's weight in the Commons will be as far from its population share as it would be under current law - just in the opposite direction.)

Liberal Party: Uncertain Future

2011-05-07T12:23:00.006-04:00

After the 1953 election, when facing a united Right, the Liberals only won more non-Québec seats than the Conservatives twice: 1968 (Trudeaumania) and 2004 (Right still gluing pieces together).

If the Liberals want to become a party of government again, it will have to regain Québec (unless the Right self-destructs again...). That's not too hard to imagine: if the NDP's performance as Official Opposition is unsatisfactory - this first week has pretty much been a disaster - and if the separatists decide to disband the Bloc and focus on the PQ, then the Liberals have a chance of getting Québec back in 2015.

Still, it's equally easy to imagine a scenario where the NDP becomes Québec's default party for several elections. If the Bloc manages to find a bit of money, it could also win Quebecers back next time. Moreover, if Stephen Harper steps down in, say, 2014, and the Tories find a more moderate leader, they'd have a shot at Québec as well.

At this point, all of the following seem plausible to me:

- Québec stays with the NDP for several elections, and the Liberals become a permanent third party, sometimes wielding the balance of power when the Left and Right are equally matched;

- Québec stays with the NDP for several elections, and the Liberal Party disintegrates, leaving Canada with a two-party system;

- Québec returns to the Liberals, and we are back to the situation of the 60s and 70s, but with the Tories stronger due to the increased weight of the West;

- Québec picks the Tories or Bloc in 2015, and the Liberals and NDP, two severely weakened parties, have no choice but to merge;

- Québec sticks with the NDP, but the Liberals regain the GTA in 2015, and a merger/coalition is considered.

All of the above assume that Québec does not hold a separation referendum where Yes support exceeds 50%. However, it is a real possibility that the PQ wins the next provincial election during a period of widespread discontent with an ideologically incompatible federal government. If the PQ can stoke the sentiment that Québec is being oppressed by a majority imposed by Ontario and the West, it may yet get a majority of the votes in a referendum. If that happens:

- in case of a "clear" majority, game over, Québec secedes - this is very unlikely;

- otherwise, all hell breaks loose: separatists will want to hold yet another referendum, or worse, unilaterally declare independence; Tories will be seriously questioned about potentially "losing the country"; the NDP will face large internal dissent; the Bloc might be back stronger than ever, totally withdraw from Ottawa, or both (win 50+ seats in 2015 and have its MPs not show up). For the Liberals, the implication would be very murky: it might be the party Canada turns to in order to sort out this mess, or might be pushed into complete oblivion as all of the attention is focused on the others.

All this to say that at this point, virtually anything could happen to the Liberal Party. Its best chance of averting oblivion is Québec, but whether it'll even get a chance depends more on how the other parties - NDP, Tories, PQ - perform than on what it does. For this reason, what appears to be the Liberal strategy of lying low for now seems like a good one.

The Number of this Election: Four

2011-05-05T11:28:00.006-04:00

- Ignoring intervening by-elections, the Tories only gained a net four seats outside the Greater Toronto Area. Inside the GTA, they gained 19 and now hold a majority.

- This is just the fourth time in Canadian history that a party wins a majority with such a small vote share. The others? 1867, 1874 and 1997.

- West of Guelph, the Liberals have only four seats, and in each case, the margin of victory was below 5%. In fact, outside of Newfoundland, no Liberal candidate reached 50%.

- The Liberals also only have four seats outside the Atlantic and metropolitan areas with over 1 million people: Kingston and the Islands, Guelph, Winnipeg North and Wascana. The former two are university towns, while the latter two had very personally popular Liberal candidates.

- Of the four ridings won by the Bloc, three were due to the presence of a strong (> 25%) non-NDP federalist candidate that divided the vote. Only in Bas-Richelieu--Nicolet--Bécancour did the Bloc win a two-way race.

- Outside Québec and the City of Toronto, the NDP won just four seats carried by the Liberals in 2008: St. John's South--Mount Pearl, Dartmouth--Cole Harbour, Newton--North Delta and Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca. In fact, relative to 2008, the NDP gained no net seats outside Québec, the City of Toronto and Greater Vancouver.

- With just under four per cent of the vote, the Greens not only carried a smaller share of the popular vote than in 2008, but they are also down compared to 2006 (Update: and 2004, a reader points out).

- This was Stephen Harper and Jack Layton's fourth election as party leaders.

Model Performance: Comparison with Other Projections

2011-05-03T18:55:00.011-04:00

Updated to reflect change of lead in Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup

This post will compare the accuracy of my final projection with that of others that were freely available during the campaign. For a region-by-region analysis of how my projection fared, click here. Once again, the websites mentioned here are linked through the left bar.

Here are the eight final projections that were based on an average of polls (C-N-L-B-G-I):
148-100-44-14-1-1 (The Mace)
152- 94-46-15-0-1 (Canadian Election Watch)
142-114-39-12-0-1 (Riding by Riding)
151- 91-47-18-0-1 (Calgary Grit)
144- 98-51-15-0-0 (LISPOP)
155- 86-47-20-0-0 (democraticSPACE)
143- 93-58-14-0-0 (Too Close to Call)
143- 78-60-27-0-0 (ThreeHundredEight.com)

First, I would like to congratulate democraticSPACE for being the only model projecting a Conservative majority. On that front, I fared honourably by having the second highest Conservative seat count. Four websites estimated the probability of a Conservative majority. Obviously, democraticSPACE had the highest, right around 50%. Canadian Election Watch said it would occur with a 45% chance, while Calgary Grit had 28%, and The Mace, 13%.

Although the Conservative seat count was the most politically relevant figure to project, to get a sense of the overall quality of a projection, one needs to look at the other numbers as well. Below is half of the total deviation of each of the above eight projections. (This is the sum of the absolute value of the difference between the projected and the actual result for each of the parties and independents. It is divided by 2 because, by definition, it is always even.)

21 (The Mace)
24 (Canadian Election Watch)
25 (Riding by Riding)
28 (Calgary Grit)
28 (LISPOP)
29 (democraticSPACE)
34 (Too Close to Call)
49 (ThreeHundredEight.com)

Once again, Canadian Election Watch comes in a strong second, this time behind The Mace. democraticSPACE actually did not do too well, placing sixth. Interestingly, the two prognosticators with newspaper columns fared worst... (Of course, Éric and Bryan still have great websites with interesting content.)

If you average the above two measures of success (Conservative seat count and half total deviation), Canadian Election Watch comes in first! I'm not going to use this to declare victory, but I think there's a strong case for saying that I gave at least as accurate a portrayal of the overall situation as any other projection.

I also note that EKOS, which projected 138-113-41-15-1, has a half total deviation of 28, in the same ballpark as the projections above based on multiple polls. Update: Steven Britton also projected on the EKOS poll alone, and got 150-116-37-5, which has a half total deviation of 17, better than the above projections. However, his official call, below, was less accurate.

Now, it is true that seat projections based on polls did not do too well due to poll inaccuracy. Would relying on intuition and other information have been better? To look at that, I compiled the following relatively better publicized projections that were obtained via other methods:

151-86-45-24-1-1 (Andrew Coyne)
156-76-46-30-0-0 (Steven Britton)
146-83-55-22-1-1 (Dan Arnold, aka Calgary Grit)
152-71-52-31-0-2 (Bernard von Schulmann, aka BC Iconoclast, April 25)
146-65-63-33-0-1 (Election Prediction Project)
156-46-60-46-0-1 (Glen McGregor, April 29)

Two of these called for a bare Conservative majority, but in both cases, the NDP was very low, and the Bloc was absurdly high. The half deviations were as follows:

32 (Andrew Coyne)
38 (Steven Britton)
40 (Dan Arnold, aka Calgary Grit)
47 (Bernard von Schulmann, aka BC Iconoclast, April 25)
59 (Election Prediction Project)
69 (Glen McGregor)

The striking thing here is that everyone did worse than most projections based on polling averages. Thus, while relying on polls is far from perfect, it still gives us a better idea of what's going on than letting "gut" and "instinct" cloud one's judgment. Obviously, some prognosticators probably did predict 166 Tory seats (one of the commenters here was close, with 170). However, the above numbers suggest that in most cases, taking poll numbers seriously, even when they're significantly off, is still helpful.

What about riding-by-riding predictions? As far as I know, 7 of the above projectors bothered making a call for each of the 308 races (democraticSPACE also did so for most of them, but did not call some close races). Here is the number correct for each:

259 (Canadian Election Watch)
255 (Riding by Riding)
250 (-1?) (Steven Britton)
242 (Too Close to Call)
234 (ThreeHundredEight.com)
234 (Election Prediction Project)
217 (Glen McGregor)

Once again, Canadian Election Watch performs strongly, this time coming out on top. I'm particularly proud of my projections for BC, where I registered 34/36. The two predictions that relied the least on polls were the worst. In fact, the four most widely known ones came out at the bottom. So while everyone, myself included, did pretty poorly, we still did better than the media will give us credit for.

So where does this leave us? As I've emphasized above, while these results are far from satisfying for election projectors, they still point to the value of relying on the hard data provided by imperfect polls. None of the 7 "soft" (i.e. not based on a numerical model) projections had the Bloc below 22 seats, while 5 of the 8 projections using models had it at 15 or fewer.

As for myself, I'm obviously not thrilled about the absolute result, but very satisfied about how I fared compared to others. Moreover, I'm glad that some of the major issues emphasized on this blog and little discussed elsewhere, such as massive Conservative gains the GTA area, the efficiency of the NDP surge in Québec and the ballot box penalty for the Bloc, all came to pass.

It was my goal to provide you with the most accurate and up-to-date coverage of voter intentions and seat implications for the 41st General Election, and I believe that in many ways, I have succeeded. I hope that you agree, and that you will check back sporadically over the next few years for more political coverage and insights. In fact, please check back over the next few days: I will be analyzing the possible implications of these results as I digest them.

2011 Result Maps

2011-05-03T16:18:00.004-04:00

Updated to reflect change of lead in Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup

Here are the maps of the results of the 2011 General Election. Notice how little red is left in the Greater Toronto Area: the Liberals went from 32 to 7 seats in the area, a far steeper drop than the final projection's call for 18 GTA Liberal seats.

I remember saying to a commenter that complained about my low Ontario projection for the Liberals that many people would be surprised at how many seats the Grits lose around Toronto. I had no idea I would be this right...

Model Performance: Region by Region

2011-05-03T12:20:00.011-04:00

Updated to reflect change of lead in Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup

The election is over, and we have a Conservative majority. In this post, I will discuss where the projection went wrong, and why. A major reason for most projectors' failure to foresee a Conservative majority is that outside Québec, the polls underestimated Tory support by at least 5% in every single region. This performance is frankly embarrassing. My vote share adjustment allowed me to be closer to the mark by bumping the Tory vote estimate by 1-2%, but that wasn't nearly enough.

In a subsequent post, I will compare my final projection to those of other models using poll averages, as well as to predictions made using other methods. It turns out that although projections based on polling averages didn't fare well, they did better than those based on other methodologies. Moreover, among projections based on polling averages, Canadian Election Watch performed very well.

Atlantic Canada (Projected|Actual)
CON - 12|14 ; 32%|38%
LIB - 12|12 ; 28%|29%
NDP - 8|6 ; 34%|30%

Here, we can see that the polls overestimated the NDP vote share, and underestimated the Conservative one. My vote share adjustment from the NDP to the Tories was not enough to compensate for the bias. Had the actual vote shares been known, the model would have been exact. (There would still have been ridings called incorrectly, but overall numbers would have been correct.) As I had predicted, a 14+ seat performance in Atlantic Canada would point to a Conservative majority.

Québec
NDP - 44|59 ; 40%|43%
LIB - 7|7 ; 15%|14%
CON - 8|5 ; 17%|17%
BQ - 15|4 ; 25%|23%
IND - 1|0

The polls in Québec were mostly on the mark. They were a little low for the NDP and the Conservatives, and a bit high for the Bloc. My vote share adjustment appropriately compensated for the bias against the Tories, reduced the Bloc problem, but exacerbated the NDP inaccuracy. Unlike in Atlantic Canada, the projected result would have differed from the actual one even if the actual vote shares had been known: the Bloc would still have been given around 10 seats.

Would simply applying a uniform swing, without taking riding polls and potential swing variability into account, performed better? Well, yes and no: as I said previously, uniform swing on polling numbers would have given the Bloc just 5 seats, which would have been very prescient. However, uniform swing on the actual results would have left the Bloc with just one seat, a significant underestimate. Thus, taking other factors into account and increasing the Bloc's predicted count was correct - however, it should not have been done to the extent that everyone, including myself, did.

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I've been fighting against two serious misconceptions of the Bloc vote, namely that it turns out well and that it is efficiently distributed. In fact, Bloc voters, as usual, turned out less than polls suggested, and the Bloc vote was shockingly inefficiently distributed - even much more than I had thought. Indeed, most of the NDP victories were not tight as the model suggested: the Bloc didn't even come close except in a handful of cases. Many political commentators outside Québec either don't know basic electoral facts about Québec (sovereigntists almost always underperform polls) and/or can't process numbers correctly (how can the NDP win only 5-7 seats with 41% in the polls?).

Ontario
CON - 62|73; 40%|44%
NDP - 22|22; 27%|26%
LIB - 22|11; 26%|25%

Like in Atlantic Canada, the polls failed in Ontario. While the former can be attributed to small sample size, the latter is somewhat embarrassing for the polling industry. The actual result was well outside the margin of error of the last polls from Forum, EKOS and Léger, and it was right on the upper edge for Angus Reid. Other pollsters were probably saved by their small sample size, which implied wider confidence intervals: no pollster came within 3% of the Conservative tally in Ontario. My vote share adjustment only mitigated the problem by a tiny bit.

On actual results, the model with the GTA adjustment would have done quite well: 72-20-14. It would have been farther off without the GTA adjustment, which on actual results, shifted 3 net seats from the Liberals to the Conservatives. This adjustment has been heavily emphasized on this blog, while it was barely mentioned elsewhere.

Manitoba/Saskatchewan
CON - 21|24 - 50%|55%
NDP - 5|2 - 29%|29%
LIB - 2|2 - 15%|13%

Once again, the pollsters severely underestimated the Tory vote, and my pro-Conservative vote share adjustment was not nearly big enough. On actual popular vote, the projected count would have been closer, at 23-4-1.

Alberta
CON - 27|27 - 63%|67%
NDP - 1|1 - 18%|17%

The projection was, unsurprisingly, correct in Alberta, though the pollsters underestimated the Conservative vote here as well.

British Columbia
CON - 21|21 - 41%|46%
NDP - 13|12 - 33%|33%
LIB - 2|2 - 16%|13%
GRN - 0|1 - 8%|8%

Once again, the Tories did much better than predicted. Here, however, the polling inaccuracy did not significantly impact my projection. On the actual provincial split, the model would have given 22-12-2, though I might have made it 23-11-2 via a risk adjustment.

Overall
CON - 152|166 - 37.3%|39.6%
NDP - 94|103 - 30.5%|30.6%
LIB - 46|34 - 20.0%|18.9%
BQ - 15|4 - 6.3%|6.0%
GRN - 0|1 - 4.9%|3.9%
IND - 1|0

Overall, the polls underestimated the Conservative vote by 3.7% - and, I repeat, that was over 5% everywhere outside Québec. They would have been even worse had they accounted for the fact that turnout is significantly lower in Alberta than elsewhere. My vote share adjustment shrank the gap to 2.3%.

On actual vote splits, I would have projected 166-167 Conservative seats - bang on! The Liberal count would have been 36, which is very close as well. The Bloc would still have been overestimated (though by less), and the NDP would still have been underestimated because although I kept repeating that the NDP vote is efficient in Québec, even I did not grasp the full extent of it. Outside Québec, the projected count would have come within 3 seats of the actual count for all parties. Based on these observations, I believe that the model was, in fact, very solid.

As for the riding-by-riding calls, I was correct in 259 cases out of 308 = 84.1%. (Etobicoke Centre and Westmount--Ville-Marie flipped late yesterday, both away from the projected winner. I am, however, very pleased at the change in my childhood riding. Update: Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup also flipped away from the projection.) This is worse than how such a model usually performs - you would have expected about 280 correct calls - but obviously that was caused by the inaccurate polls and the great uncertainty in Québec.

Thank You!

