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

Thursday, October 15, 2015

EKOS: Tight Race; BC Riding Polls

Today's EKOS poll shows that the Liberal lead has shrunk from 4.2 points to 0.9 points. In ON, the Liberal lead is 10.7; that's a healthy lead, but not the 18.1 from yesterday. The NDP maintained a good level in Québec (34%), but lost its very temporary lead in BC; overall, it gave back 1/3 of its gains from yesterday, suggesting that it has not started a surge.

Mainstreet and Insights West both published a batch of BC riding polls. As a result, I am making these riding adjustments (expressed with respect to existing regional adjustments; all adjustments are listed here, here and here):

Burnaby North--Seymour: CON +5, LIB -5
Esquimalt--Saanich--Sooke: NDP +5, LIB -5
Vancouver South: CON +5, LIB -5
To balance out these and previous riding adjustments in BC: NDP -0.5, LIB +0.5 in all of BC

These developments are generally favourable to the Conservatives, who claw back most of their losses from this morning's update:

CON - 133, +4 (33.4%, +0.2%)
LIB - 119, -3 (34.1%, -0.1%)
NDP - 81, -1 (22.5%, -0.2%)
BQ - 4 (4.6%)
GRN - 1 (4.3%, -0.1%)

With these numbers, we're talking a 30-35% chance of the Liberals being in the lead.

The unadjusted projection is:

LIB - 131 (35.0%)
CON - 116 (31.7%)
NDP - 83 (23.1%)
BQ - 7 (4.6%)
GRN - 1 (4.6%)

This is essentially the opposite of the adjusted projection: 30-35% chance of a Conservative lead.

I'm guessing that starting tomorrow, we should get an avalanche of various pollsters' final polls. If all firms that have published a national poll during the campaign decide to have a final say, we'll get 8 national polls (Abacus, Angus Reid, Environics, Forum, Innovative, Ipsos, Léger, Mainstreet) on top of the daily Nanos and EKOS surveys. We may also get provincial/regional polls from CRA (Atlantic), CROP (Québec) and Insights West (BC, Alberta).

I will post trends this evening to provide a good idea of how we got to where we are now. Tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, I will do the standard two updates each day. There will be an additional final update late Sunday night / wee hours of Monday, and hopefully (if I'm not too tired by that point) some analysis posts (trends, strategic voting, things to watch for election night) throughout Election Day. I also hope to provide an interim projection around 9:00-9:15pm ET based on Atlantic results, just before polls close in most of the country. So stay tuned for some exciting days!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is so strange about the Vancouver South poll is Wai Young at 33%. Even though the NDP vote has gone from a high of 30% down to 19%, as per the polls, its shifted support to the Greens and the conservatives. Must be all the ethnic ads about marijuana, and prostitution that might be hurting the liberal candidate. If 2011 results are a guide, the liberal candidate very much needs to pull in a lot more of the liberal support because vote splits are really hurting in BC on the progressive side. Of all candidates, it just surprises me that people support her.

Election Watcher said...

The Tories have done a tremendous job reaching out to the Chinese-Canadian community. Word is that last time, they had such strong support among that group (especially those that came to Canada relatively recently) that in some ridings, they decided to not spend resources identifying Chinese-Canadian supporters, and just tried getting as many of them to vote as possible.

Immigrants from Mainland China may also not be very bothered about the government being authoritarian, secretive and trampling civil liberties. After all, it's still much better than in China.

Habs24cups said...

Yup its pretty rough living in the most admred country in the world 4 of last five years.

Anonymous said...

@Habs24cups, Nobody is saying that Canada is still not an admired country, the point is a gradual erosion of our civil liberties. Its a slippery slope that people are arguing against. Developed Countries around the world are going down this path and its not necessarily unique to ours. Being the cleanest dirty shirt is a thoughtless response especially when it involves a candidate like Wai Young who said Jesus would support bill C-51 and that too, inside a church. In my church, who are supposedly non profit and non partisan, I've been disappointed at them hinting at whom they thought people should vote for. If the church wants to invite riding candidates, they should do it for all of them or none.

Habs24cups said...

Yeah I agree church and politics shouldn't mix .However the same sort of tactics are used in the union movement ..... Workers pay dues union reps give money and support to Libs or Dippers. Not everyone in unions are lefties.

Election Watcher said...

Yeah, it was pretty disgusting when BCTF was mostly unable to provide strike pay to its members who are charged around $2,000/yr in dues because they blew most of it on politics (basically campaigning against the BC Liberals). I'd be apoplectic if I were a teacher.

Habs24cups said...

What do you make of this from Jean-Marc Leger on his twitter account on October 10th...... Comme par magie,les 3 sondeurs avec robot calls plaçant le PC loin devant voient une nouvelle tendance PLC:Forum(+8) Ekos(+7) Mainstreet(+6)

Election Watcher said...

Not much.
- In Forum's case, they haven't been too out of whack except for the 9/28-29 poll, which happens to be the base for Léger's comparison.
- In EKOS' case, the base is 9/23-29, and the early part of that was a period where the Liberals were low. So it's normal that EKOS showed movement.
- I don't know about Mainstreet, but its riding polls have been generally consistent with provincial swings.

Léger is a very good pollster, but there's this belief among some in Québec that it's much better than all the other ones. Mr. Léger might have just been trying to support his brand.