Canadian Election 2019

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Speaking of today's Nanos it has the Greens (!) second in Atlantic Canada (granted, a very distant second, but still).

If that were the case, then forget CPC takebacks in NB et al  (Speaking of which, how well's PPC doing out there?)

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Given the close calls in York Region last time (and 50%+ PC vote there provincially last year) what's the likelihood it'll be blue while the rest of the 905 GTA stays mostly red?

Possible, but I think Durham region will be almost as competitive.  Halton region could too, but hard to say as more your traditional fiscal conservatives who would be turned off by Ford but were okay with Harper.  Peel region will likely be the Tory's weakest and wouldn't be surprised if Liberals sweep this again.

Keep in mind, though, w/Durham Region, the best PC result there last year was lower than the worst PC result in York Region.

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Today's Nanos is bizarre: Libs dipped from 34.4 to 32.6, Cons up from 33.7 to 34.1, NDP down from 15 to 14.4, Bloc from 4.4 to 3.8, PPC 1.8 to 1.3--and Greens up from 10.5 to 13.2!!!

That made no sense to me, until I realized that it was a likely response to yesterday's Global Climate Strike protests.  So if this blip subsides, don't say I didn't warn you.

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What I find interesting here is: has there ever been a tracking poll that's been so blatantly, and presumably momentarily and deceptively, swayed by something so electorally external as the climate protests?  It's like this reflects less of a voting-preference dynamic than a search-engine/likes/shares/retweets dynamic...

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Plus, a somewhat related question: why is Beauce so right-wing and federalist, despite being lily-white Franco? Is Maurice Duplessis still alive there?

It's sort of an entrepreneurial heartland for Quebec--somethimg to which Bernier-style economic libertarianism has long been suited.  (I think the old saw was something like Beauce being "Quebec's Alberta".)

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Every afternoon, Nanos publishes their three-day tracking poll of 'Preferred Prime Minster'.

In the past five days, Justin Trudeau's numbers have dropped from:

34.5%  -->  33.1%  -->  32.4%  -->  29.6%  -->  28.3%

It seems the cause is mostly young voters. Could be the climate day and young voters turning to more serious parties on this issue.
https://election.ctvnews.ca/the-greta-effect-nanos-survey-suggests-young-voters-turning-on-trudeau-1.4616701

And today, Scheer's jumped ahead of Trudeau (the latter static, the former 28.9)

And it's leaving more of an impact on party preferences: today's Nanos has the Cons up by half a point, the Libs down by half a point--which looks more dramatic rounded-off, as it turns a 34-33 race into a 35-32 race (in fact, it's 34.5 vs 32.2).

And with the "Greta bump" now in past tense when it comes to 3-day tracking, the Greens have fallen from 12.6 to 11.1.  (And the NDP back up from 13.2 to 14.3.)

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Further post-Greta attrition for Greens thru Nanos (11.1 to 10.2; shifted to NDP 14.3 to 15.2); Libs jump 2 points back into the lead--and Justin 4 points back into the leadership-preference lead...

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Conservatives drop Heather Leung in Burnaby North-Seymour.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/heather-leung-campaign-media-strategy-1.5308429

Robinson didn't want the Conservatives to keep her. Now that she is out, doesn't it make it even harder for him to win. Unless it's a place where there are more CPC-NDP swingers than CPC-Lib swinger, it seems harder to win for him than in a 3 or 4 way race.

What doesn't help is that the Seymour part is spillover from North Van, where the Libs more than doubled the Con incumbent and got their second-best BC share in '15.

*Perhaps* Svend might now be banking more on an ironic retro-Reform "anti-Justin-elite" sentiment?

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Conservatives = 337 candidates

Unless the law changed, she is still on the ballot as a Conservative, no?

Much like Jagdish Grewal in Mississauga-Malton in 2015.  (Who still got 26.44% as a "non-Con" Con.)

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Mainstreet riding poll for Longueuil-Saint-Hubert, done September 29. The main contenders are current/former sovereigntists.

Réjean Hébert, LPC 35
Denis Trudel BQ 28
Pierre Nantel Green 17 (outgoing NDP MP)
Patrick Clune CPC 9
Eric Ferland NPD 5
Ellen Comeau PPC 3

https://www.latribune.ca/actualites/elections-2019/rejean-hebert-en-avance-dans-longueil-saint-hubert-selon-mainstreet-102a75136ee8f5906d6f209164076898

Keep in mind that Sept 29 was the day of the climate strike with Greta Thunberg in Montreal and polling nationally seemed to have given the Greens a momentary "sugar high" for a couple of days...they have dropped a lot since. If Nantel was at 17% on Sept 29. He is probably at 10% by today

Good point. But he is incumbent MP, can get NDP votes, sovereignist vote, Green vote. One of the few known Green candidate so he should do better than generic Green I imagine.

Agreed; whatever the fate of the Greens at large, he's probably got a bit of a "Bruce Hyer bump" going for him.

Though that low number for Clune, who's been a perennial "viable" (knock on wood) CPC contender on the South Shore, doesn't bode well for Team Scheer in Quebec.

