British Columbia provincial election 2013

[DL]

I think a weakness of the BC vote compass is a lack of questions that differentiate between the NDP and Green parties - the parties do differ on some issues.

[DL]

Christy Clark herself and her charmless ex-husband Mark Marrissen are both dyed in the wool federal Liberals who were heavily involved in Paul Martin's leadership campaign and then in Dion's campaign in 2006 - her inner circle is filled with big L Liberals many of whom are refugees from the McGuinty regime in Ontario.

[DL]

Are the Greenies going the Lizzy May way and focusing their resources on those one or two seats or are they actually running a province-wide campaign?

One thing that really speaks volumes is the fact that in the 2009 BC election the Greens ran a full slate of 85 candidates and got 8% of the vote. This time they are only running 60 candidates and several of the ridings where they are not running anyone are very surprising. in Penticton they took 16% last time (their second best showing in the province), this time they have no candidate running there at all. They are also not running candidates in any of the Kelowna seats or in kamloops and in a Prince George seat, plus they have no candidate in  North Island, Alberni or Parksville-Qualicum...in the latter they took 11% last time and the riding is a major NDP target. I figure about 10% of people in that riding will go to the polls expecting to vote Green - they will see no Green name on the ballot, what do you suppose they will do? I suspect two-thirds will vote NDP and the rest will either spoil their ballot or vote Liberal.

[DL]

Interior
Lib: 42 (+7)
NDP: 20 (-21)
Cons: 14 (+4)
Grn: 10 (-1)

Some wild swings going on in the low sample areas.

Actually the NDP is at 29% in Interior in that poll not 20% so down 11..not 21. Keep in mind that in most of the interior there are no Greens on the ballot!

[DL]

That one poll by Insight West had some minute sub-sample of people who were undecided who pushed for how they were leaning and they were very very slightly Liberal 29% to 25% - but we are talking about 29% of 15% of people in the poll who were undecided vs 25%. In other words 4.25% to the Libs compared to 3.75% to the NDP - and that's not even counting how astronomical the margin of error would be on a question asked of less than 100 people who were undecided on the first question.

[DL]

One thing I find particularly interesting about the Angus Reid poll is a unique methodology they are using in this final poll. Instead of giving everyone the same generic vote question they figure out which of the 85 ridings everyone lives in and give each respondent an actual sample ballot for their riding with local candidate names listed. This means that if you are in a riding with no Conservative candidate you cannot say you are voting Conservative ditto for Greens and it would also give people names of independents some of whom are high profile and could win.

In 2009 AR used this same approach in their final poll and they nailed the final results almost dead on. They said Libs 44 and NDP 42 and it ended up 45-42, all the other polls in 2009 that were done by phone underestimated NDP support and gave the BC Liberals 9 to 11 point leads. We shall see who is right this time.

[DL]

EKOS: 40.5-34.5, Green 13, Tories 9.

I had a had in making the weights, so if it's wrong, I'm partially to blame. To bad we didn't do regional breakdowns.

Do you compensate in any way for the fact that in 24 ridings there is no Green on the ballot and in 30 there is no Bc Conservative?

[DL]

Even if Ipsos had weighted to the 2009 turnout their final poll still would have been way off/

[DL]

-  In both Manitoba and Ontario, the governing parties began the campaign more than 10 points back yet pulled off a narrow win.  The only difference here is a least the polls caught the shift.  In fact the PCs in both provinces actually did slightly better than the final polls suggested although worse than the pre-election polls.

This is a bit of a myth. In Ontario the Liberals and PCs were locked in a close race in polls in late 2010 and early 2011. The only poll that showed the PC with a double digit lead was taken in late May/early June 2011 - right after the federal Liberals were annhilated in Ontario...by the time the writ was actually dropped in early September polls were all showing the Ontario liberals very much back in contention and that PCs had lost their post federal election "bounce"...not much actually changed during the campaign itself.

Similarly in Manitoba there was one polls in late spring 2011 that had the PCs with a significant lead over the NDP - but again by the time the election campaign actually got started in the fall - the NDP had already recovered.