Canada 2011 Official Thread

[cinyc]

And today, Nanos taketh away from the Bloc, while the Dippers dip, too:

Conservative	39.8%	+0.8
Liberal	29.8%	+1.5
NDP	17.4%	-1.0
BQ	8.6%	-1.0
Green	3.4%	-0.2

(3 days ending April 17)

[cinyc]

I will say this one more time...

The regional breakouts on these polls are JUNK.

I agree with you, with a few exceptions.  Some of the Quebec-only polling by the likes of Leger is usually reliable, as are the Ontario subsamples if they are large and balanced enough.  All the rest, especially subsamples of Atlantic Canada and Alberta and/or the Prairies, often have very high MoEs, sometimes double-digits.

[cinyc]

Today's Nanos - pretty much flat, except for a small swing from Greens to Grits:

Conservative	39.8%	NC    -
Liberal	30.2%	+0.4
NDP	17.3%	-0.1
BQ	8.6%	NC    -
Green	3.1%	-0.3

(3 days ending April 18)

[cinyc]

Nanos today, big swing to the NDP from all others

Conservative	39.1%	-0.7
Liberal	28.4%	-1.8
NDP	19.8%	+2.5
BQ	7.7%	-0.9
Green	3.9%	+0.8

Quebec

Conservative	16.6%	+1.2
Liberal	20.9%	-0.1
NDP	25.4%	+2.4
BQ	32.5%	-3.7
Green	1.3%	+0.3

Potential for some very bizarre results if that played out in Quebec.

Some of the swing is due to a good weekend polling day for the Bloc rolling off.

[cinyc]

What would the popular vote have to look like for the NDP to finish second in terms of seats? What is the reason for this surge btw?

The NDP's ads are very well done and Iggy has been a real disappointment for the Liberals.  In particular, Iggy may have had a Howard Dean moment, repeatedly telling a crowd to "rise up, rise up, rise up!"  He's not coming across as Prime Ministerial.

Plus, Layton supposedly did well in the French-language debate, boosting the NDP's numbers in Quebec.  I didn't watch the French debate, but Iggy stunk in the English-language debate, in my opinion - he came across as entitled, impatient and surly.

[cinyc]

If there was a turning point in the Liberal campaign, it's probably their decision to run this over-the-top ad.  The subtext of the ad basically states vote Liberal or Harper will kill you... flatline... which simply isn't believable - especially when the Liberals themselves were the last to cut federal health funding.   Not only that, but the original version of the ad claimed Harper said something that he never did - which has added more attention to it.  

It's no wonder that the polls are the way there are.  The Liberal campaign, which never seemed to have much of a coherent message to begin with, is collapsing.

[cinyc]

Does Harper really think his pledge to not govern from second place will gain him any seats? (link - CBC)  I can't seriously see a Liberal/NDP coalition (or an NDP/Liberal coalition if the NDP get a miraculous second place) as neither party would be amenable to that.

What's the point of forcing an election, then?

Obviously Iggy thought things would go differently once the campaign started.  Also, 2012 in general will likely be a better election environment for incumbents than right now is.

Canada's census was taken this year.  By 2012, there will be a reapportionment, which will undoubtedly add seats in the west.  That also needed to be taken into account.

[cinyc]

Will Canada's weird laws on election coverage affect us at all?

Us?  No.  This isn't a Canadian website and those of us who aren't in Canada cannot be bound by the weird, anachronistic Canadian laws on election night coverage.  We can repeat whatever we hear from tweets and elsewhere.  Early results from Atlantic Canada and that one Quebec riding whose polls close an hour early always manage to get posted on the Internet somewhere.  It's just a question of finding it.

[cinyc]

Canadian law considers Internet forums to be publications, and hence the publisher (Dave) would get in trouble if anyone does. Keep that in mind.

Twitter will have results.

Dave is an American living in the U.S.  The U.S. isn't going to extradite Dave to Canada for prosecution under a law that doesn't even have a remotely similar analogue in the U.S.  Discussing early U.S. results on election night is legal in the U.S., as is discussing early election results from a foreign country.  Nor would Canada even try to arrest an American for discussing their early election results while physically present in the U.S. on a U.S. forum - if anything, they'd be flattered that we care.  Heck, they don't even prosecute their own media organizations that in the past have mistakenly broadcast early results nationwide, let alone bloggers.  

That Canadian election results reporting law is anachronistic and unenforceable in the digital age.  It worked when CBC, CTV, Global and radio stations were the only way to get information.  Not so much now.

And even if there were a law, the First Amendment protects Americans having a political discussion about early Canadian election results in the US, anyway.

[cinyc]

These are not for you to decide.

We discussed Canadian early results on this website in 2004, 2006 and 2008.  The world did not come to an end.  And nobody ended up in a Canadian prison.