2011-05-03T01:54:00.003-04:00

Wow, over 22,500 pageviews on Election Day, and consistently over 10,000 per day during the last week of the campaign! Thank you so much for reading. Come back tomorrow for some analysis, and after that, please do check back once in a while even though there likely won't be another federal election until 2015.

2015 Fall General Election Calendar

2011-05-03T01:23:00.002-04:00

October 1: Ontario
October 5: NWT
October 5: PEI
October 6: Manitoba
October 13: NL
October 19: Federal
November 2: Saskatchewan

Election Night 2011: Comments Thread

2011-05-02T22:00:00.023-04:00

10:00p: Conservative majority projected.

10:08p:
NL: 1-2-4 as projected, but Tories take Labrador, not Avalon.
NS: 4-3-4, NDP doesn't take Central Nova or South Shore--St. Margaret's.
PE: 1-0-3, Tories don't take Malpeque.
NB: 8-1-1, Tories also take Madawaska--Restigouche.
Atlantic: 14-6-12, Tories 2 above projection, NDP 2 short.

10:17p: Bloc leads in just 4 out of 72 Quebec ridings.

10:19p: Iggy trailing.

10:26p: So to all those that said I had the Tories too high and the Bloc too low. Well, it's the opposite.

10:31p: Tories about 5% higher than polls virtually everywhere. Pollsters appear to have failed miserably.

10:40p: Have we just witnessed the death of the Liberal Party of Canada?

10:43p: With the polls this wrong, obviously none of the projectors did well. In fact, if someone came very close, that means their model converting votes into seats has a problem! But it looks like I'm among the least bad...

10:48p: Conservative majority, Bloc loses official party status. Only suspense left: will the Greens elect MPs? Nothing yet from Saanich--Gulf Islands or Vancouver Centre.

10:53p: 3 of 5 leaders ahead in their ridings. Iggy not among them...

11:02p: It is conceivable that the Liberals could be down to one seat west of the GTA (Ralph Goodale in Wascana), and the Bloc could be down to one seat overall!

11:06p: It's the opposite of 2004, when many Americans considered moving to Canada. Several of my friends are already considering moving South...

11:23p: If the Conservatives end up with 41-42% of the vote, that would be within the margin of error of the last poll of none of the 11 pollsters that have released a national survey during the campaign. Everyone was too low, except for COMPAS, who would be too high. We'll see if that's where things end up... One also wonders if this whole campaign was fake, and the Conservatives were in fact always comfortably in majority territory and toying with the media.

11:37p: All 28 Alberta races have been called, and went as projected.

11:39p: Interesting tidbit: Tories win popular vote in PEI, but just 1 of 4 seats.

11:51p: Will having your supporters intimidate the media and just taking 5 questions a day that you don't answer anyway be the standard way to campaign in Canada from now on? Will asking for emails of the government's critics and removing social scientists' tools to evaluate policy be the standard way to govern Canada from now on? Clearly, Canadians don't give a damn.

11:57p: The only Bloc candidate declared elected up to now is Jean-François Fortin, in the open seat of Haute-Gaspésie--La Mitis--Matane--Matapédia. The reason why he won is that the Liberals presented a very popular candidate, who split the vote with the NDP.

12:04a: Elizabeth May declared elected in Saanich--Gulf Islands!

12:14a: Michael Ignatieff lost in Etobicoke--Lakeshore!

12:37a: All 14 Saskatchewan ridings have been called, and the outcome is the same as in 2008, so the projected NDP gain did not materialize. In the 6 provinces where all races have been called, I was correct in 67/74. This score will certain decrease when the 4 other provinces, Ontario, Québec, BC and Manitoba, are included.

1:02a: All 14 Manitoba ridings have been called, and the Tories make a net gain of two on the NDP. They take Elmwood--Transcona from the Dippers and Elmwood--Transcona from the Liberals, who avoid being shut out by holding onto Winnipeg North, which they won in a by-election.

1:09a: Well, it's time to call it a night! For now, if one assumes candidates leading at this point will win their ridings:
QC: 6-59-6-4, 58/75 correct
ON: 72-22-12, 90/106 correct
BC: 21-12-2-1, 34/36 correct
North: 2-1, 2/3 correct
Canada: 166-103-34-4-1, 262/308 = 85%

Tomorrow, I will post maps of the results and compare my projections to those of the 7 other websites using poll averages.

Things to Watch for Tonight, Part 2

2011-05-02T20:20:00.002-04:00

This is continued from a previous post.

3. How blue does the GTA become?
This is the main piece of the puzzle for figuring out whether the Tories win a majority. My projection calls for 11 GTA seats that were Liberal in 2008 to turn Conservative this time (one of these is Vaughan, which is already Tory from a by-election). A strong Liberal performance in the GTA could limit losses to 3 or 4, while a weak one might lead them to a catastrophic 18-20-seat loss. There is a lot of variability here, so this will be an area to watch all night.

4. How many Liberal seats west of Greater Toronto?
The projection calls for the Liberals to carry only six of these, as they are projected to lose Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca (sure thing), Newton--North Delta (likely) and Vancouver South (very tight). Of the remaining six, Wascana and Yukon should be fairly safe, but Vancouver Centre (NDP and Green), London North Centre (Conservative) and Winnipeg South Centre (Conservative), while not tossups, could slip away. I think Vancouver Quadra is somewhere between the two groups in terms of precarity.

5. How docile are the Prairies?
The Prairies are the Conservatives' fortress, and not much is expected to change. The NDP's surge is expected to finally give them a seat in Saskatchewan (they got 25.5% of the vote, but no seats last time), and Winnipeg North will likely revert to the Dippers.

A few more holes, however, could appear in the Tory armour. The NDP has shots at gains in Palliser and Edmonton East, and while I have no clue what's going on in Edmonton--Sherwood Park, conservative Independent James Ford could unseat Tory incumbent Tim Uppal. If losses in Saskatchewan and Alberta are what prevent the Conservatives from reaching majority territory, Harper might feel betrayed.

6. How large is the NDP surge in BC?
We know that the NDP is up in BC. But while some polls suggest a modest gain that might only yield an extra seat or two, others have them nearing 40%, which could lead to a gain of eight seats (and a near, or possibly even complete Liberal wipeout). If the East plays out nearly as predicted, this is the question that will keep us up for a long time.

7. Can the Greens finally win a seat?
The Greens are mounting strong challenges in Saanich--Gulf Islands and Vancouver Centre. In the former, leader Elizabeth May is up 7% according to an internal poll released to the media. Can May really suck up virtually all of the Liberal and NDP votes? This one should be close. Vancouver Centre could be a three-way race between the Grits, Dippers and Greens. (The model says Liberals and NDP, but there's buzz that the Greens have a shot.) Heck, if they split the vote evenly, even the Tories might come close. What should be a safe Liberal riding could host the most exciting race tonight!

And there you have it, seven things to look out for. At 10pm, I will start a thread where you can post comments and where I will share my thoughts as results roll in. Happy election watching!

Things to Watch for Tonight

2011-05-02T19:07:00.003-04:00

The polls are already closed in Newfoundland, and will close shortly in the Maritimes. Here is an incomplete list of interesting things to look out for tonight:

1. How many Tory seats in Atlantic Canada?
By the time the polls close in most of the country, we will either know, or have a very good idea, of the seat distribution in the Atlantic. The Conservatives are projected to win 12 seats there. If they get 14 or more, a majority becomes more likely than not. But if they win 10 or fewer, Harper may have to start thinking about whether he wants to compromise, and about his political future in general.

Of the 8 seats changing hands that I predicted (remember, these are relative to 2008, so Cumberland--Colchester--Musquodoboit Valley is classified as a change, even though the change really occurred during the by-election), I am of course least confident about Central Nova. Frankly, I was tempted to override this projection by the model, but I left it there because even with that seat, the NDP wins fewer seats than both other parties while leading the popular vote.

I also had problems with the two Halifax area Liberal seats: the Atlantic numbers suggest the NDP could take both, but a Halifax area poll suggested that those are safe. I split the difference, giving Dartmouth--Cole Harbour to the NDP and calling for a hold in Halifax West, but I have little confidence in these projections.

In PEI, while by 2008 results, Malpeque is overwhelmingly the most vulnerable Liberal seat in the province, the buzz is that the two other Liberal ridings are likely Tory pickups. Because I want my projection to be data driven, I didn't take the hearsay into account, but don't be surprised if the Grits drop Cardigan and/or Charlottetown while keeping Malpeque.

Update: I forgot to mention that the Tories could also take Random--Burin--St. George's. I guess Atlantic Canadians are finding this out right now, but most of us will be in the dark for a little longer.

2. Can the Bloc hang on to official party status in Québec?
Many of you thought I'm crazy for having the Bloc down to 15. But uniform swing without balancing risk or taking ridings polls into account actually gets them all the way down to 5. It is therefore a real possibility that the Bloc could be almost wiped off the map.

I can see the Bloc get anywhere from 4 to 26 seats. There are likely to be dozens of tight Bloc-NDP races in Québec, right across the province. You have two parties, both of whose support are distributed quite evenly. Thus, for the Bloc, just a few points can make the difference between keeping half of its seats or near annihilation. Furthermore, while I think 15 is a very reasonable estimate, I have no idea where those 15 seats are going to materialize. I'm guessing they won't be in Montréal, where the NDP's left-of-centre platform is most likely to appeal, but I could be wrong.

The list of ridings that I'm uncertain about is too long to list - virtually every race in Québec but Outremont is unpredictable, which is pretty much the opposite of what one would have said at the outside of the campaign. (OK, Beauce and Roberval--Lac-St-Jean are also safe, but that's really about it!)

More coming later tonight.

Missed Poll: Forum: Tories by 3

2011-05-02T10:43:00.002-04:00

I missed the last Forum Research poll, conducted yesterday, as it was not reported by the Hill Times. It has the Tories jumping by 4 points in Ontario, but losing the lead to the NDP by 2 points in BC.

The final projection might have been different for Etobicoke Centre (that's the seat that I moved from Tories to Grits to balance risk in Ontario), Kamloops--Thompson--Cariboo (very narrowly projected Conservative over NDP), and perhaps Vancouver South (ditto over LPC).

Final Projection: Conservative Minority

2011-05-02T07:57:00.008-04:00

Canadian Election Watch's final projection was posted on the left sidebar around 6:45am EDT, and it calls for a strong Conservative minority government, with the NDP as the Official Opposition. I encourage you to visualize the projection with these maps (Update: now posted). The expected national seat count and vote share for each main party are as follows:

152 seats, 37.3% for the Conservative Party of Canada
94 seats, 30.5% for the New Democratic Party of Canada
46 seats, 20.0% for the Liberal Party of Canada
15 seats, 6.3% for the Bloc Québécois
0 seats, 4.9% for the Green Party of Canada
1 seat held by an Independent

Because the Independent, André Arthur, normally supports the Conservatives, this projection implies that the Tories are just 2 seats short of a working majority. Here are some unscientific estimated probabilities of various events based on the record of similar models in past elections (not that the projection model is totally rigorous, but the probabilities are even more ad hoc):

Conservative working majority: 45%
New Democratic win (most seats): 2%
Liberal Official Opposition: 1%

Of course, if the Tories actually finish only two seats short, they could still form a majority if they manage to convince MPs from the Liberal party to cross the floor.

As a reminder, the projection model is a uniform swing model (dividing Canada into six regions) adjusted for riding polls and by-elections (such as Elizabeth May running in Central Nova last time). Additionally, the following tweaks are made:

- Different swings are applied to the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area and other areas in Ontario, based on EKOS data.
- The Conservative polling averages are slightly increased, and the Bloc's, Greens' and NDP's slightly decreased, as is consistent with past history and commitment measures. (The magnitude of these adjustments, around 0.5-1.5% in each case, is admittedly ad hoc.)

Both of these changes favour the Conservatives by a few seats, and account for most of the difference in the Conservative seat count between this projection and that of some other websites using a similar methodology.

At this point, it is important to remember that the idea behind a uniform swing model is that mistakes on one side and the other tend to cancel out. Thus, this model is not designed to correctly predict the winner is every riding. Rather, it is supposed to give a good idea of the expected total count for each party. As a result, the riding-specific projections should be considered unreliable (Atlantic, Québec, Ontario, West). But, hey, they're fun, and Lawrence Cannon, Peter MacKay and Gilles Duceppe are all projected to be swept away by the orange wave (though all these races are very tight, so none of the three may come to pass).

This final projection is a little different from the ones made throughout the campaign because it has an extra ingredient. Rather than just projecting as the winner whoever the model points to and adding up the ridings, I also took a look at how many close races each party is projected to win or lose. I then manually adjusted the outcome in certain ridings in order to come up with an aggregate projection with roughly equal upside and downside risks.

For example, the Bloc Québécois would have won only 5 seats on a uniform swing model. Because my model also includes riding polls and the regional effects they suggest, it had the Bloc winning 13 seats. However, the Bloc was still losing more close races than it was winning, so I shifted two additional seats to the Bloc from the NDP. The other beneficiaries of this adjustment are the Liberals, who get one seat from the NDP in Québec and one seat from the Conservatives in Ontario.

Furthermore, I took another look at Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier, which is handled outside the model due to the presence of an Independent incumbent. I decided to move that seat back into André Arthur's fold, though of course it is a tossup.

Had the above changes not been made, the final projection would have been 153 C, 98 N, 44 L, 13 B. This is what appears on the campaign trends graph (Update: now posted) in order to maintain consistency.

Later today, I will post a more detailed analysis of the projection, which could also serve as a quick (and incomplete) guide to election night.

Final Projection: Maps

2011-05-02T07:42:00.003-04:00

Here are the maps for the projection. The one for Montréal is the most striking.

Final Projection: Campaign Trends

2011-05-02T07:38:00.003-04:00

Here is the complete trend graph for this campaign. As previously explained, the discontinuity is due to a change in methodology, so the continuous parts of the lines reflect actual variations in the parties' fortunes. Also, as indicated in the main post about the final projection, the numbers plotted as the final point of each line differ from the final projection, which adds a step in the data crunching.

We can see that the Conservatives started the campaign barely in majority territory, but fell out of it due to a strong start by Ignatieff. (Yes, the Grits were actually doing well in the first week. Weird, huh?) For most of the campaign thereafter, they were teetering between a minority and a majority (if you mentally shift the Tory line before the discontinuity up). Throughout the NDP rise, the Conservatives were quite stable, losing just a handful of seats, as I had predicted. This lands them just outside majority territory in the final projection.

The NDP was in the low 30s for the first 60% of the campaign. It was a few points higher in Québec than in 2008, but that wasn't enough for any seat gains. In the rest of Canada, the NDP was actually lower than its 2008 results through the first half of the campaign! As the NDP wave hit Québec, its projected seat count started increasing at a moderate pace until it got to around 50, just 6 days ago. Then it hit the zone where a big chunk of Québec seats swing almost in unison, and the NDP seat count skyrocketed. The rest is history.

It's striking how the Liberal and the Bloc lines are almost parallel, though in the first half of the campaign, the Grits were either on the rise or flat, while the Bloc was already trending downward. While Gilles Duceppe's drop can be at least partly attributed to an uninspired and ill-conceived campaign, Ignatieff didn't do too bad of a job. Unfortunately for him, Jack Layton was much better, and enthusiasm for the NDP crowded out the Liberals.

Final Projection: Seats Changing Hands, West

2011-05-02T07:25:00.003-04:00

These are seats changing hands relative to the 2008 General Election, ignoring any intervening by-elections.

Manitoba/Saskatchewan
CON 21 (-1), 50%
NDP 5 (+1), 29%
LIB 2 (=), 15%
Conservative to NDP: Saskatoon--Rosetown--Biggar

Alberta
CON 27 (=), 63%
NDP 1 (=), 18%

British Columbia
CON 21 (-1), 41%
NDP 13 (+4), 33%
LIB 2 (-3), 16%
Liberal to Conservative: Vancouver South
Liberal to NDP: Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca, Newton--North Delta
Conservative to NDP: Surrey North, Vancouver Island North

Final Projection: Seats Changing Hands, Ontario

2011-05-02T07:18:00.002-04:00

These are seats changing hands relative to the 2008 General Election, ignoring any intervening by-elections.

CON 62 (+11), 40%
NDP 22 (+5), 27%
LIB 22 (-16), 26%

Liberal to Conservative (12)
Ajax--Pickering
Bramalea--Gore--Malton
Brampton--Springdale
Brampton West
Don Valley West
Eglinton--Lawrence
Kingston and the Islands
Mississauga South
Mississauga--Streetsville
Richmond Hill
Vaughan
York Centre

Liberal to NDP (4)
Beaches--East York
Davenport
Guelph
Parkdale--High Park

Conservative to NDP (1)
Oshawa

Final Projection: Seats Changing Hands, Québec

2011-05-02T07:00:00.002-04:00

These are seats changing hands relative to the 2008 General Election, ignoring any intervening by-elections.

NDP 44 (+43), 40%
BQ 15 (-34), 25%
CON 8 (-2), 17%
LIB 7 (-7), 15%
IND 1 (=)

Liberal to NDP (7)
Brossard--La Prairie
Honoré-Mercier
Hull--Aylmer
LaSalle--Émard
Laval--Les Îles
Notre-Dame-de-Grâce--Lachine
Westmount--Ville-Marie

Conservative to NDP (3)
Beauport--Limoilou
Charlesbourg--Haute-Saint-Charles
Pontiac

Bloc to Conservative (1)
Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup

Bloc to NDP (33)
All remaining ridings, EXCEPT:
Bas-Richelieu--Nicolet--Bécancour
Berthier--Maskinongé
Chicoutimi--Le Fjord
Gaspésie--Îles-de-la-Madeleine
Haute-Gaspésie--La Mitis--Matane--Matapédia
Joliette
Laurentides--Labelle
Manicouagan
Montcalm
Montmorency--Charlevoix--Haute-Côte-Nord
Québec
Repentigny
Richmond--Arthabaska
Rivière-du-Nord
Sherbrooke

Final Projection: Seats Changing Hands, Atlantic Canada

2011-05-02T06:48:00.003-04:00

These are seats changing hands relative to the 2008 General Election, ignoring any intervening by-elections.

CON 12 (+2), 32%
LIB 12 (-5), 28%
NDP 8 (+4), 34%

Newfoundland and Labrador
Liberal to Conservative: Avalon
Liberal to NDP: St. John's South--Mount Pearl

Prince Edward Island
Liberal to Conservative: Malpeque

Nova Scotia
Liberal to NDP: Dartmouth--Cole Harbour
Conservative to NDP: Central Nova, South Shore--St. Margaret's
Independent to Conservative: Cumberland--Colchester--Musquodoboit Valley

New Brunswick
Liberal to Conservative: Moncton--Riverview--Dieppe

EKOS: Tories by 2.7

2011-05-01T23:35:00.003-04:00

The final EKOS poll is now here. The Conservatives lead the Liberals by 11.4% in Ontario, which would imply roughly 60 Conservative seats. However, they trail the NDP by 2.1% in BC, which would seriously dent their chances of a majority. The Tories are also third in the Atlantic, and just 9.2% ahead of the NDP in MB/SK, both of which would imply seat losses.

I will post my final projection overnight, before the polls open in Newfoundland at 7 a.m. EDT. They will not change much from the current projection as, taken together, Nanos and EKOS suggest very modest shifts.

The projection will be accompanied by maps, a completed trend graph, a list of ridings changing hands, and some analysis. So check back tomorrow morning, or later tonight!

Nanos: Tories by 8.2 on Sunday, 5.5 over Weekend

2011-05-01T22:13:00.002-04:00

The last Nanos poll is here, along with a daily breakdown of the national results here. Interesting, just like last year, the Tories' support increases on the last day before the vote, and last year, it's Nanos' last-day numbers that came closest to the mark. Will the Tories win by 8%, more than what every pollster (except COMPAS) has been showing in the past week?

The two notable movements in this poll are both good news for the Conservatives: their lead over the Liberals in Ontario more than doubled, from 5.1% to 11.3%, while the NDP lost 7% in BC and is now 13% behind.

I will wait for the last EKOS poll before making a new projection.

Small Mistake

2011-05-01T19:28:00.003-04:00

Because of the Elizabeth May's presence in Central Nova in 2008, I made an adjustment for that riding, namely that it is projected using 2004 and 2006 election results. It turns out there was a sign mistake in the formula, and that riding should have been projected NDP instead of Conservative since today's first update. Those posts will be updated with the correct numbers shortly.

Harris-Decima: Tories by 6

2011-05-01T19:06:00.004-04:00

Harris-Decima has released its final poll, which is favourable to the Conservatives. The main highlight of this survey is the 15% Conservative lead over the NDP in Ontario (17% over the Liberals), a big change from a 1% Liberal lead in last week's numbers. Also, Harris-Decima has the Tories with a 10% lead in Atlantic Canada, though this diverges from all other polls and is probably due to small sample.

~~There are no changes in the projection:~~ The Grits lose one seat to the Tories in BC:

CON - ~~153~~ ~~154~~ 153
NDP - 97 98
LIB - 45 44
BQ - 13

The average Conservative national lead is 7.1%.

EKOS: Tories by 3.2

2011-05-01T15:54:00.004-04:00

Another poll, this time from EKOS, suggests that while things have been stable for a few days, they are now moving again for the NDP, this time outside Québec.

This survey has the NDP surging to a large lead in Atlantic Canada, which some other polls have shown as well. In Québec, the Bloc has fallen to 22.8%, giving the NDP a 17.1% lead. In Ontario, the Tories have increased their lead over the Grits to 13.1%, and are 3% ahead in the GTA, which is also where my model has them.

While all previous polls have shown the Tories leading by at least 5% in BC, this one is the third one today to essentially show a tie in the province. In the end, this shift may be what costs Harper his majority.

In the projection, the NDP picks up two seats in BC, one from the Grits and one from the Tories:

CON - ~~153~~ 152
NDP - 97 98
LIB - 45
BQ - 13

The Tory average national lead decreases slightly, to 7.0%.

EKOS will have another update around 10pm tonight with data from today, so we still have at least three polls to come.

One More Crazy Scenario that People Haven't Mentioned Much

2011-05-01T14:26:00.004-04:00

What if the Tories get to 153 or 154 (after any possible Liberal defections), and the Greens hold the balance of power? Obviously, it's very unlikely that things work out exactly this way, but that's now within the realm of possibility.

I'm not currently projecting any Green seats and won't unless a non-partisan riding poll comes out, but you just don't know what's going on in Saanich--Gulf Islands and Vancouver Centre (which the Liberals are worried about) based on provincial numbers.

Forum: Tories by 2

2011-05-01T11:28:00.007-04:00

Forum Research's last poll of the campaign is the tightest yet: 35-33. The NDP is up to 31% in Ontario, just 5% behind the Tories, and 43% in Québec (the writeup says 33, but there are clearly 10 points missing in Québec, and the NDP number would not reach 33% nationally if the Québec number were that "low"). In BC, the Tories are just 2% ahead of the NDP, so maybe Abacus was onto something. This poll has a large sample of 3,789.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that Ontario is turning its back to the Grits. This is great news for Stephen Harper's majority prospects (but see update 2 below). The Tories pick up two more GTA seats from the Liberals in the projection. ~~If the Forum poll is right that the Conservatives lead the Liberals by 10% in the GTA, the Tories could win over 25 seats there, up from their current 8.~~

[Update: A word of caution: this poll says that the Tories lead the Liberals by 10% in the GTA, a huge change from 2008 when the Grits won the area by 8%. However, the poll defines the GTA as "the two-dozen ridings in the City of Toronto itself, and more than 30 ridings in the surrounding metropolitan area." That's at least 53 ridings, while usually the GTA only includes 42 ridings. Adding those 11 ridings means that, in fact, the GTA did not swing by 18% as might appear at first glance. Fortunately, I did not use Forum's GTA numbers for the projection.]

[Update 2: The GTA/non-GTA divide is very important. The Tories' main competitors in the GTA are still the Liberals, but elsewhere in Ontario, it's now the NDP. So if the Liberals are bleeding in the GTA, it's good news for Harper. But if they're bleeding elsewhere, that could hurt the Conservatives.]

The other changes in the projection are an NDP gain from the Liberals in Toronto and another NDP gain from the Bloc.

CON - ~~154~~ 153
NDP - 95 96
LIB - 46
BQ - 13

The Tory national lead shrinks to 7.1%.

Abacus: Tories by 5

2011-05-01T09:51:00.005-04:00

Abacus has released its final poll of the campaign, and it largely agrees with recent polling averages. Still, there are some differences:

- The Liberal collapse is especially apparent across the West: they score less than 10% west of Ontario, and no higher than the Greens in Alberta and BC.

- The Tories have a strong 16% lead in Ontario, which would provide them with a majority, except...

- The NDP catches up with the Conservatives in BC, where it's 40-40.

No changes in the aggregate projection result from this poll; things appear to have stabilized:

CON - ~~152~~ 151
NDP - 93 94
LIB - 49
BQ - 14

The average national Conservative lead is also stable, at 7.6%. Still at least ~~two~~ three national polls (Harris-Decima is reportedly going to have one, and of course EKOS and Nanos are coming), and possibly several more to go today.

Nanos: Tories by 6.4

2011-05-01T07:44:00.004-04:00

The latest Nanos poll shows a slightly smaller Tory-NDP national gap, but there is no big variation in terms of the regional splits. Interestingly, the NDP lead over the Bloc is down from 16.8% to 13.5%. While this is not a statistically significant change, if such a shift were real, it could cost the NDP several seats. The other important number to observe is the Tory lead over the Liberals in Ontario. Nanos has it at 5.1%, up slightly from 3.6%, but still nowhere near what Harper needs for a majority.

Adding this projection to the poll mix shifts one Tory seat to the NDP in Ontario due to the depreciation of older surveys. Update: It also shifts a Nova Scotia Tory seat to the NDP:

CON - ~~152~~ 151
NDP - 93 94
LIB - 49
BQ - 14

The average Conservative national lead is 7.6%.

If I interpret this tweet correctly, Nanos suggests that the Saturday numbers were tight, and will release another poll at 9pm tonight containing data from today. This means that we can still expect at least three more polls today, EKOS, Abacus and Nanos, with more likely.

COMPAS: Tories by 20

2011-04-30T22:18:00.002-04:00

COMPAS has the Tories at 46%, the Dippers at 26%, and the Grits at 17%. Needless to say, this poll is grossly out of line with everything we've seen. Because the previous COMPAS poll was also pretty crazy, I will simply assume that COMPAS' methodology is flawed and ignore this survey.

Note that this decision will counteract a significant fraction of the Tory ballot box bounce included in the model. Of course, that bounce is relative to "normal" polls, which this one is not.

Frank Graves is a Tease

2011-04-30T14:09:00.005-04:00

Apparently, EKOS numbers, although fairly stable, show some very interesting things that might explain last night's revelation about Layton (I'm not going to dignify that story by linking to it).

Has the NDP surged into the lead in BC? Or is it now taking more from the Tories than the Liberals in Ontario? Neither appears particularly likely, but either would seriously damage Harper's chances at a majority.

What we do know is that EKOS numbers don't point to a Conservative majority. For the rest, gratification is denied until tomorrow, when, as appears likely, a massive orgy of polls will be upon us, climaxing in a final projection and ropes of accompanying posts in the wee hours of Monday morning. Frank, you tease!

(So yeah, I will post regularly tomorrow, but wait until after midnight to make a final projection. It is possible that some pollsters release data from tomorrow's polling at night - that has been done in the past.)

Pontiac Poll and Today's Projections

2011-04-30T12:44:00.008-04:00

CROP has the Tories tied with the NDP in Pontiac. So the projection there remains an NDP win.

Here are the updated projections around the web. As usual, I encourage you to visit these websites, which are all linked from the sidebar. I will update this post as more updates are made.

Most Current
151 C, 93.6 N, 45.2 L, 17.6 B, 0.6 I (Calgary Grit - update)
148 C, 97 N, 47 L, 15 B, 1 I (Riding by Riding - update)
153 C, 92 N, 49 L, 14 B (Canadian Election Watch)

Including some polls from today
140 C, 96 N, 57 L, 15 B (LISPOP)
144 C, 59 N, 65 L, 40 B (ThreeHundredEight.com)
Average of 5 projections: 147 C, 88 N, 52 L, 20 B
(Without ThreeHundredEight.com: 148 C, 95 N, 50 L, 15 B)

Including polls from yesterday
149 C, 79 N, 55 L, 24 B, 1 I (democraticSPACE)

Including polls from two days ago
142 C, 88 N, 64 L, 14 B (Too Close to Call)

Including polls from three days ago
143 C, 73 N, 69 L, 22 B, 1 I (The Mace)
Average of 8 projections: 146 C, 85 N, 56 L, 20 B
(Without ThreeHundredEight.com: 147 C, 88 N, 55 L, 17 B, 1 I)

Ranges excluding highest and lowest:
CON: 142-151
NDP: 73-96
LIB: 47-65
BQ: 14-24

Léger: Tories by 5

2011-04-30T09:22:00.003-04:00

We have another piece of evidence, by Léger Marketing, that the Conservative lead is around 5%. My raw polling average has it at 5.5%, but after adjusting for a likely Tory ballot box bump, it is 8.0%.

This poll has the Tories leading the Liberals by 11% in Ontario, which is consistent with the polling average. That's good news since Léger is usually pretty middle-of-the-road. The NDP is 8% behind the Conservatives there.

In Québec, this survey has the Bloc a little higher than others. Still, that's just 27%, 13% behind the NDP. In the Atlantic, it's a tight three-way race, though the Liberals trail the others slightly. Out West, there's nothing surprising.

We keep hearing about an NDP surge in BC. Léger still has them 10% behind the Conservatives, and the pre-adjustment polling average, 9%. While that's less than the 18% gap recorded in 2008, it's unlikely to cost the Tories more than 2-3 seats.

In the projection, the Bloc gets an NDP seat in Québec, the NDP gets a Tory seat in Ontario, and the Tories get a Grit seat in PEI, which gives:

CON - 153
NDP - 92
LIB - 49
BQ - 14

Update: Interestingly, according to this poll, still just 8% of Canadians think the next government will be led by Layton, while 66% think Harper will remain PM. This doesn't mean Canadians prefer Harper - he trails Layton by 4%, 30 to 34, on the best PM question.

Angus Reid: Tories by 4; Nanos: Tories by 8.4

2011-04-30T07:33:00.002-04:00

Today's Angus Reid and Nanos polls show stability in the national Tory-NDP gap (though Angus Reid has the Grits dropping to 19%), but have very different implications due to different regional splits.

Ontario: Angus Reid has the Tory-Liberal gap widening from 7% to 15%, while Nanos has it shrinking from 6.5% to 3.6%. The former gives Harper a good shot at a majority, while the latter puts him nowhere close.

Atlantic Canada: Both polls agree that the Liberals and Conservatives are roughly tied. However, Nanos puts the NDP about 12% behind them, while Angus Reid has the Dippers roughly 20% ahead...

Québec: Nanos suggests that the NDP rise has stopped, and shows a small Liberal rebound. Angus Reid has the Grits flat and the Dippers still going up, now at 45%.

British Columbia: Angus Reid has the NDP up to a statistical tie with the Tories, while Nanos shows no such bump.

Overall, the Liberals plunge in my Ontario polling average, giving 3 seats to the Tories. The NDP picks up 4 seats in Québec, 3 from the Bloc and one from André Arthur. The Dippers also gain a seat from each of the other two parties in NS.

CON - 153
NDP - 92
LIB - 50
BQ - 13

The average Conservative national lead is 8.1%.

Conservative Majority Out of Reach? NOT SO FAST!

2011-04-29T22:50:00.004-04:00

The Toronto Star reported this morning that the Conservatives think it is "almost impossible" for them to win a majority. Specifically, they say they need to win 74 Ontario seats in order to get to 155. Are these sources telling the truth, that they're at just 81 outside Ontario?

Here is the number of ex-Ontario seats projected for the Conservatives by each of the 8 websites that use a polling average:

Calgary Grit: 98 (from Monday)*
ThreeHundredEight.com: 92
LISPOP: 91
Canadian Election Watch: 91
Too Close to Call: 87
The Mace: 87
democraticSPACE: 85
Riding by Riding: 85 (from earlier today)*

*The latest projection's breakdown is not available.

Is the Conservatives' internal polling having them a lot lower than public polls? Do they use a seat model that's significantly less generous to them than all the ones above?

Unlikely. They are probably playing the media, perhaps hoping that fewer left-wingers in the GTA vote if they don't think a Tory majority is possible. Update: Or maybe they're trying to lower expectations, so that they can have more legitimacy if they "unexpectedly" come very close to 155.

To be fair, just 81 seats outside Ontario isn't insanely low, but it's just not what you'd expect, on average, based on current Conservative numbers.

