The 2011 Campaign is Underway!

It's official: Canadians will be heading to the polls on May 2. (Well, a minority of Canadians, since minors, people that don't vote and absentee/early voters will, in fact, not be at a polling station on Election Day. Sadly, I will not be part of this minority.)

Will the Conservative teflon coating hold? Will Ignatieff finally tell us what he and the Liberals are now about - and will it be too late? Will the NDP hold on to their near-tripling of seats in the past decade in an election where the economy will likely figure prominently? Will the Greens finally manage to elect an MP? Will the Bloc... Well, we know they'll win 40-55 seats anyway.

Five weeks is an eternity in politics. That's even more true during a Canadian campaign, where changes in the public mood are often large, brisk and unexpected (see 1993, and to a lesser extent, 2006).

I hope to issue new projections every day or two during the campaign. The poll weighting formula will use more rapid depreciation - probably roughly twice as fast as usual.

Later today, or whenever the details of the latest Angus Reid poll comes out, I will issue a regular projection, which will be mapped. For now, here's a writeup of a Segma poll in the five ridings of Quebec City proper. The Conservatives won 3 of these 5 seats in 2008, with an overall 3% edge over the Bloc in popular vote. The survey shows that the Tories retain the lead in only one of these ridings (Louis-Saint-Laurent, held by Josée Verner), and trail the Bloc by 7% citywide.

EKOS: Tories by 7.2

The latest bi-weekly EKOS poll has the Conservatives squarely in minority territory, with a modest lead in Ontario. Not much time today, so I won't elaborate, but here is the latest projection:

CON - 152
LIB - 73
BQ - 51
NDP - 32

The average Tory national lead is back down to 11.3%.

When the campaign officially gets underway, I will say more, and post new maps and a new trend graph. So check back tomorrow!

Ipsos: Tories by 19 (!)

The latest Ipsos poll is a blockbuster for the Conservatives. They lead by double digits in Atlantic Canada and Ontario, are at a respectable 25% in Québec, and are at over 50% in each of the Western regions. The Bloc remains strong, but for both the Liberals and the NDP, this survey's numbers are a disaster across the board.

Frank Graves of EKOS, however, has suggested that the latest EKOS numbers, which will be released tomorrow, are completely different. So stay tuned...

In the meantime, the aggregate projection moves back up for the Tories, but not quite back into majority territory:

CON - 154
LIB - 72
BQ - 51
NDP - 31

The average national Conservative lead is 12.1%.

Harris-Decima: Conservatives Lead by 6 Only; Projection: Back to Conservative Minority

The latest Harris-Decima poll tells the story of a Conservative party that is actually squarely in minority territory. It shows virtual Liberal-Conservative ties in Atlantic Canada and Ontario, much like the polls before the recent flare-up in Tory numbers. Also, this survey suggests three-way race in BC, though I would caution that Harris-Decima often shows lower Tory numbers than other pollsters in BC.

We've had six March polls so far, and while four of them suggest that the Tories are either in or close to majority territory, two instead say that the Conservatives are in familiar minority grounds. Here is the Tory-Grit gap in each of these polls:

EKOS (2/24-3/8, 2892 respondents): 7.4%
Ipsos (3/7-9, 1002): 13%
Angus Reid (3/8-9, 1021): 16%
Léger Marketing (3/7-10, 1494): 13%
Nanos (3/12-15, 1216): 11%
Harris-Decima (3/10-20, 2001): 6%

A similar pattern of EKOS and Harris-Decima showing smaller gaps than other pollsters also emerged in February. Who's right?

In any case, the aggregate projection uses a weighted average of recent polls (9 for this one), and spits out the following:

CON - 152
LIB - 73
BQ - 51
NDP - 32

Not surprisingly, given this latest survey, the Tories are back in minority territory. Their average national lead over the Grits has dropped to 11.4%, the same as in the 2008 election.

Nanos: Tories Lead by 11; Projection: Conservative MAJORITY

The latest Nanos poll suggests little movement. In Atlantic Canada, the only region where the Liberals vie for the lead, this survey sides with the Tories by a statistically insignificant 5%. In BC, unlike most other recent polls, this survey suggests that the NDP is competitive with the Conservatives (7.8% behind). In fact, this poll, as is often the case with Nanos surveys, is a strong one in general for the NDP: 19.9% nationally, and 23% in Ontario.

The number that shifted the projection slightly to the favour of the Tories is their 12.3% lead in Ontario - yes, that's bigger than their national lead. If the election plays out this way, the Tories would likely win over 60 Ontario seats. As a result, the aggregate projection now has the Conservatives in majority territory for the first time since the creation of this blog:

CON - 155
LIB - 71
BQ - 51
NDP - 31

The average national lead for the Tories is also 12.3%.

If a campaign indeed gets underway, it would be rather ironic: after repeatedly backing off from defeating the government due to weak polls, the Grits and Dippers would head into the election both in their weakest position in the past 20 months.

Ipsos: Tories Lead by 13

The results of the latest Ipsos survey have been posted on ThreeHundredEight.com. Relative to other recent polls, this one has the Conservatives particularly strong in Atlantic Canada (47%) and BC (50%), the Liberals strong on the Prairies (35%), the NDP strong in Alberta (19%) and the Bloc in a good position (46% in Québec).

