Canada 2011 Official Thread

[MaxQue]

So, you are right, Hashemite, so, I'll try to not be an hack, even if I'm member of a party, now.

Vorlon, I think you switched Léger and CROP in your numbers.

Nanos' poll seems to be quite in line with other polls, i.e. status quo.

Earl: If you look subsambles of NDP numbers since last elections in Quebec polls, the progress (not saw by national polls) is in Quebec City and outside Montreal and Quebec RMA. So, "rural" Quebec. But, sub-samples, so caution.

But  that could be possible, I know people in my native area which would consider voting for them in the good circumstances. Which is totally new, there.

So, yes, I'm in Outremont. Situation there is a race between Mulcair (NDP) and Martin Cauchon, former Justice Minister of Chrétien (Liberal). BQ and Conservatives are not in position of winning.

So, Montreal Island.

As usual, I would say than most races are boring. Check Papineau (Trudeau against Barbot(BQ, former MP)), Ahuntsic (BQ against Liberals), Lac-Saint-Louis (Anglo suburban, hyper-wealthy seat, on West Island. Conservatives are running Larry Smith, senator and former president of the Montreal Alouettes, a football club.). Jeanne-Le Ber, perhaps, I don't know. For an NDP gain in Quebec, I would check more in Gatineau or Hull-Aylmer (??). With a big question mark, especially for the latter.

I follow more my native region, Abitibi.

In Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the BQ incumbent, Marc Lemay will be reelected. NDP is nobody yet are are irrelevent there. Conservatives are running a 26 year old candidate, a political advisor to Pierre Corbeil, a provincial minister in the impopular provincial government (and Pierre Corbeil's riding is in the part of Abitibi which is in the other federal riding, so, wrong area). Liberals are running an unknown woman, which said than she will run a new style campaign, on social networks, without signs or an electoral office (that is code for saying "I have no funds at all, the party doesn't care about that unwinnable riding").

In Abitibi-Baie James-Nunavik-Eeyou (ABJNE), my native riding and the one where I'll move back during the campaign, there is a 3-way race, for now.

The Bloc incumbent, Yvon Lévesque, running again, at 70 years old.
The Conservative candidate, which finished 2nd last time, the mayor of Senneterre, Jean-Maurice Matte. Last election, Harper went to the main city in the riding during the election and said he could be named minister if elected and Harper visited the riding twice in February-March this year. A clear target, I think.
The Liberal candidate, Léandre Gervais, a guy which founded a powerful engineering firm in Abitibi. The business people in the area should side with him, he is well-known, too. Could be difficult with voters, because of all the scandals of engineering firms funding illegally the provincial Liberal party.
Again, NDP is irrelevent, unless the rumors of a star candidate in the riding comes true, this time (there was some in 2006 and 2008). According to Elections Canada database (and credits to Pundits' Guide website for finding that), they named a sociology teacher in Chibougamau, in the North as their candidate in January, but never notified the media, which acts as there is no candidate, for now.
For now, as the Liberal candidate is stronger than last time, I forecast a BQ win, but tightly.

And I would like to signal to NDP and Conservatives than a good website has a candidate list! Those parties don't, it is quite bad. By the way, the French NDP website doesn't even seem to have an MP list.

[bullmoose88]

...[omitted because my text box is acting weird with this many lines...

I understand that the GG could, ask another party/coalition to form the government even if they don't have the most seats.  Its hard seeing the tories finishing 2nd or worse in overall seat numbers.

I just mean, either with a tory minority government for another period, or some sort of Liberal government with NDP/Bloc support on supply/confidence motions or even in coalition...how stable is that going to be?  As long as the bloc takes enough seats to make it virutally impossible for the tories or the libs (or libs/NDP) from having a majority...and there isn't a major shift in voting patterns (realignment/scandal) whats an election going to solve?  How is it going to usher in a government that can serve out its full term?

[You kip if you want to...]

I don't see why all talk must always be that this will be an epic Liberal rout, that the Liberals are doomed and so forth. Sure, Ignatieff is a poor leader and the odds aren't good. But Ignatieff is probably a marginally better leader than Dion - who also had sh**tpoor leadership numbers and when expectations are so low anything marginally positive can boost you up. Remember 1988.

At any rate, a Tory majority would be awful for this country; but if the people are retarded enough to go for it, then maybe the idiots should suffer the consequences and live with it afterwards. But for those who aren't idiots, it will be awful.

To be fair to Canada, even if the Tories do win a majority, it'll be with something like 55 to 60% of the country voting against them.

That's first-past-the-post for you... I don't know about Canada, but the government never winning a majority of the popular vote is hardly ever an issue in the UK. Even Blair and Thatcher missed 50% by a fair bit.

[DL]

PS: The NDP is also heavily targetting Hull-Aylmer where they are running the former President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada in a riding that is full of low level federal civil servants right across the river from Parliament Hill. If there is an NDP breakthrough in Quebec, Hull-Aylmer will be the next shoe to drop after Gatineau (and holding Outremont of course)

[MaxQue]

Again, NDP is irrelevent, unless the rumors of a star candidate in the riding comes true, this time (there was some in 2006 and 2008).

