Projection Update: EKOS 8/20-22 and Mainstreet's Windsor West Poll

The following polls have been added to the model:
EKOS' 8/20-22 national poll (current weight among national polls: 19%)
Mainstreet's 8/21 Windsor West poll
For a full list of included polls, see previous Projection posts.

The EKOS poll was conducted over 3 nights. Although 338 indicates that they were 8/21-23, Frank Graves' (EKOS president and founder) tweets (ON and QC numbers) on Aug. 23 states that the numbers were "as of last night." I could go either way, and I'll treat the poll as a 8/20-22 poll - it doesn't make a big difference.

EKOS shows two main things that roughly cancel out: great Liberal numbers in ON, and great Conservative numbers in the Atlantic. Of course, the Atlantic sample size is tiny, so the margin of error (MoE) is huge (roughly +/- 12%). However, the Conservative number is so good that even if you take the low end of the 95% confidence interval for the Tories and the high end for the Liberals, the poll would still be mildly positive for the Tories (they'd be only slightly behind the Liberals)! Other things to note include poor NDP numbers and good BQ numbers; both of these are consistent with EKOS numbers all summer, which suggests that they may be EKOS house effects. On the other hand, this poll has the worst Green numbers we've seen from EKOS this summer. (The Greens have been sliding in my projection gently, but continually for four weeks...)

The Mainstreet Windsor West poll guides a "star" adjustment, as described here, for Sandra Pupatello, the Liberal candidate. This obviously helps the LIBs and hurts the NDP in Windsor West. However, riding-level adjustments have a countervailing effect elsewhere in the same polling region so that the riding-level projections remain consistent with the polling average. As a result, the result of this poll on total seat numbers is smaller than the effect in Windsor West alone (and in fact marginally positive for the Tories even though only the NDP, LIB and GRN vote shares are adjusted).

Projection as of the latest national poll (midpoint: August 21)
LIB - 153.0 (33.7%)

CON - 145.6 (36.3%)
NDP - 20.3 (12.8%)
BQ - 14.6 (4.4%)
GRN - 3.6 (9.5%)
IND - 0.5
PPC - 0.5

If you're new to my 2019 projections, view key interpretive information here.

The projection is essentially unchanged. The NDP is down a bit, but this just brings it back to where it has been all August before this past week (or would have been, had I introduced the NDP turnout adjustment at the outset): this past week's polls tended to be from pollsters whose results are usually favourable to the NDP. This EKOS poll balances things out.

There were, however, a ton of changes in which seats are projected ahead, due to the poll's unusual Atlantic and ON results:
- In the Atlantic, CONs take 7 more seats from LIBs: Sackville--Preston--Chezzetcook, Central Nova, Avalon, Egmont, South Shore--St. Margarets, Charlottetown, West Nova.
- In Ontario, LIBs regain 10 seats from CONs: Vaughan--Woodbridge, Cambridge, Richmond Hill, Burlington, Oakville North--Burlington, King--Vaughan, York Centre, Whitby, Northumberland--Peterborough South, Newmarket--Aurora.
- In Manitoba, CONs take 1 more seat from LIBs: Winnipeg South.
- In BC, CONs retake 1 seat from the NDP: North Island--Powell River.

It'll be interesting to see if EKOS has identified new trends of Tory strength in the Atlantic and/or additional Liberal strength in ON, or if this is just random variation.

Addendum: You'll note that the "seats ahead" breakdown has the Liberals winning 78 ridings in ON, just two fewer than in 2015. However, their "average" number of wins in ON is 73: they're marginally ahead in disproportionately many tight races. The LIB lead in ON is 7.5% in my adjusted polling average, which is 2.2% short of the 2015 level.