Canada 2008: Official Thread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually, no. Bad data is worse, far worse, than no data.

[Hash]

Some good NDP numbers in Quebec, not so good in Ontario so far

I hope you're not basing the first part of your sentence on the EKOS "poll".

[cinyc]

Actually, no. Bad data is worse, far worse, than no data.

Even bad data is usually good for watching trends, as long as the polling method is consistent.  

The polling methodology here may not be if they don't poll a set number from each of the ridings, though.  Poll more in a Liberal-NDP battleground, and their numbers temporarily go up while the Conservatives fall.  Poll more in a Torie-Liberal battleground, and the NDP falls.  Seems more open to manipulation than your typical nationwide or provincewide poll.

[Hatman 🍁]

Some good NDP numbers in Quebec, not so good in Ontario so far

I hope you're not basing the first part of your sentence on the EKOS "poll".

hey now, don't dis Ekos! As I mentioned, the poll numbers our from our "EKOS panel", which is mostly online, and we all know how bad online polls are.

Historically, EKOS hasn't been a very bad pollster, so that's something to keep in mind. SES is the best (now called NANOS research or something like that)

[Hatman 🍁]

On an interesting sidenote,

http://www.ekoselection.com/index.php/2008/09/even-tories-love-obama/

Among Conservatives:

Obama 48%
McCain 33%

Among NDPers

Obama 80%
McCain 7% (lol!)

Among the liebrals
Obama 82
McCain 8

Among the "Greens"
Obama 67
McCain 12

[Hash]

which is mostly online

Oh dear God.

[Verily]

Another new poll, this one from "Segma" (never heard of them):

Con: 43
Lib: 25
NDP: 15
BQ: 8
Green: 7

Must be a Quebec polling firm because the poll release is all in French. They do agree with EKOS that the NDP's best region is the Maritimes, although they have the NDP third there.

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/assets/pdf/CP204198.PDF


Obama leads by a wide margin in all states provinces

[cinyc]

Another new poll, this one from "Segma" (never heard of them):

Con: 43
Lib: 25
NDP: 15
BQ: 8
Green: 7

Must be a Quebec polling firm because the poll release is all in French. They do agree with EKOS that the NDP's best region is the Maritimes, although they have the NDP third there.

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/assets/pdf/CP204198.PDF


Obama leads by a wide margin in all states provinces

Segma UniMarketing is definitely a Quebec polling firm.  I don't remember them doing polls in 2006.  Nodice has April and January 2008 Segma UniMarketing polls in their database.

[Hash]

Another new poll, this one from "Segma" (never heard of them):

Con: 43
Lib: 25
NDP: 15
BQ: 8
Green: 7

Not buying that either.

A lot of their regional numbers are also very fishy (Conservatives at 51% in BC?, Tories tied with Liberals in Montreal?, Liberals ahead by 4 in the GTA area?). Some poll questions are also lol-worthy.

[cinyc]

hey now, don't dis Ekos! As I mentioned, the poll numbers our from our "EKOS panel", which is mostly online, and we all know how bad online polls are.

Historically, EKOS hasn't been a very bad pollster, so that's something to keep in mind. SES is the best (now called NANOS research or something like that)

According to a big banner on CPAC's website, Nanos (nee SES Research) starts releasing its poll numbers on Thursday at 2PM Eastern.  It sounds like it's going to be a daily poll (which is what I remember happening at least in the last two weeks of the 2006 race).

[Cubby]

http://predictor.hillandknowlton.ca/predictor/

Hill and Knowlton's Election Predictor is finally back up. It lets you test potential outcomes by entering swings from the last election between parties or by what percent they get in the polls. Its entertaining, if not always helpful. It doesn't take into account the candidates who are running, just the numeric change from last time.

