Canadian federal election - October 19, 2015 (Official Campaign Thread)

[DL]

Notice that when its a three way split in Ontario - its the Liberals who get burned by FPTP because their supportr is so spread out

Yes, because nothing has changed in the last 70 years

You don't have to go back 70 years - look at how in 1975 the Ontario Liberals took 34% of the vote and got 36 seats while the Ontario NDP got 38 seats with just 29%.

Also in the 2011 federal election in Ontario the NDP took 25.8% of the vote and the Liberals took 25.3% - but in seats the NDP got 22 seats and the Liberals just 11 seats.

The Liberal vote in ontario is very efficient when it is at high levels but it quickly becomes very ineffecient at lower levels...particular when the gap between Liberals and NDP gets into low single digits or negative

[DL]

One thing to keep in mind is that during this first month of the campaign, both the Conservatives and the Liberals have dumped a sh**t load of money on advertising while the NDP has spent little or nothing. I have the radio on all day and watch news shows and have been inundated with Tory attack ads against Trudeau and Liberal ads where trudeau claims he is ready...i have only occasionally seen the NDP ad that attacks all the Tory scandals.

I suspect that the Liberals have gambled on blowing a big chunk of their research budget in August desperately trying to get back into the game...it has worked for them to a point, but every bit of ammunition you use in August represents ammunition you cannot use in late September and October when it matters the most! The Conservatives have enough money to flood us with ads every step of the way.

I think the NDP is taking a gamble on "going dark" for the first half of the campaign - knowing this would erode their numbers in the short term and after Labour day they will start saturating the airwaves with their ads...interesting to see how all that pans out

[DL]

Now a new Forum poll is out: NDP 36%, Liberals 32% and CPC 24%

I find it impossible to believe their Ontario number where they have Conservative support at just 21%

[DL]

You know, people make fun of Forum a lot and some of it is justified...I usually have less of a problem with their actual numbers than I do with their ex-cathedra spin on their own findings. But apart from that Brandon-Souris by election their record is not bad at all.

Their final polls were quite close to the final result in the 2011 federal election, both the 2011 and 2014 Ontario elections, the Toronto mayoralty last year and other provincial elections in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Alberta

All of that being said I still refuse to believe that the CPC is as low as 21% in Ontario

[DL]

Polling companies are only judged on their final election eve poll...no one cares what they said over the course of the campaign since there is no way to ever prove who was right and who was wrong.

Nanos likes to boast about being the most "accurate" in the 06 and 08 elections...but if you look at his daily tracking his numbers were all over the place - one day he'd have the liberals leading on the Prairies, another day he'd have the Tories leading in Quebec etc...but none of that matters. Incidentally Nanos did some polling in the Toronto mayoralty and wildly underestimate Ford and over-estiumated Tory...I think that's because live-interviewer polls tended to have a "social desirability bias" where many people did not want to admit to a real person that they were voting for Ford.

[DL]

I think more Conservative candidate may soon be fired - several have been exposed as having ties to fanatical anti-gay hate groups.

[DL]

I never believed that the CPC would ever fall to 25/26% - there has never been an election in Canadian history where the conservatives (ie: PC, PC+Reform, PC+Canadian Alliance or CPC) got less than 29%.

I also believe that as long as the NDP dominates Quebec its very very difficult for the Liberals to overtake the NDP in the seat count unless they get a national popular vote lead of over 3%

[DL]

I'm told that Ekos also has a three way race in Ontario for some reason Nanos is a big outlier in Ontario

[DL]

FWIW - the EKOS IVR poll was in field Sept 2-8 and the Forum one was in field Sept 9-10 - so its possible that there is a trend...

[DL]

Forum just seems to really over-estimate the leading party's margin, no matter who's ahead.

There is some truth to that...but actually up until about three months ago Forum was always had the WORST numbers for the NDP - as recently as January/February they had the NDP as low as 17% nationally when everyone else had the party in the low 20s.