There are no changes to the aggregate projection:

CON - 153
LIB - 73
BQ - 51
NDP - 31

The average Tory national lead is 12.1%.

Léger: Tories Lead by 13 Nationally

Léger Marketing has released a national poll confirming the Conservatives' solid national lead. This poll is a very bad one for the Liberals: they trail the Conservatives by 14% in Ontario and the Bloc by 23% in Québec. The only bright spot for the Grits is a 7% lead in Atlantic Canada.

For the Tories, their low 16% in Québec is worrisome, especially because they trail the Bloc by 11% in the Quebec City area, which they won by 7% in 2008. However, their stellar results in Ontario and BC (45% vs. only 13% for the NDP) make this a quite satisfying poll.

The aggregate projection changes little, and the Conservatives are still short of a majority:

CON - 153
LIB - 73
BQ - 51
NDP - 31

The average Tory national lead is now 12.2%.

Angus Reid: Tories Lead by 16; EKOS: No, It's 7.4

After a week without new polls, we got two today. First, Angus Reid released a survey showing not so much the Tories soaring, but the Grits tanking - to 23%. Despite the ghastly headline, the Liberals are actually doing OK in Québec, also with 23%, compared to a weak 34% by the Bloc. In Atlantic Canada, all parties are below 30% due to a mysterious 20% going for 'Other'. Even with very small Atlantic sample sizes, this is a freak number: random variation has a very small chance of explaining it...

For the Tories, this is a great poll across the board (except in Atlantic Canada): 41% in Ontario, 45% in BC, and even stronger results than usual across the Prairies. They even got 22% in Québec despite refusing to fund the new arena in Quebec City (the poll was conducted March 8-9).

As for the NDP, the 19% in Ontario is good, but their numbers out West are dismal: they would be down to around 6 seats from 15 in the previous election.

Later in the day, EKOS released its bi-weekly poll, which appears to tell a very different story on the surface. However, a good chunk of the difference in headline numbers comes from the Tories not quite having as eye-popping numbers out West as in the Angus Reid poll - this does not have big seat implications.

In all important Ontario, the two polls are consistent with each other: Angus Reid shows a 12% Conservative-Liberal gap, while EKOS shows 7%. Moreover, the two polls agree that the NDP is doing poorly in the West, and that the Bloc has dropped from around 40% to the mid-thirties. The most surprising finding of this poll is a 9% Liberal lead in Atlantic Canada, which differs from what all February polls have shown. Of course, due to small sample size, this remains to be confirmed.

The new projection reflects the weak latest numbers for the Bloc and the NDP. Even as the Liberals bounce back a little, the Tories inch closer to a majority:

CON - 152
LIB - 74
BQ - 51
NDP - 31

The average Conservative national lead is up slightly, to 11.9%.

Harris-Decima: Conservative Lead at 8

Harris-Decima's latest poll, conducted 2/17-27, shows a solid, but not huge, Conservative lead. This puts it closer to the latest EKOS poll (5% gap, 2/10-22) than the recent Abacus (15%, 2/23) and Ipsos (16%, 2/23-27) surveys. There were few surprising regional results in this HD poll, except for the three-way tie in BC, but then again that's probably due to a small sample.

There are virtually no changes to the national projection:

CON - 151
LIB - 70
BQ - 53
NDP - 34

The Tory national lead decreases slightly, and sits at 11.6%.

Ipsos: Tories Lead by 16

The latest Ipsos poll (via ThreeHundredEight.com) puts the Conservatives squarely in majority territory, with 43% of the vote. This is a very strong survey across the board for the Tories, except in Québec where their 19% is still average. For the Grits, this was actually not bad in terms of their support level, and in fact the 27% in Québec is quite encouraging. However, the Tory-Grit gaps, at 12% in Ontario and 19% in Atlantic Canada, would spell electoral disaster for the Liberals.

So where did all the Conservative votes come from? Well, this was a very bad survey for the NDP (13%) and for the Greens (5%), though the latter may be due to a methodology change: as explained by Éric at ThreeHundredEight.com, Ipsos has opted to stop prompting for the Green Party. My averaging method for the national popular vote has been modified to account for this change.

Not surprisingly, this poll brings the Tories closer to that magic 155-seat mark in the aggregate projection, though they are not there yet:

CON - 152
LIB - 70
BQ - 53
NDP - 33

This is the absolute worst projection for the Liberals since this blog was created in July 2009; it is also just one short of the highest point for the Tories. The average Conservative national lead is at 12.1%.

Also, readers of Éric's blog have probably noticed that he has a new projection model in place. The change in the model gave 4 extra seats to the Conservatives and 9 to the NDP, at the expense of 13 seats for the Liberals. Over the past 1.5 years, Éric's old method has, compared to my projections, consistently disadvantaged the Tories and especially Dippers to the benefit of the Grits. His methodology change makes the seat projections from our two blogs much closer. I feel a little vindicated, but mostly reassured that I was not way off in the left field!

However, it remains true that my methodology depreciates old polls faster than Éric's. This would explain why I peg the Tory lead at 12.1% now compared to 10.4% for ThreeHundredEight.com.