I entered the results from the Harris-Decima Poll (from the main Wikipedia article on the Election) it was taken yesterday:

Con.   36%
Lib.     28%
NDP    15%
Bloc      9%
Green   9%

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hZuJofcVZ-TXNgJc2erR6MNXQ6cg

To get the numbers to round to 100%, I added 1 percentage point to "other" and 2 points to the Liberals b/c IIRC, some NDP voters chicken out at the last minute and vote Liberal. With these numbers, the results are:  (change from 2006)

Conservative       129 Seats  (+3)
Liberals               107 Seats   (+6)
NDP                     25 Seats    (-5)
Bloc Quebecois    46 Seats    (-4)
Other                   1 Seat
Greens                 0 Seats

Another Minority Government. The ridings that would change are:

Bloc to Liberal: Papineau, Brossard-La Prairie, Ahuntsic
Bloc to Tories: St. Hyacinthe-Bagot

NDP to Liberal: Parkdale-High Park, Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, London-Fanshawe, Burnaby-Douglas
NDP to Tory: Vancouver Island North
Liberal to Tory: Vancouver-Quadra

[Hash]

hey now, don't dis Ekos! As I mentioned, the poll numbers our from our "EKOS panel", which is mostly online, and we all know how bad online polls are.

Historically, EKOS hasn't been a very bad pollster, so that's something to keep in mind. SES is the best (now called NANOS research or something like that)

According to a big banner on CPAC's website, Nanos (nee SES Research) starts releasing its poll numbers on Thursday at 2PM Eastern.  It sounds like it's going to be a daily poll (which is what I remember happening at least in the last two weeks of the 2006 race).

Good. Only Nanos will do for me.

Good to see the predictor back. But take a sh**tload of salt when applying it. As Pym said, it doesn't take into account candidates (for example the Green-Lib deals in 2 ridings, Bill Casey's riding, Blair Wilson, ridings with or without star candidates) and electoral trends (Newfoundland).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Which two ridings do they have a deal [qm]

[Hash]

Which two ridings do they have a deal [qm]

Central Nova and Saint-Laurent-Cartierville. In the former, no Liberal candidate is opposing May. In Dion's riding, there's no Greenie.

[cinyc]

Which two ridings do they have a deal [qm]

Central Nova and Saint-Laurent-Cartierville. In the former, no Liberal candidate is opposing May. In Dion's riding, there's no Greenie.

I also read somewhere that the Tories aren't running a candidate against Independent Andre Arthur in Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.  They don't want to risk splitting the federalist vote, or so the story goes.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I was about to say that Arthur is basically a Tory anyway, until I remembered that he isn't. He's a fascist. But he's mining the same rich seam of Duplessisism that the Quebec Tories (and ADQ in another setting) are, so...

[Verily]

Which two ridings do they have a deal [qm]

Central Nova and Saint-Laurent-Cartierville. In the former, no Liberal candidate is opposing May. In Dion's riding, there's no Greenie.

I also read somewhere that the Tories aren't running a candidate against Independent Andre Arthur in Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.  They don't want to risk splitting the federalist vote, or so the story goes.

The Greens are also, as mentioned earlier, not running a candidate against Bill Casey (basically so May can hammer MacKay on the Atlantic Accord).

[Dan the Roman]

Which two ridings do they have a deal [qm]

Central Nova and Saint-Laurent-Cartierville. In the former, no Liberal candidate is opposing May. In Dion's riding, there's no Greenie.

I also read somewhere that the Tories aren't running a candidate against Independent Andre Arthur in Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.  They don't want to risk splitting the federalist vote, or so the story goes.

The Greens are also, as mentioned earlier, not running a candidate against Bill Casey (basically so May can hammer MacKay on the Atlantic Accord).

I have a hunch that May will disappoint. She strikes me as a bad match for Maritime Liberals. While the current climate is toxic for any Tory there, as an outsider she is singularly poorly placed to exploit it. I would not be shocked if the NDP was actually much more of a threat to MacKay than she was.

[Hash]

Which two ridings do they have a deal [qm]

Central Nova and Saint-Laurent-Cartierville. In the former, no Liberal candidate is opposing May. In Dion's riding, there's no Greenie.