The only way Elections Canada can get people to stop discussing results from provinces that close early is to lock up the vote-counters in those ridings without telephones or Internet access until all the polls close.  Even then, the news would get out somehow.

[cinyc]

I was worried, I misread "seeing" as "seeking"...

Well, "seeing" has some interesting meanings too, in this context.

These are not for you to decide.

We discussed Canadian early results on this website in 2004, 2006 and 2008.  The world did not come to an end.  And nobody ended up in a Canadian prison.

Have a look at the 2008 figures. The only thing we had was seat totals for the Maritimes. People wondered aloud if the ABC strategy had backfired, cause apparently no one was online to tell them there were reasonable Tory targets in New Brunswick.

Traditionally, the Maritimes and that one Quebec riding are the only thing that's released before most if not all of the polls close.  Recently, most of Ontario's polls have closed an hour or so before the polls closed out west, so the votes are just getting counted or starting to trickle in around 10PM Eastern, when B.C. closes.  This year, polls in the Eastern time zone will close at 9:30 and those in the Pacific time zone will close at 10:00.  We're only going to get some early Newfoundland (close at 7PM Eastern) and Atlantic (7:30PM Eastern) results before the polls close in most of the rest of the country.

[cinyc]

I think you missed the point entirely.

That the quality of the aggregate info available wasn't good enough to split Newfoundland from the other Maritime results?  Or our analysis sucked?

Hopefully, we'll get better early riding- or provincial-level data this cycle, thanks to Twitter and other tools that weren't available in 2008. 

Reading the tea leaves from the Maritimes is useful, but always an inexact science.

[cinyc]

That the results we (well, some posters who were posting on the forum at the time, whose identity I would have to look up. Though I do seem to recall Meeker was among them, might be wrong though) were very, very incomplete ones, just a headline seats leading tally. Nothing to satisfy an election junkie in any way. The dam on real results coverage broadly held.
Now, that doesn't mean the same thing will be true in 2011 - Twitter wasn't around then - but don't get your hopes up.

That's somewhat a function of how the Canadian TV networks have tended to report results - by aggregate seat count, not focusing on riding-level results.  I suspect many of the early reports in the past were based on election night TV or radio coverage from Atlantic Canada or the CBC's international radio affiliate, which has no restrictions on coverage.

Even the change in the Atlantic Canada seat count tells us something, though.

[cinyc]

And the remarkable thing is, it seems to be working, at least for now. At least, my, admittedly far from thorough, but more than perfunctory search hasn't uncovered any violators. The most that I've seen is people saying "I will be discussing this on Twitter".  Can't believe it - 30 million law-abiding citizens and no freedom fighters among them Smiley

What can I say: Canadians.

Yeah, in 2006 it took an American blogger, Ed Morrissey from Captain's Quarters, to publicly and explicitly do the job most Canadians were unwilling to do.  He's not sitting in any Canadian prison.

This time, there could be a tweet-in.

[cinyc]

Look, no-one's saying anyone's going to prison, but what public policy reason is there to possibly violate the law? Is it a good thing for the election in one time zone to be slightly skewed by the election in another?

Where I come from, there has to be a really, really, really compelling public policy reason to restrain free speech.  I don't need a public policy reason to speak. 

There is no public policy reason to stop foreigners from discussing results from an election they can't vote in on a forum not directed toward Canadians.  Anyone who comes here does so by choice.

[cinyc]

Pollsters usually give a breakdown for "The Prairies", which is Alberta, Sask and Manitoba. They show the Conservatives flat, the NDP up and the Liberals down on 2008, none of the changes all that large, but who knows how accurate that is.

Basically suggests Winnipeg North may flip back to the NDP, NDP will be the main challengers to the Conservatives in Desnethe (but hard to say whether they have any serious shot), Liberals might lose Wascana, NDP will probably hold Edmonton Strathcona, and the NDP may stand a chance at Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar. Not many interesting races out there.

Some pollsters do break out Alberta from the rest of the Prairies, but when they do so, the MoE for both areas is so high as to be completely unreliable - like on Atlantic Canada levels.  And that's before worrying about not weighing regional subsamples properly.

[cinyc]

It's a timing problem. People need to count the ballots, and such, and hence need to work. Work from the time the polls open to the time counting is complete. When it's 7am in Ontario, it's 6 in Winnipeg, 5 in Edmonton, and 4 in Vancouver. It makes it 8am in Halifax and 8:30 in St.John's.

People like the polls to close at 8pm. In Toronto, this would close the polls at 5pm in Vancouver, way to early.

8pm in Vancouver would be 11pm in Toronto, far too late.

9:30pm could be a compromise, and if Toronto, that would be 6:30pm in BC, which is a bit early, but could also be done. This would be 10:30pm in the Atlantic, but, that's a bit late.

If you had the polls close at a different time in the Atlantic, maybe, but then you'd need to like not-count the results, which gets too late for the workers, or just not release the results, which is possible.