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Also re Singh: Lester Pearson wasn't out after the Diefenbaker landslide in 1958.

Or for that matter, Gary Doer wasn't out after the Manitoba NDP was decimated in 1988.

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And the Nanos tracker is showing the Libs back in front after a one-day blip beneath the Cons--and the NDP *down* a tenth of a point!  Whither the anticipated "Jagmeet bump"?

Though one other thing I'm wondering about in the post-debate Jagmeetmania: how much of this is among *younger* voters, who are traditionally hard to poll and hard to convince to vote?  For all we know, we might see a polling-booth Jagmeet spurt at the expense of *nobody*, but simply through raw numbers of young voters who might otherwise not have voted.

(And the ghost of this was already apparent in pre-election polls, where for all his doldrums, Jagmeet had a way of overperforming among the younger-cohort set that even the Greens didn't)

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Keep in mind that Mainstreet is based on a three-day roll - so only one third of their sample from the poll referred to above is post-debate

The simple fact of the NDP approaching mid-teens in a Mainstreet poll is telling enough.  Guess the days of Audrey single-digit numbers and 4th behind the Greens are well and over...

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Strategic voting has *always* happened; it's just that in this age of social media, people speak of it as if it were a new invention (oh!  gee whiz,I gotta vote strategically).  It's why the NDP has *always* been the third party, much like the Libs/Lib Dems in Britain since their "strange death".

Oh, and Nanos is continuing to show Singhmania underperforming when it comes to voter intent: in today's tracker, only up to 14.1 from 13.4--but the Libs and Cons separated 36.9-33.2.  (But Singh's approvals up from 10.9 to 12.3.)

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Strategic voting has *always* happened; it's just that in this age of social media, people speak of it as if it were a new invention (oh!  gee whiz,I gotta vote strategically).  It's why the NDP has *always* been the third party, much like the Libs/Lib Dems in Britain since their "strange death".

The one exception of an election actually proving the rule - the moment it became clear in 2011 that the NDP were in the stronger position, all of that logic turned on its head and flowed the other way. A salutary reminder that most voters make a calculation based on the options presented to them, rather than use the ballot as a means of expressing fundamental identity. Less and less do that, in nearly all countries, with every passing year.

Not to mention Ontario last year (where, if we're going by current polling, *might* also be a single-term phenomenon)

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If I was an American, I would be voting for Biden over Trump if it came down to it, even if Bernie was hypoethetically  running third party but also in this scenario had no path to actually winning the presidency. Sometimes the stakes are just too high to not be tactical and practical IMO.

Though there, we're talking about a winner-take-all situation rather than Canada's parliamentary-constituency circumstance.  Thus, a lot of these Davenport-type races are more akin to AOC vs Joe Crowley than Biden vs Trump.

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So, you think Scheer is scarier than Harper?

A lot of progressives voted Liberal in 2015 to give the boot to Harper, but you didn't.

I don't think Scheer is worse than Harper. Perhaps he is "just as bad", but not worse.

However, unlike 2015, it's a President Trump (and in Ontario, a Premier Ford) era.  Which to progressives, has a way of "scarifying" Scheer by proxy.

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Incidentally, sort of like the Family Guy ipecac waiting to kick in, some real polling progress on the NDP front's finally happening--they hit 20% on DART/Maru (with Con-Lib 33-28--but that's versus the previous poll's 37-30).  And the Mainstreet (Mainstreet!) tracker's gone 13.2-14.3-15.1-16.6, with ConLib 31.7 (down from 33.1) vs 28.9 (down from 32.6).

And Nanos, traditionally good for the NDP but lately sluggish even after the debate: in today's tracker, they went up from 15.3 to 18.1!  Wonder what that last-day sample showed.  (Libs still ahead, but down to 33.2 from 35.4; Cons down from 33.2 to 32.1.  Bloc up from 5.3 to 5.9.)

Weird things are happening.

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Now NDP up another 1.6, to 19.7, on the Nanos tracker.  And Libs down from 33.2 to 31.5 (Cons up 32.1-32.3; Bloc 5.9-6.2).

Over a series of four polls, the Libs have plummeted from 36.9, the NDP soared from 14.1.  (Cons down a point, Green and Bloc both up a point).

Is it too soon to say, Liberal free fall?  (And the Cons are only treading water, really)

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I wonder if the NDP can sustain their growth beyond a solid 20% this election..

I think we'll see whether the poor NDP organization before the campaign started in terms of lack of fundraising and slowness in nominating candidates will end up hurting them. 

This morning's Nanos shows mild portent of such a glass-ceiling "sobering up"; the NDP back down from 19.7 to 19.2, the Libs back ahead at 32.3 from 31.5 (the Cons from 32.3 to 32.1, the Bloc and Greens down and up respectively by .3).  Also wonder how much of that is a Justin-security-threat "sympathy bump"; but still, it's a sign that the Liberal free-fall isn't necessarily infinite...

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Voted Tory in the advance poll yesterday.

I toyed with voting People's or spoiling my ballot, but my ultimately decided that Scheer and my local candidate were better fits for my views.

