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.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Model Update: NDP Turnout Adjustment

I will update the projection for the new Léger poll soon, but first, just a quick note to let you know that I've decided to adjust the NDP vote share downward by 1%, with increases to the LIB and CON shares by 0.5%. The reason is that there has been high pollster disagreement on the NDP vote share among pollsters all summer: some consistently have them around 10-12%, while others consistently have them around 16-18%. In recent provincial elections, the NDP underperformed the polls in ON, AB and NS. They hit the polls in BC and SK, but in both cases, the pollsters were in agreement. They slightly outperformed the polls in MB (2016), but that was likely due to the Greens only running in about half of the ridings, meaning that some Green voters had to vote for someone else. Therefore, if things stay this way, it appears quite likely that the NDP would underperform relative to the polls again.

A knock-on effect of this is that I've changed the Burnaby South adjustment by adding 1 point to Jagmeet Singh's bonus (now +6%): if polls have been overestimating the NDP, then his by-election result was even better relative to contemporaneous provincial polling. I've also reviewed where the bonus is coming from: I crudely had it all come from the Liberals, but given what looks like a tight race, I've decided to take a closer look. Now 3.5 points are from the Liberals, 1.5 from the Tories and 1 from the Greens. (This is very uncertain, though, as the by-election had no Green candidate and a star PPC candidate.)

No comments: