2017 Nova Scotia election (May 30)

[DL]

Today's CRA poll:

Liberal: 42%
Tory: 28%
NDP: 26%

Now it looks like it will be a race for who will be official opposition. Considering that the PC leader has already led his party through an election and has been leader of the opposition for the last four years...I'm surprised that the PCs are this close to falling back into third place behind the NDP led by a neophyte like Burrell

[Hatman 🍁]

Today's CRA poll:

Liberal: 42%
Tory: 28%
NDP: 26%

Now it looks like it will be a race for who will be official opposition. Considering that the PC leader has already led his party through an election and has been leader of the opposition for the last four years...I'm surprised that the PCs are this close to falling back into third place behind the NDP led by a neophyte like Burrell

Remember, last election the NDP actually finished 2nd in the popular vote, but third in seat totals, so those numbers aren't that promising.

[MAINEiac4434]

Prediction: the Liberals form government again, with the Tories as official opposition. The NDP is almost level with the Tories on raw votes, but FPTP screws them over and they end up with like four seats.

[DC Al Fine]

That's the problem for the NDP. Large swathes of Halifax and parts of industrial Cape Breton are total dead zones for the Tories. The NDP's main competition in competitive seats is the Liberals. This was helpful for them in the 2000's but they're getting screwed by it now.

[DC Al Fine]

And my wife has just told me it's time to take her to the hospital to have the baby. Have fun watching the debate guys.

[136or142]

Prediction: the Liberals form government again, with the Tories as official opposition. The NDP is almost level with the Tories on raw votes, but FPTP screws them over and they end up with like four seats.

The NDP's 26% in this election (if that's what they end up with) would almost certainly be much more concentrated than the 26% they received in the last election.  There are people here who know Nova Scotia better than I do, but I'd guess the NDP support will be mostly concentrated in Central Halifax, Dartmouth/Cole Harbour and maybe Pictou County/Central Nova.

[MAINEiac4434]

And my wife has just told me it's time to take her to the hospital to have the baby. Have fun watching the debate guys.

Congratulations! Name the baby "Jack Layton." No matter the gender.

[lilTommy]

Prediction: the Liberals form government again, with the Tories as official opposition. The NDP is almost level with the Tories on raw votes, but FPTP screws them over and they end up with like four seats.

The NDP's 26% in this election (if that's what they end up with) would almost certainly be much more concentrated than the 26% they received in the last election.  There are people here who know Nova Scotia better than I do, but I'd guess the NDP support will be mostly concentrated in Central Halifax, Dartmouth/Cole Harbour and maybe Pictou County/Central Nova.

That sounds right, polling needs to be specific to HRM and the rest, because the last poll listed here which had the HRM polled had the NDP over 30% and the Liberals at 39%... but if you compare that with the 2013 HRM results which were NDP 31% Liberals 48%, Liberals are going to lose seats. The PCs vote is up 10 points which will swing a handful of seats to the NDP, even the PCs could steal 1 or 2 if their vote is concentrated enough.

[Hatman 🍁]

And my wife has just told me it's time to take her to the hospital to have the baby. Have fun watching the debate guys.

Congrats.

If you're looking for good Tory names, may I suggest:

(girls)
Reagan
Margaret
Ronalee
Kim
Elizabeth

(boys)
Stephen
Ronald
Donald
George
David (Jr?)

[Zanas]

And my wife has just told me it's time to take her to the hospital to have the baby. Have fun watching the debate guys.

Congrats, Phil!

[DL]

A brand new poll by Forum Research suggests it's very close:

Liberals 37%
PCs 35%
NDP 25%

And they have Halifax a three way dead heat!

[adma]

And my wife has just told me it's time to take her to the hospital to have the baby. Have fun watching the debate guys.

Congrats.

If you're looking for good Tory names, may I suggest:

(girls)
Reagan
Margaret
Ronalee
Kim
Elizabeth

(boys)
Stephen
Ronald
Donald
George
David (Jr?)

In terms of Nova Scotia, Elmer?

[136or142]

A brand new poll by Forum Research suggests it's very close:

Liberals 37%
PCs 35%
NDP 25%

And they have Halifax a three way dead heat!

Forum polls are junk polls.