You didn't wait until election day? Don't you want to see your vote contribute to the maps?

What I'm finding from my social-media feed is that an *awful* lot of people are "selfie voting" in advance--sort of like a forthright declaration of a commitment to exercise their franchise, the earlier the better; and in a way that implicitly encourages others to follow suit.  And reports are that advance turnout's up 25% from last time, which I think is all about advance turnout, rather than turnout in general.  (And the phenomenon seems particularly common among the "fashionably left"; thus, some of last year's Ontario NDP landslides were even *more* landslidish in the advance polls.)

Which, of course, is hell to those of us who use the polling-map barometer--almost as if good old-fashioned voting on Election Day is becoming a Luddite anachronism a la land lines and print newspapers...

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Voted Tory in the advance poll yesterday.

I toyed with voting People's or spoiling my ballot, but my ultimately decided that Scheer and my local candidate were better fits for my views.

You didn't wait until election day? Don't you want to see your vote contribute to the maps?

What I'm finding from my social-media feed is that an *awful* lot of people are "selfie voting" in advance--sort of like a forthright declaration of a commitment to exercise their franchise, the earlier the better; and in a way that implicitly encourages others to follow suit.  And reports are that advance turnout's up 25% from last time, which I think is all about advance turnout, rather than turnout in general.  (And the phenomenon seems particularly common among the "fashionably left"; thus, some of last year's Ontario NDP landslides were even *more* landslidish in the advance polls.)

Which, of course, is hell to those of us who use the polling-map barometer--almost as if good old-fashioned voting on Election Day is becoming a Luddite anachronism a la land lines and print newspapers...

It's almost like you are trying to convince people that this is a bad thing?  Good on those people for voting early and sharing it.

Within the context of this forum, it is from a political-science and just general election-map-geekery POV.  That is, advance polls don't show up on maps like this (Toronto, 2011)



By voting in advance, voters forfeit a role in creating a fine-grained "electoral psychogeography".  Or, the advance-voting phenomenon is the electoral equivalent of opting for the Interstate as if the Route 66 alternatives out there didn't exist.

Btw/this and Ontario opting for "megapolls" last year (i.e. ridings which once might have had 150-200 polling subdivisions being reduced to as little as 20-25), it'd seem as if dumbing-down the electoral map is all the rage...

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Agreed, but not people voting in advance polls' fault.  That's all.  The impression I got from the post was kind of like a "Who are they to think they should be voting in advance polls" nonsense.  I'm happy people are sharing they are voting, and encouraging others to do the same, even if it means fewer maps / less accurate maps.

Though keep in mind, too, how fewer/less accurate maps also does a disservice to future electioneering/canvassing by providing an ambiguous impression of ground-level conditions.

And yes, it's good that more people are voting.  But this phenomenon of advance voting stealing the electoral oxygen is actually quite new and yet ill-pinpointed; and yes, in many ways truly a double-edged-sword product (even if higher-operating) of a viral-social-media "selfie age".  Sort of like those towns and places and sunflower and lavender fields that open their arms to the selfie crowd, only to be overrun by the same; and said selfie crowd so eager to play follow-the-leader that they develop little incentive to dig deeper than the perfect selfie.  In this case, the "digging deeper" means that no, you don't *have* to vote in advance; it doesn't make you any less of a citizen; and you don't have to follow-the-leader in that respect.  And at this rate, it might actually be no less crowded on e-day--I've heard of people surprised by advance-polling lineups.

So, psephologically speaking, it's a real unexpected-consequence circumstance that's yet to be fully absorbed--who knows if we might have ridings this time where over half the vote is cast in advance.  And really--for the sake of this forum or for geographic political science in general, that's not good...

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PEI regularly has more than 50% vote in advance polls. It's gotten to the point where a party will win every poll on election day, but still lose the riding.

The discrepancies between election day voting and advance voting also has implications when you watch the ballots come in on TV.  People may go to bed thinking X party did terrible, and not really think about the election again - when in reality said party may have done quite well thanks to later counted advance votes.

Good point about PEI--that, plus the modest size of the ridings, can render poll-by-poll maps there rather misleading.

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It isn't something that one could ever prove, but there might be practical - governance, discourse - implications to less and less detailed information like that. I do sometimes wonder if some of the more bizarre and inexplicably stupid political blunderings seen in this country over the past decade might have been... if not averted then maybe lessened... if our politicians actually knew who was voting for them. Uniquely, of course, they have no real idea at all.

And then there's the possibly deliberate obfuscations of "megapolling" of the sort Ontario instituted in 2018 (and Toronto after megacity)--the bigger the polling subdivision, the more inscrutable the ground conditions.

Which sort of befits the election which gave us Premier Doug Ford--big, dumb, galoomphing polling subdivisions where you *really* have to read between the lines to figure out deeper patterns.  Almost like it was designed to confound political forces with a more ground-level grassroots approach to electioneering.  (And with "technology" as an excuse, i.e. newfangled electronic balloting systems allowing one to rationalize away all that complicated stuff.  It's almost as if these dweebs aim to ultimately do away with polling subdivisions altogether.)