Updated Trend Graph

2011-04-29T21:39:00.003-04:00

Here are the trends updated with today's points.

Two things to note: first, the Liberals have stabilized around the mid-50s. The key number for them is their Ontario vote share, and most recent polls put them at around 28%, except for Ipsos' 21%.

Second, accounting for methodological change (that's the discontinuity on the graph), the Tories are at their lowest point of the campaign. They are still very close to a majority, however, so unless things change drastically in the next two days, there will be a lot of suspense on election night. Don't believe the media saying there's virtually no chance of a Tory majority.

Today's Projection Averages

2011-04-29T21:07:00.003-04:00

As usual, I encourage you to visit these websites, which are all linked from the sidebar.

Most Current
149 C, 79 N, 55 L, 24 B, 1 I (democraticSPACE - update)
143 C, 94 N, 52 L, 18 B, 1 I (Riding by Riding)
151 C, 86 N, 54 L, 16 B, 1 I (Canadian Election Watch)
Average: 148 C, 86 N, 54 L, 19 B, 1 I

Including some polls from today
149 C, 78 N, 57 L, 23 B, 1 I (Calgary Grit)
144 C, 53 N, 70 L, 41 B (ThreeHundredEight.com)
Average of 5 projections: 147 C, 78 N, 58 L, 24 B, 1 I

Including yesterday's polls
142 C, 88 N, 64 L, 14 B (Too Close to Call)
Average of 6 projections: 146 C, 80 N, 59 L, 23 B, 1 I

Including polls from two days ago
147 C, 69 N, 60 L, 32 B (LISPOP)
143 C, 73 N, 69 L, 22 B, 1 I (The Mace)
Average of 8 projections: 146 C, 77 N, 60 L, 24 B, 1 I
(Without ThreeHundredEight.com: 146 C, 81 N, 59 L, 21 B, 1 I)

Ranges excluding highest and lowest:
CON: 143-149
NDP: 69-88
LIB: 54-69
BQ: 16-32

Ipsos: Tories by 5, Grits at 18%; Eight Riding Polls

2011-04-29T19:21:00.004-04:00

Ipsos Reid confirms (updated link) the 5% Tory lead over the NDP that many others have observed. The Liberals are at a historic low, but Ipsos has consistently shown the Grits lower and the Tories higher than other pollsters.

In Ontario, the NDP has vaulted into second place at 34%, just 6% behind the Conservatives. The Liberals languish at 21%. Although the NDP is close to the Conservatives in the popular vote, it would likely only win around 26 seats, leaving 69 for the Conservatives, and just 11 for the Liberals. The NDP needs to win the Ontario popular vote handsomely before making significant inroads.

The NDP leads in Atlantic Canada, 10% in front of the Tories and 19% ahead of the Grits, who would fall out of contention in the last region where they have a shot at the lead. The Tories polled at 55% in SK/MN, 23% ahead of the NDP, and at a whopping 74% in Alberta.

The Québec numbers are pretty run-of-the-mill: NDP at 42%, 16 in front of the Bloc, with the Grits and Tories well back around 15%. BC numbers have the Tories and Grits slightly stronger than the polling average, so the Dippers are just 3% ahead of the Liberals and 13% from the Conservatives.

For all these funny numbers, this poll only caused a one-seat change in the projection: the NDP takes an Ontarian seat from the Liberals. Based on this poll alone, however, I have the Tories winning a bare majority: 157 C, 108 N, 31 L, 12 B.

Next, ProjectDemocracy has released eight riding polls conducted by Oracle. Two of these are in the same ridings as CROP polled, and unfortunately, the results conflict. In Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier, while CROP showed a tight three-way race, this one has André Arthur leading the NDP candidate by 6%, both well ahead of the Bloc. In Charlesbourgh--Haute-Saint-Charles, where CROP showed an NDP-Tory race, Oracle says it's an NDP-Bloc race.

Two more of these polls are in Québec: Lévis--Bellechasse, where the Conservatives have a whopping lead (this conflicts in a major way with an earlier poll which had the NDP much closer in an early stage of its surge), and Pontiac, where the NDP leads by 6%.

The Tories lead in the four other ridings polled: Saskatoon--Humboldt, Desnethé--Missinippi--Churchill River, Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca and Nunavut. Harper's efforts in the North have really helped Leona Aglukkaq, who polled at over 70%. The only competitive riding is Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca, where the Tories lead the NDP by 5.8%, almost exactly as the model expects.

All these riding polls result in one change: André Arthur retakes his seat by a fraction of a point. This one could bounce back and forth over the weekend... The new projection is thus:

CON - 151
NDP - 86
LIB - 54
BQ - 16
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead is 8.8%.

Why Andrew Coyne is wrong, and the NDP will win at least 30 seats in Québec

2011-04-29T14:01:00.005-04:00

Plenty of commentators, like Andrew Coyne (whose most recent article is an absolute must), are still skeptical about the NDP's ability to convert its polling numbers into a seat landslide in Québec. (See here and here.) Here are two common explanations for their skepticism, and why I think they're wrong.

Update, 6:45pm: Andrew has changed his mind from last night, and now agrees that the NDP will win over 30 seats in Québec. However, some still believe that they will only get 5 to 7 (see here and here).

1. The Bloc vote will turn out more than the NDP's.
Contrary to what many have asserted, the sovereignists are notoriously bad at turning out their vote. In almost every provincial and federal election, there is a prime à l'urne (ballot box bounce) for the federalist party/parties. The 2008 provincial election, when the PQ did unexpectedly well, was an exception and probably due to Quebecers being unenthusiastic about the incumbent government (Charest's Liberals). Such an anti-incumbency effect would clearly not hurt the NDP. While the NDP may not get a bounce because of its inferior organization, it is unlikely to be much worse than the Bloc at turnout.

2. The Bloc vote is efficiently distributed.
This is patently false. The Bloc vote was efficiently distributed in 2008 because it is quite uniform across French-speaking regions of Québec. This allowed it to win a lot of ridings by moderate margins, instead of wasting tons of votes on ultra-safe strongholds. This efficiency is predicated on the Bloc winning the Francophone vote. If the Bloc were tied with the NDP province-wide, it would still win Francophones, and Duceppe would trounce Layton seat-wise.

However, with the NDP 13% ahead of the Bloc, the Dippers are clearly also in the lead among Francophones. Both parties have quite uniformly spread votes. This means that the Bloc will lose dozens of races by 10% or less. Because the Bloc is no longer first, the same feature that made its vote very efficient in the past now makes it inefficient.

Now, obviously, there may be pockets of the province where the Bloc retreats less than elsewhere, which would make its vote less uniform and help it survive in some areas. The projection actually takes this into account through regional adjustments based on riding polls: if I applied a straight uniform swing without regional adjustments, the Bloc would be down to 9 seats.

Bottom line: If the election were yesterday, I'm confident the NDP would have won, at a bare minimum, a majority of Québec seats. Taking into account a potential recoil over the weekend, maybe that lower bound is around 30 seats for Election Day. However, while I think the NDP has probably stopped going up in Québec, I don't think that a voter recoil is much more likely than a further Bloc collapse. The best bet is that the Dippers win a majority of Québec seats, and that the Bloc loses at least half its caucus. I wouldn't even be surprised if the Bloc falls below 12 and loses official party status, though the odds of that are currently under half.

Riding Poll: Bloc Holds on by 7 in Berthier--Maskinongé

2011-04-29T12:34:00.008-04:00

Cible Recherche has conducted a riding poll in Berthier--Maskinongé. This staunchly pro-Bloc riding was projected to be a tough fight, with a 3% NDP edge. This survey suggests that the Bloc vote may be holding up better in this region than elsewhere.

The Lanaudière region and nearby areas are the most sovereignist places in Southern Québec. Most of the Bloc's close races are there, as it is literally fighting for its survival. Along with far Eastern Québec, this is where the Bloc will make a last stand. Thus, this riding survey is very significant, and suggests that the Bloc might have a better chance at staying an official party than provincial polls imply.

As a result of this riding poll, I will make an adjustment not just for Berthier--Maskinongé, but also for other ridings on the North Shore of Montréal. As a result, the Bloc also retakes Laurentides--Labelle and La Rivière-du-Nord, both of which were projected NDP by under 2%.

CON - 151
NDP - 86
LIB - 55
BQ - 16

Update: Bernard von Schulmann has alerted me to a Yukon riding poll by DataPath. The Liberal incumbent is comfortably in the lead, as expected.

Update 2: Skoblin points out that Berthier--Maskinongé is the riding where the NDP candidate can barely speak French. I had missed that! Obviously, that means that this poll may not be representative for what's happening in the region. However, the adjustment I made for nearby ridings is a lot smaller than the one applied to Berthier--Maskinongé. I will keep it since it also serves as a correction for the fact that the NDP was winning lots of close races, but losing very few when I had the Bloc at 13.

Nine Québec Riding Polls and a Halifax Area Poll

2011-04-29T10:51:00.007-04:00

By now you've all come to expect it: Skoblin points out more riding polls.

CROP conducted a collection of six riding polls in the Quebec City area and three in the Saguenay--Lac-St-Jean region. All 6 Quebec City ridings are tight races involving the NDP, just as the model expected:
- NDP vs. Tories: Louis-St-Laurent (tie) and Charlesbourg--Haute-Saint-Charles (NDP by 4);
- NDP vs. Bloc: Québec (tie) and Louis-Hébert (NDP by 2);
- Three-way: Beauport--Limoilou (NDP by 6 over Bloc, 9 over Tories) and Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier (NDP by 2 over André Arthur and 3 over Bloc).

The projection formerly included a downward NDP adjustment because previous riding polls had indicated a weaker NDP rise in the area. All of these polls are consistent with a more refined story: the absence of such an adjustment in ridings with a Conservative incumbent, but a stronger adjustment in ridings with a Bloc incumbent. After this change, the NDP takes Charlesbourg--Haute-Saint-Charles and Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier, both of which it was losing by less than 3%. The projected NDP leads in Québec and Louis-Hébert both shrink, as does the projected Tory lead in Louis-St-Laurent.

In the Saguenay--Lac-St-Jean, CROP has the Tories with a healthy lead in Roberval--Lac-St-Jean and the Bloc ahead in Chicoutimi--Le Fjord. The race in Jonquière--Alma is tight, with the Tories holding a slight edge. All of these are consistent with the model, which takes into account last week's Segma polls in the same ridings, though the Bloc lead in Chicoutimi--Le Fjord is larger than expected.

Finally, MarketQuest-Omnifacts has a Metro Halifax poll. It shows the NDP surprisingly low in the area - in between the leading Grits and trailing Tories, while last time, it held a 10% lead over the Liberals and 20% lead over the Conservatives. However, all four seats in the region are so safe that none of them switches hands, though as indicated in the article, the race in Halifax (the riding) may be closer than expected.

As a result of the changes in and around Quebec City, the projection now gives:

CON - 151
NDP - 89
LIB - 55
BQ - 13

Update: Reader Dave Roberts mentions an Environics Alberta poll that shows no orange wave there. (Reader JeffS points out the poll was taken before the NDP surge spilled outside Québec.) Really, Environics, or whoever ordered the poll? Alberta?

EKOS: Tories by 4.8; Nanos: Tories by 5.2

2011-04-29T09:44:00.004-04:00

Two more polls suggest that the NDP rise continues at a much slower pace, but tell different stories about the Liberals.

First, today's EKOS survey has the Grits down to 20% nationally, a drop of 2.3%, while the NDP rises by 2.2% to 29.7%. In Ontario, the NDP rises by 3.4% to 26.2%, pulling slight more from the Grits than the Tories, the gap between whom grows to 12.3%. It's now a virtual tie for second place in Ontario. In Québec, the NDP ascension continues, and they build a 13.4% lead over the Bloc. The Liberals tank to 13%. Regionals for other areas will become available later.

Update: EKOS regionals outside Québec and Ontario are now up. The NDP now trails the Tories by just 5.8% in BC.

In the Nanos poll, however, all parties are essentially flat nationally. In Ontario, the Grits gain several points from the Tories (the gap shrinks to 6.5%) while the NDP is flat, which is very different from what EKOS shows. EKOS' sample is much larger, however. In Québec, the Bloc drops to 23.6%, 17.8% behind the NDP. The NDP jumps by 8.3% in BC, and are now within 8 points of the Tories.

In the projection, the NDP takes 5 more seats from the Bloc, which now risks losing official party status. The Dippers also gain one from the Tories in BC. (You may notice that the Tory count went up. That's because I had made mistakes in the previous update, now corrected. Sorry.)

CON - 152
NDP - 87
LIB - 55
BQ - 13
IND - 1

The average Tory national lead shrinks to 9.1%.

I will post another update shortly incorporating a bunch of new riding polls, so check back soon!

Around the Web: Projection Roundup

2011-04-28T17:39:00.004-04:00

A reminder that links to all of these websites can be found on the left. Only projections based on a polling average are listed below.

Including today's polls
142 C, 88 N, 64 L, 14 B (Too Close to Call)
146 C, 74 N, 63 L, 24 B, 1 I (democraticSPACE, updated)
146 C, 92 N, 51 L, 18 B, 1 I (Riding by Riding, updated)
153 C, 81 N, 55 L, 18 B, 1 I (Canadian Election Watch, corrected)
Average: 147 C, 84 N, 58 L, 18 B, 1 I

Including yesterday's polls
150 C, 69 N, 59 L, 29 B, 1 I (Calgary Grit)
143 C, 47 N, 74 L, 43 B, 1 I (ThreeHundredEight.com - also includes today's Nanos)
147 C, 69 N, 60 L, 32 B (LISPOP)
143 C, 73 N, 69 L, 22 B, 1 I (The Mace)
Average of all 8 projections: 146 C, 74 N, 62 L, 25 B, 1 I

Harris-Decima: Tories by 5; Trois-Rivières Riding Poll

2011-04-28T16:35:00.006-04:00

Update: Two Tory seats were mistakenly allocated to other parties. See corrections below.

The latest Harris-Decima poll confirms what other pollsters are seeing on the national level. All five pollsters that have polled this week show a 3-7.5% Tory lead over the NDP in their most recent survey.

If you're a Conservative, however, this is a terrible poll: the Liberals have a 1% lead in all-important Ontario. Under this scenario, it would be impossible for Harper to aspire to a majority.

If you're a Bloc voter, this is also a terrible poll: it has the NDP 20% ahead of the Bloc. Under uniform swing, such an outcome would leave the Bloc with a grand total of 1 (yes, that's one) seat. Obviously, in reality, swings vary by riding, so the Bloc would probably keep a few more. However, it would probably lose official party status.

The changes in the projection this time around are:
~~- Liberals take one Conservative seat in Ontario.~~
- Tories ~~make it up by~~ reclaim~~ing~~ the NS seat it dropped to the NDP earlier today.
- The NDP gains a seat from ~~each of the three other parties in Québec~~ the Bloc and the Grits. The Bloc seat is Gilles Duceppe's own. ~~The Tory seat is Beauport--Limoilou, admitted to be vulnerable to a Conservative operative.~~ (Correction: Beauport--Limoilou had already been allocation to the NDP in the last update!)

CON - ~~151~~ 153
NDP - 82 81
LIB - 56 55
BQ - 18
IND - 1

The average Conservative lead decreases to 10.1%.

Once again, our friend Skoblin points us to a riding poll, this time from Trois-Rivières. It shows a 14-point NDP lead over the Bloc, in a riding where the Dippers got 9% of the vote in 2008. This is one of the seats the Bloc lost to the NDP in the last projection update, so it's good to see confirmation.

EKOS: Tories by 7.3

2011-04-28T13:28:00.005-04:00

Today's EKOS survey has the Tories marginally up, and the NDP and Liberals marginally down. The regional numbers didn't change by much: the Tories recover from a bad day in Atlantic Canada and make it a three-way race, which is consistent with what the poll average says. They are 2% up in Ontario, which pushes their lead to 11.5% - a good sign for Harper.

In Québec, the NDP is stable at a high 37.4%. As a result, the Bloc and Conservatives both lose ground, two and one seat(s) respectively in the projection, all to the NDP. The NDP is now projected to win a majority of Québec seats.

CON - 152
NDP - 80
LIB - 56
BQ - 19
IND - 1

The average Conservative lead is up a whisker, at 10.4%.