Polls in the Eastern, Central and Mountain Time Zones already simultaneously close at 9:30PM Eastern.  Those in the Pacific Time Zone close at 10:00PM Eastern.  Realistically, we're only talking about results from the Atlantic and Newfoundland Time Zones getting counted and released before the rest of the country.  Those areas close at 8:30PM local, which is 7 or 7:30PM Eastern.  And while those results may be interesting to us political junkies, they don't necessarily tell the rest of the country how the rest of the country will vote.  The Atlantic provinces are special in their unique ways.

So to me, the ban is totally unnecessary.  It's not like Ontario's results are going to be dumped at 7PM while polls are still open 3 hours longer in B.C.  Even if they were, the ban on putting info on Internet sites where folks have to actively seek out results is dumb.  The whole idea that those who want to know the results aren't going to vote because they know their party didn't fare well out East is extremely silly.

[cinyc]

Another EKOS poll, apparently. Looks all but identical: Con 34, NDP 28, Lib 24, BQ 6, Greenies 7 (figures rounded by me).

Was EKOS polling over the weekend?  Nanos didn't poll on Good Friday or Easter Monday (hence, no update this morning).  They probably shouldn't have polled Easter Sunday either - there are too many people away from home, potentially skewing results.

[cinyc]

Everyone take a very deep breath - latest Angus Reid poll:

Conservatives 35%
NDP 30% (!!!)
Liberals 22%

This is REAL!

Aren't Angus Reid polls Internet polls?  And when was this poll taken?  I wouldn't trust any poll taken over the holiday weekend.

[cinyc]

These are areas the NDP wont make many gains (though Mulcair claimed some pickups in the Saguenay, I see only one). I am more interested in ridings in the Montreal area. Let's see some riding polls from the 514 and the 450.

It's still a pretty big improvement from 2008, although anything better than 4% or 5% is a "big improvement". Still, it looks like the NDP isn't just sucking up support from the Bloc and the Liberals, the Conservatives seem to have taken a hit too, compared to 2008 anyway.

The Conservatives didn't take much of a hit compared to Angus Reid's last poll, which had them at 36.

[cinyc]

I'm assuming that NDP number in the Atlantic provinces is completely meaningless.

NDP got not far short of that number in 2008, so it wouldn't be unrealistic (2008 was LIB 35.0; CON 29.6; NDP 26.0). In good part due to running up ridiculous margins in St. John's East and Sackville-Eastern Shore, but that will happen again. Cons are up just as much as the NDP in the Atlantic if Angus-Reid is right.

I don't trust any Atlantic Canada subsample, really.  The MoE is so high that any of the three major parties could be leading. 

There usually has been an Atlantic Canada-only poll released around now that might be somewhat reliable.

[cinyc]

I am going to go out and make a prediction, that the Tories will massively outperform polls on Monday.

Why? The NDP is peaking several days too soon. The narrative at the end of this week will shift from Jack Layton as leader of the opposition to Jack Layton as a potential PM, and despite what some NDP supporters may think, that is a prospect that terrifies 60% of Canadians. When Newspapers start to run with it later this week, you are going to see two things:

1. Centrist Liberal voters voting strategically for the Tories
2. Soft-NDP supporters deserting as they learn more about the platform, and read the slew of stories about lunatic NDP paper candidates that are going to dominate media coverage for the rest of the week.

This is what happened to the Liberal Democrats to an extent, but here it will be far worse. NDP government has a disastrous record in the key swing areas(BC, Ontario), and a large portion of the likely NDP MPs are paper candidates, separatists, crazies, or all three.

People may be ready for an NDP opposition. They clearly are ready to dump the Liberals. But I doubt they really want an NDP government, and if polls in the next few days show them close to the Tories, its the worst thing that could happen to the NDP.

It's starting:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/ndp-candidate-takes-mid-campaign-vacation-in-vegas/article1999879/

[cinyc]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I saw that story several days ago. It clearly hasn't had any noticeable impact, if it will have any at all.

Several days ago?  It was first published Tuesday night. 

Many NDP candidates have not been scrutinized because the talking heads and partisan pundits thought they had no shot of winning.  Now that they do, they will be.  And the dirt will come out, as it had on Liberal and Conservative candidates earlier in the campaign.

[cinyc]

From Ipsos's press release announcing said poll:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Fail.

Not necessarily, if Ipsos is polling likely voters.  Higher relative Quebec LV expected turnout times lower Quebec LV support could equal higher overall national support, especially if 6.4% is rounded down and 6.5% rounded up.

[cinyc]

Ratings or not, Sun News is beginning its corrosive effects on politics. Anonymous source leaks to channel that Layton was naked in a massage parlour? This is less Fox as it is News of the World, except they spent ten minutes talking about it.

Well, Layton's wife confirms the story was true, so Sun News' story is correct.

It is about time Canada got themselves a news channel that's not unabashedly leftist.