But when you compare Forum's final polls to the actual results in the last series of provincial elections and the Toronto mayoralty - they were pretty damn close and not that far off the average of all the pollsters

[DL]

I'm not sure why people keep saying the conservative vote is more efficient. What tends to happen in FPTP systems is that the party with the largest vote share is the most efficient when it comes to seats. In other words there is a bit of a leader bonus. Canada has never had an election result where three parties were within a couple of points of one another so we are in uncharted territory. For all we know know the Conservatives could come in slightly ahead in popular vote and come in third in seats just by being unlucky and losing more close races than they win. We could also see a scenario where the Conservatives have the most "wasted votes" since they tend to pile up 75% majorities in the rural west while the NDP and Liberals tend to win their seats by more modest margins. It's true that redistribution created more seats in BC and Ontario and Alberta, but while the Tories will win most of the new seats in Alberta, in Ontario and BC the new seats are in "swing areas" where right now conservative support is way down.

Anyways I'm just saying sometimes people just keep repeating something as if it was fact when it is just a hypothesis and I don't think we have any way of knowing which party's vote is more "efficient" in the uncharted territory of a three way race. I'd want to see a slew of riding polls to have a better idea.

[DL]

In terms of the raw vote count - the NDP may get a bit of a bump nationally for the simple reason that the turnout in Quebec tends to be higher than in the rest of Canada

[DL]

Churchill is a classic example of a seat where trying to apply a provincial swing model is useless. Its a totally rural riding where 60% of the electorate are First nations living in reserves. This is the sort of riding where voting is almost totally personality-based and totally oblivious to national swings...if Niki Ashton and her father have strong ties with elders in certain reserves she can win some polls on reserves 450 votes to 2 - and these people are not watching the At Issue panel on CBC and leaders debates etc...

Crude seat projection models like Grenier's aren't bad at the aggregate level but when it comes to trying to predict individual ridings - forget it.

[DL]

Actually a sample size of 375 is quite decent for a riding poll and if the NDP has an 11 point lead and the margin of error is 5.0 points that means the NDP lead is OUTSIDE the margin of error. In any case the point is not that Trudeau will necessarily lose but that he could lose. He needs to spend more time knocking on doors in his own riding and less time gallivanting around the country

[DL]

Some more riding polls (by lolForum):

Toronto Centre:
NDP: 41
Lib: 40
Cons: 14
Grn: 4

(this was always going to be close)

One thing is very weird in the Toronto Centre poll. They have a crosstab for "Past Vote in 2011". As you may know in 2011 Bob Rae beat the no-name NDP candidate in Toronto Centre by a 41% to 30% margin with the Tory getting 22%. With redistribution the heavily Liberal northern third of the riding was lopped off and so under the new boundaries in 2011 Toronto Centre would have voted Liberal by a very narrow 40% to 37% margin (Tories well back at 17%), yet in the Forum poll they have 238 people who voted Liberal in '11, 95 who voted NDP and 77 who voted CPC. In other words instead of past vote being 40% Liberal and 37% NDP it is 56% Liberal and 22% NDP!

Looking at demographics, Toronto Centre should actually be much more winnable for the NDP than University-Rosedale since it is all poor inner city, while U-R now includes all of Rosedale.

Anyways just my two cents worth

[DL]

I'm sure the NDP is quite happy to have the debate over whether Trudeau is losing or just neck and neck with the NDP in his own riding just go on and on...replete with duelling polls!

[DL]

If we're to rely on the current Nanos tracking poll as a foretelling of anything--Lib 30.8 (-0.2), Con 30.4 (+1.3), NDP 28.9 (2.4)--then Mulcair's the big loser of the debate.  But I won't come to such conclusions now.

The debate would have nothing to do with that. Because the Globe debate was only carried on Youtube and on the Parliamentary channel - it is estimated that it was watched by a grand total of 60,000 people (that is far less than 1% of the electorate!)

[DL]

PS. While most Canadians did not view debate, numerous clips were played over and over and over again on the various news networks across Canada. And print media carried considerable coverage as well.

Except that most of the analysis and commentary after the debate was that Trudeau bombed and looked like a high school debater and that Mulcair did very well. So anyone who did not actually see the debate and just followed the coverage of it would be left with that impression.