My Favourite Tweet of the Campaign

2011-04-28T12:37:00.000-04:00

@VeryEthnic says:

@acoyne endorses Canucks: http://bit.ly/mCBLXO. @globeandmail endorse the fucking Predators http://bit.ly/k2cbTl

Updated Trends and Poll Weights

2011-04-28T09:30:00.009-04:00

Here is the updated trend graph that I've been promising. The discontinuity in the lines reflects methodological changes. Data in the days before the break has been revised: this is what they would have been without any GTA adjustment (which I have decided to keep at 4%) or change in the vote share formula. This makes it easier to see the parties' true progression.

The other change is that while I used to plot the projection at the end of each day, I have started yesterday to plot the projection at noon as well. So the graph will be a little more choppy from now on.

The story in the past day and a half has of course been the NDP's rise: it gained a whopping 25 seats! However, I don't think it's the main thing to watch going forward - it's fairly likely now that the NDP will finish second, and extremely unlikely that it'll finish first. Indeed, even if the NDP wins the popular vote, it would probably get fewer seats than the Tories, whose vote is very efficient.

Instead, I think that the thing to watch now is the Liberal number in Ontario. The Tories have been flat through the NDP progression because it has made up for losses to the NDP by gains from the Grits in Ontario. However, in the past few days, the Liberal support in Ontario seems to have hit a floor at 28%, which explains the dip in the blue line in the past day. If the Liberals hold on to that 28% of core supporters in Ontario and the NDP numbers from the past two days' polls hold, Harper will be denied a majority. But if the Liberal vote disintegrates in Ontario, the Tories have a good chance of achieving their goal.

Another thing to watch is the Bloc. I'd say they currently have a ~~one-in-three~~ (OK, 1/3 is probably a tad too high) one-in-five chance of losing official party status on Election Day.

Here are the weights on the national polls for the most recent projection. Hopefully this gives you a better sense of how the model works, which can help with understanding the trends:

Nanos 4/24-27: 12%
Nanos 4/20-23: 4%
Nanos 4/17-19: < 1%
EKOS 4/24-26: 19%
EKOS 4/18-20: 3%
Forum 4/26: 20%
Forum 4/20: 5%
Angus Reid 4/25-26: 16%
Innovative 4/21-25: 12%
Environics 4/18-21: 5%
Ipsos 4/18-20: 4%

In bold are the four polls conducted entirely this week. They account for 2/3 of the projection. Polls from last week carry 1/3 of the weight.

Currently, polls with a midpoint date within 2 days of the most recent one (Forum 4/26) are given full weight, which is the square root of the sample size. Polls up to 10 days old are given some weight. As I've indicated a few days ago, I am gradually lowering these thresholds; they were 3 and 12 for most of the campaign, and will be even lower than 2 and 10 for the final projection, which will be almost entirely based on this week's surveys. There is also additional depreciation for polls that are not a firm's most recent one.

Nanos: Tories by 6.2

2011-04-28T08:12:00.002-04:00

Here's today's Nanos release. Nationally, the NDP keeps progressing at the expense of both traditional parties. In Québec, Nanos concurs with the latest Forum poll, and puts the NDP in the lead by 17%. Duceppe and the Bloc could really be wiped out! The Tories lose several points in Atlantic Canada and Ontario, which, as we'll see in the projection, hurts their chances of a majority. They do gain in BC, however.

This poll again causes many changes in the projection. The NDP takes 5 more seats from the Bloc, and one from the Tories in NS. Furthermore, the Liberals regain two in Ontario. Thus, the Conservatives fall out of majority territory, and Layton catches up to Dion's 2008 performance:

CON - 153
NDP - 77
LIB - 56
BQ - 21
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead is 10.3%.

Take a look at the Cyberpresse article (in French), where a Conservative operative concedes that the Tories could lose Pontiac and Beauport--Limoilou. The projection has the NDP ahead in Pontiac, and literally 0.1% behind in Beauport--Limoilou. The Tories think they could make up for those losses in Abitibi--Baie-James--Nunavik--Eeyou, Richmond--Arthabaska and Mount Royal. The projection indeed has them ahead of the incumbent Bloc in A-BJ-N-E, but the current projected winner is the NDP. Richmond--Arthabaska had a riding poll putting the Tories a whopping 26% behind the Bloc last week - so that poll needs to be very wrong. Finally, the Conservatives lost Mount Royal by 28% last time, with less than half the Liberal vote alone, so this would seem like a tall order.

Too Tired

2011-04-28T01:09:00.003-04:00

And too bummed out by Habs loss. Will post the updated trend graph some time tomorrow. Sorry.

For now, take a look at this Léger poll, which is not on voting intentions. Canadians and even NDPers overwhelming think the NDP is gaining on (and as we've seen, leaving behind) the Liberals due to Layton outperforming Ignatieff, and not due to its platform (and thus ideas). Also, a majority of Liberals support considering a merger with the NDP, but on the NDP side, there are more opponents than supporters.

Five Québec Riding Polls, Fun with Forum Numbers

2011-04-27T23:52:00.002-04:00

Skoblin once again alerts me to riding polls, five of them this time!

Two of these, from Segma, were conducted in Eastern Québec (Gaspésie--Îles-de-la-Madeleine and Haute-Gaspésie--LM--M--M). They are very old (April 6-13, before the orange wave struck) and both give huge leads to the Bloc. Still, the NDP was already up a few points provincially, and the Bloc down a few. These polls instead had the Bloc gaining significantly, the NDP gaining less than elsewhere in Québec, and the Liberals down more than elsewhere. These surveys will help these ridings stay in the Bloc fold, and move HG-LM-M-M back from being narrowly projected Liberal.

Two more polls, by Connexion, were conducted April 12-16 in two Conservative ridings, Lévis--Bellechasse and Lotbinière--Chutes-de-la-Chaudière. Both had the Tories first, a few points in front of the Bloc, which was in turn a few points ahead of the NDP. Compared to contemporaneous provincial polls, they show the Tories dropping by more, the Bloc holding up instead of dropping, and the NDP rising slightly more than elsewhere. Nevertheless, because these seats were so safe, they remain Conservative for now in the projection.

In Hull--Aylmer, the NDP led by 13% over the Liberal incumbent according to a Segma poll conducted 4/21-23. This is virtually identical to what the model predicted!

As a result of the change in HG-LM-M-M, the projection is now:

CON - 156
NDP - 71
LIB - 54
BQ - 26
IND - 1

I've also played around with the Forum Research poll, and made a projection based on it alone. I turned off the popular vote adjustment, since I want to see what the projection would look like if the poll were entirely accurate. I did keep other features of the model, like the GTA adjustment and tweaks due to riding polls. The result: 143 C, 103 N, 54 L, 8 B. Forum's projection based on that poll is 137-108-60-3. The NDP vote outside Québec would be very inefficient, causing them to be well behind in the seat count despite being just 3% short of the Tories. So nothing we have suggests that the NDP may win the seat count... yet.

EKOS: Tories by 5.9; Forum: Tories by 3

2011-04-27T18:32:00.002-04:00

One might have thought when the NDP surge started that it might compete for second place with the Liberals. Well, it's instead competing for first with the Tories!

First, today's EKOS shows little meaningful change from yesterday's. The Liberals did lose 2.6% in Ontario, mostly to the benefit of the NDP. This is far from statistically significant, but every point the Liberals lose in Ontario increase Stephen Harper's chance of winning a majority.

Next, Forum Research also has a new poll, all conducted yesterday. It shows the NDP with the largest lead yet in Québec: 40% to 23% for the Bloc. With such numbers, the Bloc risks losing official party status. The NDP also surges to first place in the Atlantic, and is close to the Liberals in Ontario. In this poll, it's the Conservatives and not the Liberals that are down in Ontario, which is bad news for Harper. Further bad news for the PM is that Forum shows the NDP tied with the Tories in MB/SK, and above 20% in AB where it would be competitive for a second seat. In BC, the NDP drops to the benefit of the Greens.

The NDP increases once again in the projection, this time by 4: it takes one seat from the Tories in SK, one from the Grits in ON, another from the Grits in QC, and one from the Bloc. The Tories also take a Liberal seat in ON, but the Grits take one back in PEI. All this gives:

CON - 156
NDP - 71
LIB - 55
BQ - 25
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead is 11.4%.

Note that this projection does not yet incorporate some new riding polls that some very kind readers have brought to my attention. I will add them after the game, and will also update the trend graph.

Go Habs Go!

Delay in Posting

2011-04-27T15:51:00.001-04:00

I might not be able to post until late tonight. Sorry. On the plus side, it's now (unofficially - still some paperwork to be completed) Dr. Election Watcher :)

Nanos: Tories by 10 over NDP, by 21.2 (over Grits) in Ontario

2011-04-27T07:12:00.009-04:00

After a one-day hiatus, the daily Nanos poll is back, and how! It shows a 4.2% one-day national jump for the NDP, meaning that it got 12.6% more on April 26 then April 21. Not surprisingly, all other parties (save the Greens) are down.

Nanos has the NDP up 12% in Québec, but if you're a junkie like me, that's old news. The big story is that the NDP has eaten into the Liberal vote in Ontario, allowing the Conservatives to build a 21.2% lead even while losing 1%. This would give them around 70 seats in Ontario, and Harper would get a majority with room to spare.

Because the NDP is in the "paying zone" in Québec, this poll has a dramatic effect on the projection. The Dippers pick up 8 (typo) 7 seats in Québec alone, 5 (typo) 4 from the Bloc and 3 from the Liberals, both of whom are starting to lose Montréal fortresses like Hochelaga and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce--Lachine. Even Gilles Duceppe's own riding is in peril, and would already have gone NDP were it not for a Leader's effect. The NDP now has more seats than the Bloc in Québec, 29 to 26.

The Conservatives pick up a seat from the NDP in BC due to methodological change. They also gain two from the Liberals in Ontario, one of which is also due to methodological change. ~~They would have lost a seat to the Grits in PEI if it weren't for the vote share adjustment modification.~~ (Sorry, mistake when using old model.) So although the projection has the Tories picking up 3 seats, they are in fact ~~flat~~ only up 1.

CON - 157
NDP - 67
LIB - 57
BQ - 26
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead over the NDP is 13%. That's a drop of 0.8%, since the previous update would have shown 13.8% using the new formula.

The Tories have now gained 7 seats in 5 days, putting them in majority territory. However, 6 5 of these seats were due to methodological change. Therefore, taking into account the apparently increased Conservative swing in the GTA and the ~~increased~~ greater motivation of Tory voters, the Conservatives have been virtually flat since the end of week 1, and were almost always in (or on the edge of) majority territory. I will have a trend graph tonight (or tomorrow, if I'm too drunk after watching Game 7) that makes it easier to separate out the effect of methodological changes in the projection.

I will be pretty busy today, so I might not be able to post again until around 5pm or so. But do check back then for an update!

Change in Vote Share Adjustment

2011-04-27T06:24:00.003-04:00

It is now apparent that there is a large voter commitment gap between the Conservatives and the Liberals (not surprising given the way the Liberal campaign is going). See the latest EKOS and Angus Reid polls for evidence. Starting with the next projection, I will make the following methodological change:

Current Vote Share Adjustment: I reduce the vote shares of the Greens and Bloc, and distribute the deductions among the three main parties. Then I reduce the vote share of the NDP, and distribute the deduction among the Tories and Grits.

New Vote Share Adjustment: The first step with the Greens and Bloc remains the same. However, in the second step, I will give the NDP deduction entirely to the Conservatives.

This change effectively shifts half a point from the Liberals to the Conservatives. It doesn't affect the NDP's estimated share (which is still penalized about 1% relative to the raw polling average), but will (very modestly) help the NDP in races against the Liberals and hurt it in races against the Conservatives.

Canucks Win!

2011-04-27T01:20:00.000-04:00

Angus Reid Regionals: NDP at 27% in Ontario

2011-04-27T00:42:00.005-04:00

Angus Reid has obliged and promptly posted its regional breakdown. (Unlike Innovative Research Group...) It is very consistent with what we are seeing from EKOS: three-way race in Atlantic Canada (though Angus Reid doesn't put the NDP first), large NDP lead in Québec (9% here), Tories strong on the Prairies.

Angus Reid has the NDP still third, but at a high 27% in Ontario. That's actually an increase of just 3% over last week's survey: Angus Reid has usually had the NDP higher than everyone else in Ontario. But even if it were at 27%, it would not gain more than a handful of seats in Ontario.

One place where Angus Reid and EKOS disagree is BC, where Angus Reid shows a healthy Conservative lead while EKOS shows a tight race. Here Angus Reid is much closer to the polling average.

The NDP has hit the red zone in Québec. In the projection, it gains 7 seats there, six from the Bloc and one from the Grits. The Grits further lose St. John's South--Mount Pearl to the NDP. Finally, the Tories are down two seats in Ontario, one to the Grits and one to the NDP. (~~The Tories would have lost another seat, but~~ I've further phased in the GTA effect, which caused no net change.)

The new projection has the Grits holding on to second place by the slimmest of margins:

CON - 154
LIB - 62
NDP - 61
BQ - 30
IND - 1

The average Tory national lead over the Liberals is flat, at 13.3%. However, the NDP is now in second place, 13.2% from the Conservatives. You can see that the icon following the "13.2%" on the top left has changed from the Liberal logo to the NDP logo.

So the first hour of the day has been interesting. We will get EKOS and Nanos updates later, so stay tuned!

Minor Correction: The further phasing in of the GTA effect in fact caused no net change. The model now has a GTA effect at 3%, and currently that translates to a net gain of 3 seats for the Tories.

Updated Trends and Riding Polls

2011-04-26T22:46:00.004-04:00

Just five days left in the campaign! The updated trend graph of course shows a steep NDP climb, along with heavy Liberal and Bloc drops. The Conservatives' uptick has been modest, and half of it (3 seats) was caused by the phasing in of a change to the model.

I predicted the flatness of the Conservative seat count in the event of an NDP rise. However, if the Liberals collapse in Ontario, Harper would get a safe majority unless the NDP gets as high in Ontario as it is in Québec - the latter still appears very unlikely.

Two riding polls to report: one by Léger in Lac-Saint-Louis, where Conservative star candidate Larry Smith trails the Liberal incumbent by just 6%, down from 20% in an earlier CROP poll. This Léger poll appears to be dated (the linked writeup only says it was conducted after the debates).

The other poll, conducted 4/18-19, shows Elizabeth May 7% ahead of Gary Lunn in Saanich--Gulf Islands, with the NDP and Liberals both under 10%. Now, this is a poll commissioned by the Green Party and I'm not familiar with this pollster (Oracle). The Conservative support level, 38%, is right around what you'd expect, but one has to be skeptical that May has indeed pushed the NDP and Liberals under 10%. For all these reasons, I will not allow this poll to tip the projection unless there is independent confirmation.

Game 7!

2011-04-26T21:41:00.001-04:00

Angus Reid: Tories by 5 over NDP, 13 over Grits

2011-04-26T19:52:00.001-04:00

According to Robert Fife, Angus Reid will release a poll putting the NDP at 30%, within striking distance of the Conservatives. EKOS is not an outlier anymore.

EKOS: Tories by 6 over NDP, 9.9 over Grits, and more

2011-04-26T16:24:00.001-04:00

The now daily EKOS update shows little change from yesterday on national numbers. In the Atlantic, the NDP is still in the lead, with an increased gap over the Grits and Tories. In MB/SK, the Liberals are down while both the Conservatives and NDP are up.

Numbers moved a little more in Québec, and for the first time in a while, the NDP is flat (actually half a point down). The Bloc is also down, to less than 25%, while the Tories are up a point. Ignatieff gets a boost - possibly because the last day of the sample came on the heels of his very successful visit to Tout le monde en parle - and gains 3 points.

We also have, through ThreeHundredEight.com, regional numbers outside Central Canada from the Environics poll. Given the small size of the poll, these don't mean much, but let's see what we have just for fun. In the Atlantic, the story is very different from EKOS: Environics has the Grits and Tories tied 18% ahead of the NDP. Across the Prairies, the Tories get over 60%, even reducing the Liberals to 8% in MB/SK. In BC, Environics calls for a replay of 2008.

ThreeHundredEight.com also reports on four Québec riding polls, three in the Saguenay region and one in the Coeur-du-Québec area. These surveys suggest very erratic swings: a 9-point increase in the Bloc lead over the Tories in Richmond--Arthabasca, but a 23-point increase in the Tory lead over the Bloc in Roberval--Lac-St-Jean, both to 26%. Good thing the gap is so big in these ridings, so the projection doesn't need to worry about them too much! The NDP has increased its support in both, but remains third.