I also read somewhere that the Tories aren't running a candidate against Independent Andre Arthur in Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.  They don't want to risk splitting the federalist vote, or so the story goes.

Arthur is a crazy fascist-lite Tory.

[Хahar 🤔]

Results of said poll in map form:



LOL.

They should team up with ARG and Zogby for Zogby-ARG-EKOS super-polls!

That'd be great.
Clearly, the Liberals need a Trudeau.

Even a Chrétien would work wonders.

Or we can just use a hammer in the right place to paralyze half Dion's face.

[Verily]

Which two ridings do they have a deal [qm]

Central Nova and Saint-Laurent-Cartierville. In the former, no Liberal candidate is opposing May. In Dion's riding, there's no Greenie.

I also read somewhere that the Tories aren't running a candidate against Independent Andre Arthur in Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.  They don't want to risk splitting the federalist vote, or so the story goes.

The Greens are also, as mentioned earlier, not running a candidate against Bill Casey (basically so May can hammer MacKay on the Atlantic Accord).

I have a hunch that May will disappoint. She strikes me as a bad match for Maritime Liberals. While the current climate is toxic for any Tory there, as an outsider she is singularly poorly placed to exploit it. I would not be shocked if the NDP was actually much more of a threat to MacKay than she was.

Had they run Alexis MacDonald again, yes, but Alexis MacDonald was needed to take over in Halifax. (If the NDP hadn't scrounged up a strong candidate, they might well have lost Halifax to the Liberals.) I do think May will come up short, but she'll get a strong second place. And she wouldn't surprise me if she won, either, if only because of the discontent in the Maritimes.

[Hash]

I'm not predicting a May victory right now. But she'll get very close, and like Verily, I wouldn't fall off my chair if she won.

It will also be interesting to compare the result in BGOS with the 2007 result there.

[Verily]

I'm not predicting a May victory right now. But she'll get very close, and like Verily, I wouldn't fall off my chair if she won.

It will also be interesting to compare the result in BGOS with the 2007 result there.

They're not really comparable; BGOS was a very safe PC seat, so the Greens needed to take a lot of votes directly from the PCs. Not so in Central Nova; May needs some switchers from MacKay, but mostly she needs to squeeze down the NDP and win over the Liberals.

Speaking of which, is Jolley running in the federal election? He did last time, and BGOS was the Greens' strongest result in 2006.

[Hash]

I'm not predicting a May victory right now. But she'll get very close, and like Verily, I wouldn't fall off my chair if she won.

It will also be interesting to compare the result in BGOS with the 2007 result there.

They're not really comparable; BGOS was a very safe PC seat, so the Greens needed to take a lot of votes directly from the PCs. Not so in Central Nova; May needs some switchers from MacKay, but mostly she needs to squeeze down the NDP and win over the Liberals.

Oh, I certainly wasn't pointing out BGOS as a Green pickup opportunity like Central Nova. I was just saying that it will be interesting to see how high the Greenie vote is there compared to '07.

[Verily]

I'm not predicting a May victory right now. But she'll get very close, and like Verily, I wouldn't fall off my chair if she won.

It will also be interesting to compare the result in BGOS with the 2007 result there.

They're not really comparable; BGOS was a very safe PC seat, so the Greens needed to take a lot of votes directly from the PCs. Not so in Central Nova; May needs some switchers from MacKay, but mostly she needs to squeeze down the NDP and win over the Liberals.

Oh, I certainly wasn't pointing out BGOS as a Green pickup opportunity like Central Nova. I was just saying that it will be interesting to see how high the Greenie vote is there compared to '07.

I thought you were more looking at the swings, actually, not the pick-up chances. But I agree that Central Nova is much more likely than BGOS was--if only because the Greens now have a fairly substantial body of evidence to present to voters that they are a credible party, and a lot of that evidence was the 2007 Ontario election.