They came true, finally.
Romeo Saganash, a important guy in the Cree community.
To me, that clearly kills the Liberal candidate odds of winning, since I suppose he will rack the Native vote this time, while that vote is overwhelmingly Liberal, usually.

[Hash]

Nanos day 2

Purgatories 39.1
Liberal 32.7
NDP 15.9
BQ 8.7
Green 3.7

[Insula Dei]

Nanos day 2

Purgatories 39.1
Liberal 32.7
NDP 15.9
BQ 8.7
Green 3.7

Very good for the Liberals, no? How long has it been since the gap between them and the Tories was this close?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Nanos day 2

Purgatories 39.1
Liberal 32.7
NDP 15.9
BQ 8.7
Green 3.7

Hell, that looks worse and worse.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If they're doing daily polls, then the numbers will bounce around wildly.

[The Vorlon]

Nanos day 2

Purgatories 39.1
Liberal 32.7
NDP 15.9
BQ 8.7
Green 3.7

Hell, that looks worse and worse.

Likely just noise - Tory gap actually grew in Ontario.

Projected Seats         
Tories   Grits   Dippers   Bloq
6           23   3           0
10           18   2   45
64           27   15   0
40           11   5   0
20           11   5   0
1           1   1   0
141   91   31   45

[The Vorlon]

If they're doing daily polls, then the numbers will bounce around wildly.

It's actually a three day tracking poll. so daily changes are based upon 1/3rd of sample - ie Daily sampe in Ontario is about 90 or so, Quebec 75 or so,  Atlantic Canada about 30 or so...

There is also the issue of not being demographically/age balanced within each subsample.

400 a day is barely enough to balance the sample nationally each day, but no where near enough for each region.

For example, Ontario may have too may men one day while Quebec might have too few.. the next day, the balance may shift, which will, in addition to (huge) random error, also cause substantial systemic error regionally.

We will (of course) look at the regional samples cause we are all junkies, but they need to be taken with a megaton of salt...

[cinyc]

If they're doing daily polls, then the numbers will bounce around wildly.

It's actually a three day tracking poll. so daily changes are based upon 1/3rd of sample - ie Daily sampe in Ontario is about 90 or so, Quebec 75 or so,  Atlantic Canada about 30 or so...

There is also the issue of not being demographically/age balanced within each subsample.

400 a day is barely enough to balance the sample nationally each day, but no where near enough for each region.

For example, Ontario may have too may men one day while Quebec might have too few.. the next day, the balance may shift, which will, in addition to (huge) random error, also cause substantial systemic error regionally.

We will (of course) look at the regional samples cause we are all junkies, but they need to be taken with a megaton of salt...

I think you're underestimating the size of Nanos' Ontario and Quebec daily samples.  If he's polling 400 people per day, Ontario's should be about 120, and Quebec's 100.  FWIW, Nanos' Prairies (which includes Alberta) should have a daily sample size of about 80, British Columbia about 60 and Atlantic Canada around 40.  

All are far too small to reach any real conclusions based on one-day trends.  Heck, even the three-day samples have regional MoEs in the 5.2% to 10.0% range - better than some other pollsters who poll 1000 or less voters nationwide, but still relatively high.  Atlantic Canada and B.C.'s MoEs are too high to make even three-day trends anything close to reliable.  Pollsters who separate Alberta from the rest of the Prairies generally get real crap subsamples in both instead of mixed results that make little sense unless unpacked.

Edited to add: I was looking at an earlier poll when I came up with the numbers.  Nanos might be polling less than 400 per day - it's hard to tell.   From this link, it appears Nanos is only polling about 313 per day, which makes your numbers closer to correct.  In any event, every subsample is far too small to reach any short-term trend conclusions.

[The Man From G.O.P.]

I love this thing:

http://predictor.hillandknowlton.ca/predictor/

Is it accurate?

[Frodo]

Though this article does not say so explicitly, it suggests that a Conservative parliamentary majority would be good for the Canadian left, bringing greater pressure to bear on the Liberal, New Democratic, and Green parties to unite in a merger 'formal and definitive' the way the various parties of the right eventually fused to form the Conservative Party after more than a decade of Liberal electoral dominance:

Defection, debate challenge may signal seismic shift in Canadian politics
 
By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News
March 31, 2011 4:26 PM

Erstwhile NDP candidate Ryan Dolby's defection to his Liberal rival in London, Ont., on Wednesday — an apparent bid to prevent vote-splitting and thus defeat the riding's Conservative candidate — was cheered by Liberals but has prompted accusations of betrayal from the jilted NDP and "coalition" from the Conservatives.

But on a day when Green party leader Elizabeth May also faced exclusion from the televised leaders' debate, and NDP leader Jack Layton was left out of a proposed one-on-one showdown between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, could Wednesday's campaign highlights portend a much deeper, even seismic shift in the Canadian political landscape?