The two other ridings are more interesting: the Bloc leads by 6% in Chicoutimi--Le Fjord over the Conservatives, just like in 2008. I had this riding going Conservative by 2%, so this is enough of a nudge to bring it back under the Bloc fold. However, the NDP is not too far behind, 12% from the Bloc, just 4-5% more than the model suggests. The projection model did reasonably well here: it hinted at a three-way race, and that's what we have.

In Jonquière--Alma, however, if the riding poll is right, the model completely flunks. The poll has this also as a three-way race, with the Tories leading, followed by the NDP and Bloc within 10. The model had it as a safe Conservative seat. At least it got the party right...

So there you have it: the Saguenay, a crazy region. Tories do much better than expected in Roberval--Lac-St-Jean, but worse in neighboring Jonquière--Alma and Chicoutimi--Le Fjord. The NDP surges in a major way in Jonquière--Alma, but almost not in Roberval--Lac-St-Jean. Only the Bloc performance has a semblance of consistency (well, the Liberal one as well - completely absent).

All this makes for the following changes in the projection:
- As stated, Chicoutimi--Le Fjord goes Tory to Bloc.
- But Bloc loses St-Bruno--St-Hubert to NDP.
- Liberals lose three seats to Tories: one in PEI and two in the GTA.

CON - 156
LIB - 63
NDP - 52
BQ - 36
IND - 1

The Conservative national lead is 13.3% over the Grits and 15% over the NDP.

One of the two changes in the GTA is due to the further phasing in of the GTA effect, which now affects 3 seats. That's currently the difference between a majority and a minority. For what it's worth, the effect is around 4% in the latest EKOS poll, and our friend Bryan over at Too Close to Call informs me that it's also around 4% in the latest Environics poll. That's less than the 10% earlier EKOS polls suggested. I currently apply a 2% effect in the model.

Around the Web: NDP Keeps Rising in Québec

2011-04-26T07:59:00.009-04:00

This post will be updated throughout the day as projection sites refresh their numbers to account for yesterday's polls, showing the NDP potentially leading by double-digits in Québec. Once again, all links can be found on the left side of the page. As of 8am, four of the eight websites I'm tracking had already incorporated yesterday's polls:

144 C, 71 L, 55 N, 38 B (Too Close to Call)
144 C, 62 L, 64 N, 37 B, 1 I (Riding by Riding, now 155 C, 47 L, 70 N, 35 B, 1 I)
151 C, 68 L, 59 N, 29 B, 1 I (The Mace)
154 C, 66 L, 51 N, 36 B, 1 I (Canadian Election Watch, now 156 C, 63 L, 52 N, 36 B, 1 I)
146 C, 75 L, 42 N, 44 B, 1 I (ThreeHundredEight.com - update)
161 C, 57 L, 53 N, 36 B, 1 I (democraticSPACE - update)
155 C, 64 L, 50 N, 38 B, 1 I (CalgaryGrit - update)

Average: 151 C, 66 L, 53 N, 37 B, 1 I

~~CalgaryGrit and ThreeHundredEight.com will also update today.~~ I'm hoping that LISPOP ~~and democraticSPACE~~ follow suit, so we get a full slate.

We also have two brave souls that ventured into predicting a final outcome for the election:

155 C, 69 N, 47 L, 36 B, 1 I (Riding by Riding)
152 C, 71 N, 52 L, 31 B, 2 I (BC Iconoclast - fixed, my bad)
~~153 C, 75 N, 54 L, 30 B, 1 I (BC Iconoclast - draft, adds up to 313 instead of 308)~~

Either result would mean Layton as the Leader of the Opposition, and very interesting by-elections... If I had to guess now, I'd predict a tighter fight for second place.

Ipsos: Tories by 13 in BC Lower Mainland

2011-04-26T07:33:00.003-04:00

There is no Nanos poll today because of Easter Monday yesterday. However, Ipsos Reid has conducted a poll in the largest region of the country where all three main federal parties are competitive: BC's Lower Mainland. It has the NDP up 5% since 2008, while the Grits and Tories each lose 1%.

Based on this poll alone, we would see only one seat out of 20 change hands in the region: Surrey North, switching from the Conservatives to the NDP. This is exactly what my current projection shows, so this poll causes no change:

CON - 154
LIB - 66
NDP - 51
BQ - 36
IND - 1

The survey does suggest Vancouver South, currently Liberal, is more precarious than previously thought, while North Vancouver, currently Tory, is safer. However, throughout this campaign, Ipsos has produced much higher Conservative numbers than all other pollsters (except COMPAS). Taking that into account, this poll suggests that the Lower Mainland is moving almost exactly like the rest of BC.

Today should bring us new data from EKOS, who is planning daily releases from now on. We should also get the rest of the regional breakdowns from Innovative Research (MB/SK and AB) and Environics (all but QC and ON). Obviously, there might be other polls as well. So stay tuned!

Day's Recap and Big Picture

2011-04-25T20:55:00.000-04:00

Four polls today made the NDP gain 8 seats in the projection, by far the largest one-day change for any party since the start of the campaign. The Conservatives gain 2 and are right on the fence between a minority and a majority, though it should be noted that their gain is due to a methodological change being phased in. The Liberals and Bloc suffer heavy losses: 5 seats each.

It's definitely time for the Liberal and Bloc campaigns to hit the panic button. The Liberals' goal is now to stay in second place. To do so, it must successfully defend the GTA and hope the NDP don't make any further inroads in Québec. A dozen of Toronto area seats could simultaneously determine who is Leader of the Opposition and whether the Tories win a majority.

As for the Bloc, the campaign is now a matter of survival. If it ties the NDP in the Québec popular vote, it keeps a respectable 35-40 seats - far more than any other party. But if it loses Québec by 9-10 points, as suggested by today's polls, its seat count may drop below 20, while the NDP could win a majority of Québec seats. Should the latter be the case, the Bloc would be at risk of withering away - who would want Duceppe's job?

The two key numbers to watch in the polls to come are:
- the Conservative lead in Ontario: 5% or below suggests a minority, while 10% or above suggests a majority;
- the Bloc vote share in Québec: around 25% implies disaster, while around 30% implies significant, but moderate losses.

It's clear where Harper and Ignatieff must focus: Metro Toronto. It's also clear where Duceppe should campaign: Southern Québec - those few Bloc-Conservative fights around Quebec City are not going to determine the Bloc's survival.

For Layton, things are more complicated. He obviously wants to win as many seats as possible, but he also needs to do his best to prevent Harper winning a majority. The reason is simple: if Harper gets his way, the Liberals will have 4 long years to rebuild, reestablish their credibility, and make sure that 2011 is a one-off. If Harper fails, the Liberals will have to choose between propping up a Conservative government - and alienating left-of-centre voters at every confidence vote for years - or give the NDP an important role in government.

Québec offers the most potential gains for the NDP, but it's in the West that Layton can impede Harper's quest to reach 155. One thing is clear, however: for once, Ontario shouldn't be on the NDP's priority list - the number of potential gains is very small, and a stronger NDP in Ontario helps Conservatives.

EKOS Regional Breakdown

2011-04-25T18:54:00.004-04:00

Kudos to EKOS for its prompt posting of the regionals! (Go here for a discussion of the national numbers.) The big news is the NDP's 13.5% lead over the Bloc in Québec, 38.7 to 25.2, with the Liberals and Conservatives under 15%. Also, unlike Nanos, EKOS picked up NDP rises in the Atlantic (NDP first!), Ontario (NDP still a somewhat distant third) and BC (NDP a close second).

This poll also puts the Conservative lead over the Liberals at just 6.6% in Ontario. That appears bad for Harper's majority hopes, but the poll also has him 2% ahead in the GTA, a big change from 2008 that would allow him to gain several seats.

Adding this poll to the projection results in many changes:
- NDP gains one seat each from Grits, Tories and Bloc in Québec;
- NDP gains one seat from Tories in Ontario;
- NDP gains one seat from Tories in BC;
- NDP loses one seat to Tories in Saskatchewan.
Furthermore, I am starting to phase in the GTA effect. For now, this results in the Liberals losing two seats to the Tories.

The projection is thus:

CON - 154
LIB - 66
NDP - 51
BQ - 36
IND - 1

The NDP is now equidistant from the Bloc and Liberals seat-wise. It is still 1.9% behind the Grits in the polling average, mostly because I make an in-house adjustment reflecting the NDP usually performing worse at the ballot box than in polls. The Tory lead over the Liberals decreases slightly, to 13.3%.

As promised, I give you projection numbers based on this poll alone:

Canada: 138 C, 104 N, 60 L, 6 B. (Yes, that's 104 New Democrats and 6 Bloc.)
Québec: 57 N, 8 C, 6 B, 4 L. (Yes, that's 57 New Democrats.)

These numbers leave me speechless, so I'll let you do the commenting.

Update: EKOS' own seat projection is not too far from mine:

Canada: 131 C, 100 N, 62 L, 14 B, 1 I
Québec: 53 N, 14 B, 4 C, 3 L

EKOS: Tories by just 5.7 over NDP!

2011-04-25T17:44:00.002-04:00

Prime Minister Layton? EKOS says maybe. Only the national numbers are out, so I will not update the projection yet, but yeah: C 33.7, N 28, L 23.7. EKOS suggests that its poll implies 131 Conservatives, close to 100 dippers and 69 Liberals - clearly enough for a coalition. When the regional breakdown comes out, I will say whether I agree...

The Bloc is at 6.2% nationally, which probably translates to around 26% in Québec - consistent with other polls. My model suggests that if the NDP gets around 30%, the Bloc would remain a significant political force, perhaps with 30-35 seats. But if the NDP gets around 40%, the Bloc might carry only a dozen seats and be well on its way to extinction.

Innovative Research: Tories by 13 over Grits, 14 over Dippers; Environics: Tories by 14 over Dippers, 17 over Grits

2011-04-25T16:31:00.005-04:00

Andrew Coyne has been tweeting polls, one by Innovative Research (full results to be posted on Macleans), and one by Environics. Both these polls confirm that the Liberals have fallen and are now tied for second place with the NDP, and both show the NDP leading the Bloc by around 10 points in Québec.

However, Ontario, which will determine whether Harper wins a majority, is a point of contention. Environics puts the Conservatives ahead by 14% there, but Innovative pegs the lead at just 5%. Both agree with Nanos that the NDP remains uncompetitive there.

The partial regional breakdowns currently available (Québec and Ontario for Environics, and all but Prairies for Innovative) have been incorporated in the projection. (I'm assuming that the Innovative poll has the same sample size as last week's.) All changes come in Québec, where the NDP now has a 0.5% lead in the polling average. It gains two seats from the Bloc, and one from the Liberals, for a total of 11:

CON - 154
LIB - 69
NDP - 47
BQ - 37
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead keeps increasing, and has reached 13.5%. The polling average still has the Liberals 2.9% ahead of the NDP.

Update: Just noting that the Bloc has fallen below the majority threshold in Québec. Also, EKOS is planning to release some numbers tonight, so stay tuned.

Nanos: Tories by 13.6, Liberals Collapse in Ontario

2011-04-25T07:19:00.006-04:00

Today's Nanos poll points to a strong Conservative majority. It has the Tories above 44% everywhere outside Québec, where they drop to 14%. In particular, the Conservatives lead by a whopping 18.5% in Ontario, which would net them 72 seats in that province against just 20 for the Liberals. Interesting, the Liberals are collapsing on their own in Ontario: the NDP has made no progress at all there according to Nanos, and would also lose seats to the Tories.

The other big news is that Nanos now has the NDP ahead of the Bloc in Québec, by 2.8%. So not only is the orange wave there holding, it is actually strengthening. The Liberals actually manage 22% in La Belle Province, suggesting that the NDP is not drawing too much of their support.

In the projection, the Conservatives take two seats in Ontario, one Liberal and one New Democrat. The NDP more than makes this up by gaining two from the Bloc, which falls below 40:

CON - 154
LIB - 70
NDP - 44
BQ - 39
IND - 1

The Conservative average national lead hits 13.1%, right around where it was during the first week. This projection gives them an effective majority, as independent André Arthur almost always supports them.

Note that I have not yet started phasing in a GTA adjustment, which would further increase the Conservative seat count. If the election were today, I'd say the Tories would have a 60% chance at an outright majority.

Update: I know people might ask about this, so here it is: based on this poll alone, I get 169 C, 54 L, 47 N, 37 B, 1 I.

Léger: Bloc by 13 in Chambly--Borduas

2011-04-24T16:09:00.003-04:00

Skoblin alerts me to a Léger poll in Chambly--Borduas conducted Tuesday and Wednesday, showing the Bloc 13% ahead of the NDP, 37-24. This is a win for the model, and does not result in any adjustment: I had the Bloc lead at 14%.

The independent candidate in the riding, a humorist who often uses vulgar language, is at 15%, tied for third with the Liberal candidate and way ahead of the Conservative candidate at 7%. Francophone southern Québec shows no sign of giving Harper or Ignatieff another look.

GTA Adjustment To Be Phased In

2011-04-24T13:53:00.006-04:00

Update: I mixed up "rest of Ontario" and "Ontario as a whole" originally. The post is now fixed, and the effect is even bigger!

I've looked back at EKOS polling, which breaks out large metropolitan areas, since the start of the campaign. There are now over 1,200 data points from the GTA, so we can say something meaningful about the swing there relative to the swing in the rest of Ontario by pooling those numbers.

The GTA is a region that the Liberals carried by 8-10% in 2008 (I don't know the exact number since riding boundaries don't match neatly with GTA boundaries). That's roughly 14-15% better than the 5.4% loss they suffered province-wide.

In the six EKOS polls to date, the GTA is only about 4-5% more favourable (actually, less unfavourable) to the Liberals than Ontario as a whole, a full 10 points less than in 2008. (Forum's latest poll actually finds the GTA 4% more favourable to the Conservatives. The COMPAS poll had the Tories leading by 17% in Ontario, by >15% in the 905, but the Liberals ahead in the 416, meaning the the GTA as a whole might be 10% more favourable to the Grits. These are the only two other GTA breakdowns I came across, and they pretty much cancel each other out.)

What does this mean? I now have the Conservative Ontario lead 3.3% higher than in 2008. If EKOS is right about the relation between the GTA and the province as a whole, we actually have, roughly, a 4.4% reduction in the Tory lead in the rest of Ontario, and a 13.3% reduction to the Liberal lead in the GTA (this makes it negative, so the Tories are now ahead).

If I fully introduce the above adjustment, the Liberals would regain four seats:
- Guelph
- Kitchener--Waterloo
- Kitchener Centre
- London West.
But the Tories would add a whopping 11 GTA seats:
- Mississauga South
- Eglinton--Lawrence
- York Centre
- Don Valley West
- Ajax--Pickering
- Bramalea--Gore--Malton
- Mississauga--Streetsville
- Richmond Hill
- Etobicoke Centre
- Etobicoke--Lakeshore (not including a leader's effect)
- Scarborough Southwest.
That's a net gain of 7 for the Conservatives, enough to deliver a majority.

Now, a sample of 1,214 since the start of the campaign pales in comparison to the sample of around 6,000 we have for Ontario as a whole just in polls released this past week. The margin of error for the Conservative-Liberal gap for a sample of 1,214 is around 5%, so there is significant uncertainty regarding the size of the GTA effect. One has to be skeptical that the GTA is indeed breaking 17.7% differently from the rest of the province - that's a huge deviation for such a large region. I am hoping for pollsters to conduct polls with bigger samples in the last week, in which case more of them might release GTA numbers.

For now, I will not yet incorporate a GTA adjustment in the headline projection. When tomorrow's EKOS update comes out, which will give us another couple of hundred observations, I will start phasing it in. Whether I end up with a full or a partial adjustment depends on whether other pollsters become more forthcoming with their GTA data.

The upshot is this: as I've said in a previous post, just before the NDP surge, the GTA carries the key to a Conservative majority. The NDP is not a factor in that region, except in a few Central Toronto ridings. The Conservatives' chance of getting a majority increases significantly if the orange wave reaches suburban Toronto. If I were Jack Layton, I would avoid Ontario, particularly Toronto, for the rest of the campaign, instead spending my time in Québec, Saskatchewan and BC.

Nanos: Tories by 12.7, NDP Flat

2011-04-24T07:26:00.002-04:00

After a one-day hiatus, Nanos' tracking poll suggests that the NDP's rise may be done, or at least taking a break. Indeed, the New Democrats are flat everywhere in the country (and down in the Atlantic), meaning that their April 23 numbers weren't better than their April 19 ones. Still, the Bloc fell in Québec, so the NDP is now within 3.5% of the lead there.