[the506]

Forum has the Greens at 6% in Cape Breton, where they're only on the ballot in 1 riding.

Junk.

[DL]

People dismissed Forum as "junk polls" in BC...but their final poll there was almost exactly what the election results were.

Meanwhile CRA today is also suddenly showing the Liberals losing ground:

Libs - 39% (down from 43% just a few days ago)
PC - 31%
NDP - 27%

[Hatman 🍁]

Forum's riding polls are junk, but not necessarily their provincial polls (though, they are often suspect). JP's concern over the Green crosstabs in Cape Breton being one example of this - though I doubt very many polling companies would geocode their questions so that only ridings that are running Green candidates would have that option listed.

[DL]

Actually it seems like everyone's riding polls are "junk" these days. Both Mainstreet and did a bunch of riding polls at the every end of the BC election and just about every single one of them was wildly off.

[Hatman 🍁]

Actually it seems like everyone's riding polls are "junk" these days. Both Mainstreet and did a bunch of riding polls at the every end of the BC election and just about every single one of them was wildly off.

Mainstreet's have always been junk too. Nothing new there.

Riding polls are very hard to get right for a number of reasons.

[DL]

Today's CRA tracking poll includes a little bit of post-debate data

Liberals 39
PCs 31
NDP 28 (+1)

Interesting movement on "best premier"... over the last few days Gary Burrell has inched up from 18% to 22% and is now tied with Baillie. That could presage the NDP eclipsing the PCs in the battle for second place.

[DC Al Fine]

A brand new poll by Forum Research suggests it's very close:

Liberals 37%
PCs 35%
NDP 25%

And they have Halifax a three way dead heat!

Forum polls are junk polls.

They can't even get the names of the cross tab regions right. They included the Annapolis Valley as part of 'South Shore', which is like calling Ottawa part of Northern Ontario, and they also called the rural northern mainland of the province 'North End' which is a neighborhood in Halifax.

Baby is a healthy little girl. No Tory name I'm afraid.

[Hatman 🍁]

A brand new poll by Forum Research suggests it's very close:

Liberals 37%
PCs 35%
NDP 25%

And they have Halifax a three way dead heat!

Forum polls are junk polls.

They can't even get the names of the cross tab regions right. They included the Annapolis Valley as part of 'South Shore', which is like calling Ottawa part of Northern Ontario, and they also called the rural northern mainland of the province 'North End' which is a neighborhood in Halifax.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Ottawa grouped with Northern Ontario before 🤢

I think with provincial crosstabs, you have no choice to put the south shore and Annapolis Valley together, but you shouldn't call it just the south shore.

[DL]

If ,Forum named those two regions "south west" and "north central" you'd get no objection from me

[DC Al Fine]

Earl & DL:

Agreed. I get that Nova Scotia is really small and that it would be ridiculous to poll every tiny region, but the way Forum went about it was just so half assed. Even posting a Cape Breton crosstab is a bit much. The entire island is only marginally bigger than a suburban GTA riding.

[DC Al Fine]

Rolling CRA poll shows things stabilizing.

Liberal: 42%
Tory: 31%
NDP: 24%

I've been running the polls through a couple models, and I have a couple of thoughts

1) The Tories are pretty stable. They'll likely pick up a few rural seats and maybe one or two of Halifax's outer suburbs, but you don't start seeing big changes in their seat count until they start tying the Liberals.

2) The NDP is the opposite. A swing of a few points could mean the difference between very good and very bad. They have very few rural incumbents, and a lot of their Halifax seats were close. By the same token, if McNeil falters, they could go from 2-3 seats in Halifax to a dozen very quickly.

3) I think a uniform or proportionate swing model may not do a good job of representing Tory health in Halifax. My models have the Tories getting solid results in total dead zones for them (e.g Cole Harbour, Dartmouth North). They didn't do that well in those seats in 2003 and 2006 when they had similar results in Halifax. The swing to the Tories might disproportionately be in upper income neighbourhoods of the city (e.g. Clayton Park West, Bedford, Halifax Citadel), which might mean an extra seat or two for them in Halifax.

Thoughts?

[Hatman 🍁]

That's a 4 point drop in one night for the NDP! What's going on? Perhaps one good night of polling being knocked off and replaced by a lousy long weekend Saturday sample?