EKOS: Tories Lead by 9

The details of the EKOS poll that's been much discussed since last night have been posted. The Tories outperform other polls by about 5 points, while the NDP and the Liberals both underperform by about 5 points. (The Greens and "Others" were also high.) The result is a national race that isn't even close.

What accounts for this discrepancy from other polls? It's a mystery. Consider the following:
- The sample size of 2,343 was reasonably large.
- EKOS did not apply a likely voter screen (which might have explained the high Conservative numbers, but would have made the high Green numbers puzzling).
- In recent polls, EKOS tended to have the Tories a bit high, and the NDP and especially Liberals a bit low, but the discrepancies were never anywhere close to this large.
- Tories outperformed the polling average by a consistent margin everywhere - there is no rogue region where the Conservative number was obviously an outlier.

The new projection, which also takes into account Mainstreet's large-sample ON poll Insights West's AB poll (which is in line with the polling average; the Mainstreet poll was already included in the last update!) of course moved toward the Tories:

CON - 138, +4 (32.7%, +1.1%)
NDP - 109, -2 (28.2%, -1.0%)
LIB - 90, -2 (29.0%, -0.6%)
GRN - 1 (5.1%, +0.4%)
BQ - 0 (4.0%, +0.1%)

The Tories lead the popular vote even without the turnout adjustment:

CON - 131 (31.1%)
NDP - 111 (29.0%)
LIB - 94 (29.8%)
GRN - 1 (5.4%)
BQ - 1 (4.0%)

Yes, the Bloc is right at the place where they start taking seats from the NDP. Expect fireworks at tonight's debate!