This is a very good poll for the Conservatives, who take a 12% lead over the Liberals in Atlantic Canada and Ontario. These are exactly where Harper needs to make gains in order to win a majority. In both cases, because the NDP did not increase, these were likely direct gains at the expense of Liberals (it seems rather likely that it went LIB->NDP->CON). The Liberals did gain at the expense of the Tories in BC.

Many changes in the projection: the Grits lose three seats to the Tories, two in Ontario and one in New Brunswick. The NDP gains three seats, one from the Bloc, one from the Liberals in Québec, and one from the Conservatives in BC.

CON - 152
LIB - 71
NDP - 43
BQ - 41
IND - 1

Finally, the NDP surpasses the Bloc in the projection! The Liberals have relinquished almost all of their gains made in the first week of the campaign. The average Conservative national lead is now 12.7%, virtually the same as on Day 1.

Proportional Representation

2011-04-23T21:17:00.003-04:00

If the Tories win a minority, but the NDP gets more seats than the Liberals and more than the Bloc in Québec, will we get a majority in favour of electoral reform?

What If the NDP Replaces the Liberals?

2011-04-23T16:06:00.003-04:00

Here's a question: what would happen if the NDP "replaces" the Liberals in the popular vote? I will look at two interpretations of this question:

1. The NDP gets to 26.3%, the Liberal vote share in 2008
The Dippers are at 21.2% right now in my polling average. I therefore increase their vote share by 5.1% throughout the country, drawing from the other parties as follows:
- Atlantic and Ontario: 3.5% from Liberals and 1.5% from Tories
- Québec: 3% from Bloc, 1.5% from Liberals and 0.5% from Tories
- West: 2.5% from Liberals and Tories
I'll assume the other 0.1% comes from the Greens.

The resulting popular vote would be roughly: 36.8 C, 26.3 N, 23.4 L, 7.2 B, 5.1 G.

North: 2 N, 1 L
BC: 20 C, 12 N, 4 L
AB: 27 C, 1 N
SK: 12 C, 1 N, 1 L
MB: 9 C, 4 N, 1 L
ON: 56 C, 31 L, 19 N
QC: 36 B, 14 N, 12 L, 12 C, 1 I
NB: 7 C, 2 L, 1 N
NS: 5 L, 4 C, 2 N
PE: 3 L, 1 C
NL: 4 L, 2 N, 1 C

Canada: 149 C, 64 L, 58 N, 36 B, 1 I

In this scenario, the Conservatives are virtually unaffected, while the NDP, unsurprisingly, draws from the Liberals and the Bloc. It would be a tossup as to who forms the Official Opposition, though the model gives the edge to the Grits. The Bloc still wins the Québec seat count by a large margin despite losing the popular vote by 2-3%. However, it would be the first time since its creation that it fails to win a majority of seats in La Belle Province.

If the Liberals hang on to the second most seats, this might not be a realignment election provided that their new leader is a bit more adept than Dion or Ignatieff. The Conservatives would almost certainly govern as a minority. Even if the NDP comes in second, it would likely not been legitimized to govern with around 60 seats.

2. The NDP leads the Liberals by 8.1%, the same as the Liberal-NDP gap in 2008
Here, I will consider an 8.5% NDP gain throughout the country, drawing from others as above, but scaled up by two thirds.

The resulting popular vote would be: 36 C, 29.7 N, 21.6 L, 6.7 B, 5 G. Note that the Conservative-NDP gap would be similar to the Conservative-Liberal gap in 2006.

North: 2 N, 1 L
BC: 18 C, 15 N, 3 L
AB: 27 C, 1 N
SK: 11 C, 2 N, 1 L
MB: 9 C, 4 N, 1 L
ON: 59 C, 27 L, 20 N
QC: 33 N, 23 B, 11 C, 7 L, 1 I
NB: 7 C, 2 L, 1 N
NS: 5 N, 3 L, 3 C
PE: 3 L, 1 C
NL: 4 L, 2 N, 1 C

Canada: 147 C, 85 N, 52 L, 23 B, 1 I

Once again, on the net, the Tories shrug. They get a much more comfortable minority than with a similar vote margin in 2006. Those 3.4 extra percentage points really pay off for the NDP, who get 27 more seats! Fully 19 of these are from Québec, where the NDP really lays into the Bloc by carrying the province by 8%. The Liberals are left with a grand total of 7 seats west of the GTA.

In this case, it's harder to tell what would happen. With 85 seats and nearly 30% of the vote, the NDP might feel comfortable trying to form government. This would present the Grits and Bloc with a very hard choice: prop up Harper and risk further alienating left-of-centre voters, or accept that Jack Layton becomes Prime Minister, which might relegate them to oblivion. Both the Liberals and Bloc would probably like to vote against Harper, and yet have a Conservative minority so that Layton does not become PM. This would get very very interesting!

Around the Web: How Much Has the NDP Surged?

2011-04-23T12:24:00.004-04:00

Update, 4/24, 6:46am: Latest numbers from democraticSPACE included

Riding by Riding has clued me in on the existence of The Mace, another projection blog, which I have now added to my blog roll. I am now aware of 8 websites, including mine, regularly making projection based on polling averages. Links to the 7 others can be found on the left of the page. Here are the latest projections, from most to least recent:

Including Polls Published Friday and Earlier
157 C, 69 L, 39 N, 42 B, 1 I (democraticSPACE)
150 C, 75 L, 40 N, 42 B, 1 I (Canadian Election Watch)
150 C, 76 L, 36 N, 45 B, 1 I (ThreeHundredEight.com)

Including Polls Published Thursday and Earlier
145 C, 74 L, 47 N, 42 B (Too Close to Call)
147 C, 68 L, 49 N, 43 B, 1 I (Riding by Riding)
149 C, 68 L, 52 N, 39 B (LISPOP)
131 C, 73 L, 81 N, 22 B, 1 I (The Mace)

Average of 7 sites: 147 C, 72 L, 49 N, 39 B, 1 I
Average excluding The Mace: 150 C, 72 L, 44 N, 42 B, 1 I

I don't know how The Mace gets to 81 NDP seats, but for the rest, the number of NDP seats is directly correlated with how fast the site depreciates polls:
- LISPOP only included polls released on Thursday.
- Riding by Riding includes earlier polls, but its projection carries a forward looking component that extrapolates from past trends.
- Too Close to Call includes past polls; it has no forward looking component, but depreciates early polls quickly.
- I depreciate past polls more slowly than Too Close to Call.
- ThreeHundredEight.com uses the slowest depreciation.

Everybody agrees that the Liberals are slightly lower than their 2008 result. Apart from The Mace, there is also consensus that the Bloc will suffer moderate losses. Finally, everybody but The Mace and democraticSPACE thinks that the Conservatives are between their 2008 result and the majority threshold.

Calgary Grit has yet to include the very NDP-favourable polls published on Thursday: 150 C, 74 L, 35 N, 48 B, 1 I.

Elsewhere, Election Almanac offers projections for individual national polls. The average of the Friday projection based on Nanos and the three Thursday projections based on EKOS, Ipsos and Forum is: 150 C, 70 L, 52 N, 36 B. EKOS has for its own polls as well, and the latest is 134 C, 82 L, 60 N, 32 B.

Finally, BC Iconoclast's prediction of the final results is 152 C, 67 L, 48 N, 40 B, 1 I.

So how far has the NDP surged? If you believe the Thursday polls, it looks like the NDP is in the 50-60 range, from the mid-30s a week ago. My model is waiting for more confirmation (both of the magnitude of the move - Nanos still had the NDP trailing by 5.5% in Québec - and that the new NDP support holds) before allocating that extra dozen seats to the Dippers. I am particularly interested in seeing new Léger numbers, as it has the best track record in Québec.

P.S. A group called Fair Vote Canada said that based on the Ipsos alone, the Tories would get 201 seats, but the same projection has the Bloc at just 4, which is extremely implausible (it was at 27% in the poll, good for second in Québec). I do not view this as a credible projection.

No Nanos Today; Segma: Bloc by 6 in Brome--Missisquoi

2011-04-23T10:57:00.003-04:00

Because yesterday was Good Friday, there is no Nanos update today as the pollster took a break.

I came across a Segma riding poll in Brome--Missisquoi. This poll is helpful, since I had the riding as a Liberal-Bloc tossup (Liberals marginally ahead by 0.3%), with the NDP 5-6% behind. Segma has the Bloc leading the Liberals and NDP 32-26-26, so I was not far off. Still, this poll does tip the riding to the Bloc in the projection:

CON - 150
LIB - 75
BQ - 42
NDP - 40
IND - 1

Segma notes that throughout the four days of polling, which was conducted Monday through Thursday, the NDP progressed at the expense of the Bloc, while the Liberals held steady. On the last day, the NDP was almost tied with the Bloc.

Looking at contemporaneous provincial polls, the NDP polled 20% better than in 2008, while its progress in Brome--Missisquoi was 17%. The Bloc lost 9% province-wide, but just 3% in this riding. The Liberals are down 7% both across Québec and in Brome-Missisquoi, while the Tory losses are 4% and 8% respectively. What we can see is that variations in Brome-Missisquoi are quite consistent with provincial variations - the differences can be mostly attributed to statistical noise. Still, the Bloc does seem to be retaining a bit more of its support in the riding. Two potential explanations come to mind:

- The Bloc often scores higher in polls than in elections. If this overvaluation of the Bloc in surveys is more pronounced in rural Québec, a Brome--Missisquoi poll will overstate its support more than a provincial poll.
- The Bloc candidate Christelle Bogosta was, in fact, the NDP candidate in 2008 and nominated by the NDP for this election. She defected shortly before the start of the campaign. Perhaps she is helping the Bloc bleed less to the NDP than it otherwise would.

(The Conservative campaign claims to have a poll showing the NDP ahead, with the Bloc in second, the Tories in third and the Liberals in fourth, 20% from the lead. This is, of course, completely unreliable, and could be an attempt to move moderate federalists from the Liberal to the Conservative camp.)

Trends 3/4 Through the Campaign

2011-04-23T03:01:00.003-04:00

As I have done at the 1/4 and the 1/2 marks of the campaign, I now bring you the trends in my daily projections.

As you can see, the Conservatives have been essentially flat since the first week, just a few seats shy of a majority. The Liberals are down slightly: it's a loss of only two seats since the leaders' debates. However, the more precious loss by the Grits is momentum: they are now at risk of dropping precipitously if the NDP makes gains in Ontario.

The most salient features of the third quarter of the campaign are of course the Bloc's decline and the NDP's rise. The former was already apparent in the first half of the campaign, but accelerated in the past few days. The latter only came about this week. The NDP has yet to overtake the Bloc in third place, but unless their recent surge abruptly reverses, it will happen very soon.

The Conservative advantage over the Liberals has been essentially flat around 11% since April 5. The current uptick is almost exclusively due to the Ipsos poll showing a 22% difference.

Nanos: Tories by 11.7 Over Liberals, 14.1 Over NDP

2011-04-22T07:05:00.002-04:00

Today's Nanos poll shows a continuing NDP increase, along with modest drops by the Liberals and Conservatives. The NDP rises everywhere except in BC, and are now tied with the Liberals for second in Atlantic Canada, 5% behind the Tories. Despite gains, the NDP is still shown 5.5% behind the Bloc in Québec and below their 2008 result in Ontario.

The Liberals are modestly down everywhere except on the Prairies. The good news for them is that the Tories are down even more both nationally and in Ontario. There is no sign (yet?) of a Liberal collapse in Ontario, which would deliver a Conservative majority.

The only change in the projection moves one Bloc seat to the NDP. Actually I still have the NDP ahead in only 3 ridings, but it is so close to winning several additional ones that in practice, it would in all likelihood get at least one of them.

CON - 150
LIB - 76
BQ - 41
NDP - 40
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead is stable at 12.4% over the Liberals. I have the Grits at 4.9% over the NDP.

A note about poll depreciation. Given the avalanche of polls this week, I have restarted accelerating poll depreciation, as I had said I might do. Prior to today, polls up to 3 days old received full weight, while those up to 12 days old got some weight; I'll call this the 3/12 formula. Today's projection is based on a 3/11 formula. I don't yet know what cutoffs I'll end up setting for the final projection - this will depend on how many polls we get next week - though it'll be somewhere between 1/6 and 3/10. In any case, none of the polls published as of now will receive any weight in the final projection. I believe that this is appropriate as things are moving so fast that the situation on Election Day might not resemble what we have today, especially in Central Canada.

Angus Reid: Tories by 10 Over NDP in BC

2011-04-21T20:47:00.002-04:00

Angus Reid has released a BC poll, confirming the strength of the Conservatives and the NDP at the expense of the Liberals. At 42%, the Conservatives are almost as high as in 2008, while at 18%, the Grits are down even lower than under Dion. The NDP's 32% is strong, and if borne out on Election Day, would allow them to gain two seats.

In the aggregate projection, this poll moves the NDP closer to additional seats, but doesn't cause any immediate changes:

CON - 150
LIB - 76
BQ - 42
NDP - 39
IND - 1

Ipsos: Tories by 19 over NDP, 22 over Grits

2011-04-21T18:51:00.003-04:00

As if the day didn't provide enough crazy scenarios, here's another, by Ipsos: the Liberals drop to 21% nationally while the Tories surge to 43%!

This poll is stellar across the board for the Conservatives: a 14% lead over the NDP (and 20% over the Liberals) in the Atlantic, a respectable 24% in Québec, 14% ahead of the Liberals in Ontario, over 2/3 support on the Prairies and 46% in BC.

It is dismal for the Liberals. Besides the numbers mentioned above, the Grits are at just 12% in BC. The silver lining is that in Québec, although they're in fourth place (20%), they're actually within striking distance of the leading NDP (28%) and Bloc (27%).

For the NDP, beside their slight lead in Québec, this poll also gives them strong results in Atlantic Canada (30%), Ontario (22%) and BC (32%).

Adding this poll to the aggregate projection moves North Vancouver from the Liberals to the Tories. In Québec, the Bloc loses one seat each to the Liberals and Tories, and gets closer to losing several to the NDP (though none yet).

CON - 150
LIB - 76
BQ - 42
NDP - 39
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead increases to 12.4%, the highest since the first week of the campaign.

What would Parliament look like with the Liberals this low and the Conservatives this high? A one-poll projection gives me:

CON 175, LIB 49, NDP 49, BQ 34, IND 1

It's a tie for second place! The reason is that by winning Québec by just 1%, the NDP puts itself at the edge of the "Red Zone" without actually cashing in - it gets 9 seats in Québec, against still 34 for the Bloc. The only Liberal seats west of the GTA would be Vancouver Centre and Yukon!

Riding Polls: Good News for Grits in Newfoundland

2011-04-21T15:42:00.003-04:00

ThreeHundredEight.com reports on the results of five riding polls: Sherbrooke, Gatineau, Avalon, St. John's East and St. John's South--Mount Pearl.

The two Québec polls yield little surprise. Sherbrooke is a safe seat for the Bloc, while the NDP now has a slight lead in Gatineau. Interestingly, the NDP rise in Gatineau is a bit less than its rise in contemporaneous province-wide polls, while the Bloc and Liberals did not fall in Gatineau, unlike elsewhere in Québec. This is consistent with an observation I made a few days ago, namely that because the Outaouais shares some characteristics with Ontario and because the NDP has not gained ground in Ontario, the NDP surge in the Outaouais is likely smaller than in the rest of Québec.

In Newfoundland, the three riding polls are extremely helpful: we knew from an Angus Reid poll in February that the effects of the 2008 ABC campaign had diminished, but because the Angus Reid poll had a small Newfoundland sample (300-400 respondents), we couldn't tell precisely by how much. These polls help us answer that question, and it now appears that the Tories' variation in Newfoundland are about 10% more favourable than in Atlantic Canada as a whole, while both the Grits' and Dippers' are 5% less favourable. The Conservative and Liberal numbers are smaller than suggested by the Angus Reid poll, which is what I had to go by until now.

As a result, extrapolating based on the provincial average now gives the Liberals a small lead in St. John's South--Mount Pearl instead of the NDP. This is consistent with the riding poll, so the seat reverts to the Grits in the projection.

For Avalon, extrapolating based on the provincial average gives the Tories an 8% lead, but the riding poll gives the Grits a 4% lead. Accordingly, this race is now still projected Conservative, but by a tiny margin.