[DL]

In which the Toronto Star doesn't get that the polling swings have all been within the margin of error.

Seriously, the Tories were at 30% on day one. They are at 30% now. There is no massive comeback going on.

Yeah, right from the start it has always been a possibility that the Conservatives would win a plurality of seats...Hepburn (who deserves a golden turkey award for being the Star's most consistently stupid and useless columnist) acts like he just woke up to that fact today. Its not as if the Tories were in single digits and given up for dead up until a week ago - at worst they were a couple of points behind.

Of course Hepburn doesnt bother to mention that unless the Tories get a majority, its still almost impossible for them to form a government.

[DL]

Once again, Ipsos the outlier. Nanos and Forum have Tories ahead nationally and in Ontario.

Nanos essentially has a three way dead heat

[DL]

I've heard the exact opposite form other pollsters...most see a Tory resurgence in Ontario and the Liberals falling behind

[DL]

The Hassidim are not some tiny sect. There are large communities of them in Montreal and Toronto and in Israel they are quite a vast population and the ultra-orthodox run several political party such as Shas etc... and its a fact that women are treated like sh**t in those ultra-orthodox communities. They are forced to shave their heads and wear wigs, they are not allowed to interact with any men who aren't close relatives, they are not allowed to work or set foot outside the community, in divorce courts the man's word has 100% of the weight and the woman's has zero. These are the people who make everyone switch seats on planes because God forbid that an ultra-orthodox man might have to breathe the same air as a woman!

There are extremist sects in Islam that treat women like sh**t and there are also extremist sects in Judaism (and in just about every other religion) that treat women like sh**t. Tell me something i didn't already know.

[DL]

"Hasidim" in general are not "some tiny sect", but Hasidim don't all follow the same leader. They are divided in various Hasidic groups - some of them extremely large, some of them extremely small, and then everything between those two extremes. These various Hasidic groups follow various leaders, have different customs etc.

Yeah and so what, the same could be said of Islam which also has countless sects and that don't all follow the same leader and that have different customs - yet that doesnt stop people from stereotyping all of Islam as being backward and barbaric etc...the candidate in question was making a perfectly valid point - namely that within every religion there are extremist sects that are very oppressive towards women and sexual minorities, and that just like Islam has Taliban, there are extreme sects of ultra-orthodox Judaism that are also quite barbaric. What's the big deal? Its true!

[DL]

Mount Royal
50-27-16-7

Isn't this the most Jewish riding? I thought most Canadian Jews were Conservative?
[/quote]

Keep in mind that while Mount Royal is the second most heavily Jewish riding in Canada - it is still only 30% Jewish and the other 70% of the riding are much like the rest of west Montreal a mix of anglophone and allophones and francophones all united by an intense hatred of the Conservative party!

Most polls have the Conservatives in single digits in Montreal - so in Mount Royal - even if the Conservative candidate did well and lets' be very generous and say that he gets two-thirds of the Jewish vote and the Liberal gets one-third (I doubt if that will happen but hear me out) - that means the Tory gets 20% of all votes and the Liberal gets 10% - but then among the other 70% - you will likely see the Tory get about 10% (7%) and the NDP say 20% (14%) and the other 70% would likely go Liberal (49%). Add it all up and you get Liberal 59%, Conservative 27%.

What I actually expect in Mount Royal is that the Jewish vote will more or less split down the middle and the Liberals will beat the Conservatives among non-Jews by about a 6 to 1 margin and win the riding very easily

 

[DL]

whereas these tiny Jewish sects might be radical toward its members, but they don't want to influence the lifestyle of others.

Except that I'm always reading about how in Israel these orthodox fanatics are always stoning people who drive on Saturdays and they have attacked people taking part in gay pride marches and they are constantly lobbying to ban the sale of pork and ban people from driving on the sabbath and banning non-religious marriage etc...There is a huge split in Israeli society between the secular majority and these religious freaks - and its never because anyone is trying to force the "haredim" to live a secular lifestyle. Its always because the haredim keep trying to impose their medieval form on Judaism on the whole country.