Eight years after the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada ended a long and bruising battle to "unite the right" and set the stage for this election's potential Harper majority, Dolby's shocking bolt and the proposed narrowing of debate lineups — each storyline raising the spectre of consolidation on the centre-left side of the country's political spectrum — offered a glimpse of what may be the ultimate solution for so-called "progressive" Canadians aiming to halt the rise of the right.

[Hash]

I love this thing:

http://predictor.hillandknowlton.ca/predictor/

Is it accurate?

No. Swings rarely work and work even less in Canada. If I recall correctly, this is from the same thing which predicted Mario Dumont would lose his own seat in 2008. So, yeah.

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

My own personal hand-made predictor: http://www.ridingbyriding.ca/ElectoMatic/ELECTOMATIC.xlsx
is accurate.

[Hatman 🍁]

Though this article does not say so explicitly, it suggests that a Conservative parliamentary majority would be good for the Canadian left, bringing greater pressure to bear on the Liberal, New Democratic, and Green parties to unite in a merger 'formal and definitive' the way the various parties of the right eventually fused to form the Conservative Party after more than a decade of Liberal electoral dominance:

Defection, debate challenge may signal seismic shift in Canadian politics
 
By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News
March 31, 2011 4:26 PM

Erstwhile NDP candidate Ryan Dolby's defection to his Liberal rival in London, Ont., on Wednesday — an apparent bid to prevent vote-splitting and thus defeat the riding's Conservative candidate — was cheered by Liberals but has prompted accusations of betrayal from the jilted NDP and "coalition" from the Conservatives.

But on a day when Green party leader Elizabeth May also faced exclusion from the televised leaders' debate, and NDP leader Jack Layton was left out of a proposed one-on-one showdown between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, could Wednesday's campaign highlights portend a much deeper, even seismic shift in the Canadian political landscape?

Eight years after the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada ended a long and bruising battle to "unite the right" and set the stage for this election's potential Harper majority, Dolby's shocking bolt and the proposed narrowing of debate lineups — each storyline raising the spectre of consolidation on the centre-left side of the country's political spectrum — offered a glimpse of what may be the ultimate solution for so-called "progressive" Canadians aiming to halt the rise of the right.

The Liberals are on the centre of the Canadian political spectrum, so I don't know why anyone thinks the NDP and the Greens should merge them.  I would be in favour of a green-NDP merger, however. Even bring on the BQ, eventually.

[The Vorlon]

I think you're underestimating the size of Nanos' Ontario and Quebec daily samples.  If he's polling 400 people per day, Ontario's should be about 120, and Quebec's 100.  FWIW, Nanos' Prairies (which includes Alberta) should have a daily sample size of about 80, British Columbia about 60 and Atlantic Canada around 40.  

Not correct actually.

Nanos samples about 400 perple a day but uses relatively mild screening questions to sift the sample down to "committed voters" - "very" roughly his equivalent of a "likely voter"

Fot the last two days these screens have reduced the original sample of about 1200 people down to 939 and 940 people respectively.

In Ontario, the three day samples were 279 and 281 persons respectively (or about 93 or 94 people a day)

In Quebec the sampes were 233 and 224, of 75 people give or take.

Only something on the order of 77% or so are deemed "committed" - hence the difference between the reported sample sizes.

The daily numbers are pretty well meaningless.... The trend line over a number of days might sort of kinda be a bit useful.. maybe.....

Nanos also has issues with sample balancing within each day.

He reports a leadership Index which he reports out of each daily 400 person sample (ie each day is a new 1 day poll)

On Monday Harper beat Ignatiuk by 84.8 to 43.4......  On Wednesday Harper won by 105.3 to 46.2

The gap expanding by 50% in two days seems... unlikely.....

Nanos also had a... not great year in 2008... though in 2006 he nailed it.....

[The Vorlon]

I love this thing:

http://predictor.hillandknowlton.ca/predictor/

Is it accurate?

No. Swings rarely work and work even less in Canada. If I recall correctly, this is from the same thing which predicted Mario Dumont would lose his own seat in 2008. So, yeah.

Uniform shift models "sorta kinda" work - They will get you in the right general ball park, but they are no replacement for riding by riding common sense.

[Hash]

Day 3

Conservative   39.4%   +0.3   
Liberal   31.7%   -1.0   
NDP   16.1%   +0.2   
BQ   8.5%   -0.2   
Green   4.4%   +0.7   

[Antonio the Sixth]

What happened to the NDP ? They were at 20% not so far ago...

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

BREAKING - Election cancelled http://www.ridingbyriding.ca/2011/04/01/737

[Antonio the Sixth]

BREAKING - Election cancelled http://www.ridingbyriding.ca/2011/04/01/737

I don't trust any "breaking news" today.

[Hatman 🍁]

EKOS IVR poll

NDP: 17.2 (+3.0)
Cons: 36.9 (+1.6)
Lib: 26.2 (-1.9)
Grn: 8.7 (-1.9)
BQ: 8.5 (-1.2)

[Verily]

What happened to the NDP ? They were at 20% not so far ago...

The NDP is perfectly capable of simultaneously polling at 16% and 20%. However, they have been polling down on their 2008 numbers pretty much constantly for the past couple of years with only the occasional poll putting them above 18%.