The new aggregate projection is thus:

CON - 148
LIB - 76
BQ - 44
NDP - 39
IND - 1

Forum: Tories by 11 over NDP, 13 over Grits; NDP by 9 in Québec

2011-04-21T13:49:00.002-04:00

And yet another poll confirms the NDP's meteoric rise, this one by Forum Research. This survey has the NDP vaulting past the Liberals nationally, 25% to 23%. Just like the Liberals, the Conservatives also lose 2 points, to 36%. Ominously for Ignatieff, his party falls to 28% in Ontario, 14% behind the Tories, while the NDP rises to 20%. And this poll shows the largest NDP lead yet in Québec: 34% to 25%.

In the Ontario projection, the Grits lose a seat to the Tories, who relinquish one to the NDP. But the Liberals make up for it by taking one from the Bloc:

CON - 148
LIB - 75
BQ - 44
NDP - 40
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead is 11.6%.

The NDP does not gain any additional projected seats in Québec, but is now within 2% of tripling their seat count to 9. Currently, I have Québec at B 31%, N 25%, C 20%, L 19%.

Forum Research states that based on their poll alone, the projected seat count would be 149 C, 71 N, 64 L, 24 B. That PM Layton scenario I described earlier today just got more likely!

EKOS Update: Tories by 9.7, Liberals and NDP Tied, NDP by 4.2 in Québec

2011-04-21T12:28:00.005-04:00

The latest EKOS poll, which is updated with one more day of data relative to what was available this morning, shows the Tories below 35%, with the Grits and Dippers exactly tied.

The good news for the Liberals is that they're just 4.1% behind the Conservatives in Ontario; the bad news is that they're doing poorly everywhere else, especially in Québec with 15.5%. For the Tories, this poll is pretty average in the East, but weak in the West: just mid 30s in MB/SK and BC, and "only" slightly over 50% in Alberta.

For the NDP, this survey is almost all good. The only area where they dropped relative to the EKOS poll from three days ago is BC, but the Tories lost an equal amount. They are statistically tied with the Conservatives in MB/SK, though that's probably due to the small sample. They are up in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, though only back to around their 2008 support levels. And, of course, the biggie is that they're leading in Québec.

Adding this poll to the projection mix makes the NDP gain a Conservative seat in Saskatchewan, while the Bloc takes one back from the Liberals:

CON - 148
LIB - 75
BQ - 45
NDP - 39
IND - 1

The Conservative national lead is back to 11.5%.

Now, since this is the first national poll with both a Liberal-NDP tie and an NDP lead in Québec, I know that many of you must be curious what parliament would look like if these results are borne out on Election Day. (Or even if you aren't, I was!) Here's what I get:

CON 135, LIB 76, NDP 64, BQ 32, IND 1

This scenario could well lead to a coalition, as LIB + NDP = 140 > 135 = CON. The Liberals remain slightly ahead of the NDP in the seat count due to their strength in Ontario, but there is real competition for the job of Leader of the Opposition/Coalition. And because EKOS is showing the NDP surge to be mainly outside of Ontario, it actually hurts the Tories more than the Grits. This would totally change if Ontarians move toward the NDP.

In Québec, I get: BQ 32, NDP 19, LIB 12, CON 11, IND 1. The NDP loses the seat count to the Bloc despite leading the popular vote by 4% because that's not quite enough to lead among Francophones, as I explained this morning. However, as I also mentioned, an extra 5% in the NDP-Bloc gap could swing an extra dozen seats to the Dippers. In that case, the Bloc would be on its way to irrelevance, while Layton could become Leader of the Opposition, or even Prime Minister - Prime Minister Layton! - in the event of a coalition. This is of course not likely by any means, but it's a possibility that cannot be dismissed anymore.

This is an exciting time in Canadian politics!

Nanos: Tories by 12.3; EKOS and CROP: NDP Leads in Québec!

2011-04-21T07:00:00.003-04:00

Today's Nanos poll shows small increases for the NDP across the board except, ironically, in Québec. Not much of note otherwise, although the 12.3% Tory national lead is the highest measured by Nanos since April 1-3.

More interestingly, two polls put the NDP ahead of the Bloc in Québec! A CROP survey has the NDP at 36%, five ahead of the Bloc. The Tories aren't doing too well either at 17%, while the Liberals get a disastrous 13%. Meanwhile, an EKOS poll is kinder to the Liberals (20.6%), but shockingly bad for the Bloc (23.7%), which trails the NDP by 7.4%.

Moreover, ThreeHundredEight.com reported yesterday on two riding polls in Northwest Québec. Abitibi--Baie-James--Nunavik--Eeyou, where the NDP was a distant fourth in 2008 but is running a popular candidate this time, is a four-way race. On the other hand, Abitibi--Témiscamingue is safe for the Bloc. These surveys were conducted from April 14-17, i.e. when contemporaneous polls still had the NDP in the low 20s. The interesting thing is that in Abitibi--Témiscamingue, the NDP rise and Bloc fall since 2008 were almost exactly equal to the province-wide variations.

What this means is that the NDP progress has been fairly uniform throughout Québec. It was probably a few points less around Quebec City, given the CROP polls in the area, and one would assume slightly more around Montréal. The CROP poll has the NDP at a whopping 40% there - but that's just 4% more than province-wide, which is actually the same pattern as in 2008. Of course, the Montréal area is almost half the province, so riding polls there would be useful in determining whether the NDP made concentrated gains in central Montréal, which would hurt the Liberals, or whether its progress was uniform throughout the metro area, which would really hurt the Bloc.

My polling average still puts the NDP a few points behind the Bloc: 24% to 32%. As a result, the NDP only gains one Québec seat in the aggregate projection (Jeanne--Le Ber), although they also pick up St. John's South--Mount Pearl, a tight three-way race. The Liberals benefit from the Bloc weakness and take a seat, though the NDP menace is now upon them in several other ridings:

CON - 149
LIB - 76
BQ - 44
NDP - 38
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead is now 11.6%.

In two previous posts (here and here), I identified 11 seats where the NDP has a shot if it gets around 25% in Québec. (One might also add Drummond and Brome-Missisquoi to the list, though it's hard to tell what's going on in southeastern Québec.) But today's polls suggest that the Dippers may rise even higher, and end up with the most votes in La Belle Province.

If, as in today's surveys, the NDP manages to win Québec by 5-7%, it might take anywhere from 15 to 30 seats. The Bloc scored 25.9% higher than the NDP in 2008, and there are 33 ridings where the gap was 30-40%. So a 7% NDP lead would put us squarely in the range where almost half of Québec ridings would be tight NDP-Bloc races! This is fully consistent with the CROP poll, which shows the Bloc at 38% and the NDP at 34% among Francophone voters, which essentially include all voters outside Montréal and the Outaouais.

If the NDP manages to win Québec by 10%, it might take anywhere from 25 to 45 seats. In this scenario, Layton would be seriously challenging Ignatieff for the right to live in Stornoway! This is especially true if some voters in the rest of Canada are drawn to the NDP due to their strength in Québec. We could be in a scenario where voters in the downtown cores of Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver decide the identity of the Leader of the Opposition.

EKOS will hopefully release its numbers for the rest of the country later today, so stay tuned. The national results have the Tories and Greens down to 34.5% and 6.6% respectively. The Liberals are up slightly to 25.8%, but can't rejoice because they are now essentially tied with the NDP at 24.9%.

Nanos: Tories by 10.7

2011-04-20T07:05:00.002-04:00

Today's Nanos poll has the NDP surging past the 25% mark in Québec, while staying mired at 12.7% in Ontario. In BC, the Liberals abruptly dropped back down from a virtual tie with the Tories, to a much more likely 25.9%.

There are no changes in the aggregate seat projection:

CON - 150
LIB - 75
BQ - 46
NDP - 36
IND - 1

The average Conservative national lead is flat at 11.5%.

Environics: Tories by 15; Innovative: Tories by 11; Today's Recap

2011-04-19T23:29:00.004-04:00

Here are the results of the latest Innovative Research Group survey and, through ThreeHundredEight.com, the latest Environics survey. The Innovative Research Group poll is not kind to the NDP, which is in fourth place in Québec at just 16%, and a distant third in Ontario also at 16%. Environics disagrees, putting the two numbers at 26% and 23% respectively. The Environics poll is favourable to the Tories, pegging them 6% ahead of the Liberals in Atlantic Canada, and 24% and 28% ahead of the Liberals and NDP in BC. The Grits are measured at just 14% in Québec by Environics.

Both polls agree that the Tory lead over the Liberals is at 6-7% in Ontario.

This update (actually, the Environics poll) makes the Liberals lose an Atlantic to the Tories and a Québec seat to the Bloc:

CON - 150
LIB - 75
BQ - 46
NDP - 36
IND - 1

The average Tory national lead is 11.5%.

Today's four national polls were bad for the Liberals, who lose two seats to the Tories in the Atlantic, one to the Bloc in Québec, and one to the NDP in BC. This is the first time since March 29 that the Liberals end a day lower in the projection than the previous day. The debate seems to have sapped whatever fragile momentum Ignatieff carried.

The other changes of the day were due to the Quebec City surveys by CROP, which moved Beauport--Limoilou to the Tories and Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier to André Arthur, both from the Bloc.

After the blip downward yesterday, the Conservatives are back to their pre-debate level: 151 seats counting Arthur. The debates seem to have mainly affected the distribution of seats on the left: the Liberals are down 3, the Bloc down 2, and the NDP up 5.

2008 All Over Again, Except in Québec; GTA Key to Tory Majority

2011-04-19T11:06:00.004-04:00

In each of the six "polling regions" of the country (Atlantic, Québec, Ontario, MB/SK, Alberta, BC), all major parties are within 4% of their 2008 score. There are only three exceptions:

- NDP up 9% in Québec
- Bloc down 5% in Québec
- Liberals up 6% in Alberta (yes, totally irrelevant)

Relative to the 2008 results, only 10 seats are projected to change hands:

- Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca (L to C)
- North Vancouver ~~North~~ (C to L)
- Brampton West (L to C)
- Sault Ste. Marie (N to C)
- Welland (N to C)
- Ahuntsic (B to L)
- Gatineau (B to N)
- Haute-Gaspésie--La Mitis--Matane--Matapédia (B to L)
- Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup (B to C)
- Avalon (L to C)

Obviously, if the election were today, there would probably be more than 10 changes. The model is biased against predicting changes because, unless an explicit adjustment is made, there cannot be changes that cancel each other within the same region. In real life, this of course happens.

If the election were today, based on the track record of a similar projection methodology in 2004, 2006 and 2008, I'd say that the Tories would have about one chance out of three of winning a majority. Harper would need to win 6 additional seats, with the following 23 being the most likely targets (current projected winner in parentheses):

West and North
- Western Arctic (N)
- Burnaby--Douglas (N)
- North Vancouver ~~North~~ (L)
- Edmonton-Strathcona (N)
- Elmwood-Transcona (N)

Ontario
- Ajax--Pickering (L)
- Bramalea--Gore--Malton (L)
- Brampton--Springdale (L)
- Don Valley West (L)
- Eglinton--Lawrence (L)
- Guelph (L)
- Kingston and the Islands (L)
- London North Centre (L)
- Mississauga South (L)
- Sudbury (N)
- Thunder Bay--Superior North (N)
- Vaughan (L)
- York Centre (L)

Québec
- Chicoutimi--Le Fjord (B)

Atlantic Canada
- Malpeque (L)
- Moncton--Riverview--Dieppe (L)
- Random--Burin--St. George's (L)
- St John's South--Mount Pearl (L)

As you can see, eight of these are in the GTA, almost as many as in all of Canada outside Ontario!

EKOS: Tories by 12.5

2011-04-19T10:45:00.002-04:00

EKOS is now polling over the weekend, and came out with a poll last night. (I didn't check their website earlier since I wasn't expecting a survey from them.) It shows the NDP and Tories up at the expense of the Liberals, who fall to just under 25% nationally and fourth place in Québec. Also in Québec, the NDP gets over 25%, within 6.5% of the Bloc. The Dippers also show strength in BC (30.4%), but a dismal 14.6% in Ontario would put several seats in danger.

This bad poll for the Liberals has them losing a seat to the Bloc in Québec and to the NDP in BC:

CON - 149
LIB - 77
BQ - 45
NDP - 36
IND - 1

The average Tory national lead rises to 11.3%.

CROP Quebec City Polls, and More About the NDP in Québec

2011-04-19T07:37:00.006-04:00

La Presse reports the results of polls in three Quebec City area ridings. In each case, Louis-Hébert, Beauport--Limoilou and Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier, the incumbent is ahead in a tight race.

These polls are valuable because it has been a while since we got a regional breakdown for Quebec City ridings. My provincial polling averages have the Tories closing the gap on the Bloc by 4%. In both Louis-Hébert and Beauport--Limoilou, according to CROP's result, there was a 1% change toward the Bloc. The Quebec City adjustment will now be 5% toward the Bloc instead of 10%, as based on previous polls, in my model. This makes sense since the arena controversy has died down. In order to balance things out province-wide, I also make a small opposite adjustment elsewhere in Québec, which will be halved as well.

The immediate effects of these changes is that the Tories take back Beauport--Limoilou, but are slightly farther from getting Chicoutimi--Le Fjord.

For Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier, I used to include it in Quebec City for the purposes of the aforementioned adjustment. However, this was debatable, since riding is only partly within the Quebec City metropolitan area. Given the above poll, I will now equate the swing in the riding to the provincial swing - there will be no adjustment toward the Bloc as in Quebec City ridings, nor will there be an adjustment toward the Tories as in other Québec ridings. (I also count André Arthur as a Tory in order to estimate his vote share.) This change now puts Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier in the Independent column.

The update projection is therefore:

CON - 149
LIB - 79
BQ - 44
NDP - 35
IND - 1

Another thing that came out of these polls is that the NDP did rise by about 5% in the Quebec City area, which is about 60% of its province-wide increase. This was done mostly at the expense of the Liberals. However, we know that the main victim of the NDP's rise province-wide is the Bloc.

The above suggests the possibility that the NDP's rise came at the expense of the Liberals outside Montréal, and of the Bloc in the Montréal area. This makes sense for at least two reasons:

1. The Bloc is actually a coalition of progressive separatists in and around Montréal and more conservative ones elsewhere. The former are naturally more receptive to the NDP's message. Another way to look at this is that in Montréal, Bloc supporters are more left-wing than Liberals, while outside Montréal, the opposite is true.

2. Empirically, in Outremont, it is the Bloc that collapsed to make way to Mulcair.

If my hypothesis is correct, the main beneficiary of the NDP's rise could actually be the Liberals. Losing votes to the NDP outside of Montréal doesn't bother the Grits, since they were hopeless in those areas anyway. But a weakened Bloc around Montréal would help the Liberals in a handful of ridings such as Brossard--La Prairie, Ahuntsic and Papineau. (Perhaps also Jeanne--Le Ber, but as I explained yesterday, that one could well go NDP.) If the effect is strong, as appears to be the case, ridings like Saint-Lambert, Alfred-Pellan and Laval could also go Liberal. I don't see these ridings actually going orange with the NDP at 20%, but if their provincial numbers get close to 25%, Brossard--La Prairie, Saint-Lambert, Alfred-Pellan and Laval could become three-way races, and might be as prone to an NDP takeover as Pontiac and Westmount--Ville-Marie, which I mentioned yesterday.

Collecting my thoughts from yesterday and today, I now see the NDP with 2-5 seats in Québec, with their polling average just over 20%. If they get to 25%, they'd have a shot at a dozen of seats, probably winning 5-8. For the reasons I mentioned yesterday, I still think they'll have a harder time getting to 10 seats than the Tories.

Nanos: Tories by 9.6

2011-04-19T07:03:00.002-04:00

Today's Nanos poll shows little change from yesterday's. The 9-point Tory lead in Ontario persists, while Nanos still has the Liberals essentially tied with the Conservatives in BC. In Québec, the Liberals register a small rise at the expense of the Tories, but the opposite is true in the Atlantic.

The Grits take a seat from the Bloc in Québec, but lose one to the Tories in the Atlantic:

CON - 148
LIB - 79
BQ - 46
NDP - 35

The average national Conservative lead is 10.8%. Save for the few days after the release of the COMPAS poll, we've been around 11% for the past two weeks.

Post-debate polling now accounts for 79% of the projection, but except for the NDP's increase in Québec, there has been virtually no change.