Wednesday, April 29, 2009

New poll - Quebec

A new CTV poll http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090429/quebec_poll_090429/20090429?hub=Canada shows us some results for Quebec, but Quebec alone (at the federal level). We will try to find the official results to see if there are national breakdowns. According to CROP, the Liberals have a huge lead in the province.

Lib - 37
BQ - 31
CPC - 15
NDP - 12

We have doubts about this poll as the Bloc has been steady at near 40% in the province for quite a while and this would represent a significant change. Until we get more information, we will not be adding this to the matrix.

BC 2009

Some good news for the NDP. 2 polls say they are doing rather well.

A robbins poll puts them at 42 behind the BC Liberals at 44. This poll also asks voters if they are voting Conservative - a minor provincial party. 5% said yes. The problem is the party is only running in a quarter of ridings, meaning that at least 3% of the province will be upset to find no Conservative on the ballot - we believe they are likely to vote Liberal. The same can be said for the 3.75% that said they were voting for "other", the problem again is that many ridings do not have any "others" running.

Angus reid reports the BC Liberals at 42 and the BC NDP at 39. Again a very high "other" number is found. While we think the Conservatives could break 2% or even 3%, we do not see it likely that the votes for "others" will be much greater, and that many of these looking for a more-right-than-the-liberals voters will default back to the BC Liberals.

We have updated our current projection, however the trendline for the NDP is still negative.

BCL - 53
NDP - 32

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Twitter

Our apologies to trendlines.ca. We had assumed we were the first to Twitter, but they have been online for quite a while! Feel free to read their feed at
http://twitter.com/TrendlinesDotCa

Trendlines has been very accurate in past elections especially the 2007 Ontario election where they were the first to (very early) project a significant PC downturn, suggesting at near the time the writ dropped a maximum of 35 seats, while democraticspace (now offline) and electionprediction (plus my own pre-blog projections) had the numbers closer to 40 or 50. Trendlines uses a trend line to project it's results, we have picked up on this and use a trend line as part of our projection.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Nova Scotia election 2009

We are perhaps only a week away from an Election call in Nova Scotia. We do not expect many polls, and hence, will not be able to do an official projection, but we still are projecting an NDP government, with the only question being if it is a Majority, or a Minority with Liberal support.

BC Election

We've been able to add baselines and trendlines to our BC election projection. The trendline is very heavy on the NDP - it's dragging it down. The NDP is also suffering from a bad baseline (They tend to finish second, only 3 times have they won) and seem to have lost the debate, and are losing momentum, if not going outright backwards after a lackluster campaign. Currently we need more polls to really re-weight things in a serious manner, but based on our trend and base lines we have updated our projection:

BCL - 58
NDP - 27

This NDP weakness has put the greens in serious striking distance in Powell River, Saanich North, and Esquimalt; the former two on historic strength, and the latter as it is the leader's riding (always to consider). The problem is that the first two were historically strong because of strong candidates (leader and deputy leader) and weather that will carry over is unknown. The fact remains, however, that if the NDP continues to slump, the Greens may end up with an MLA. Other ridings to watch for the Greens are Vancouver West End and West Vancouver (both of them)

Saturday, April 25, 2009

New Projection



Tories up in Ontario, but down in Quebec.

New poll

Hot off the press (there are benefits to being awake at 4:30am :p) A new poll, seen on the Toronto Star website:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/624337
We will do a projection very shortly.

Friday, April 24, 2009

We are now on twitter

http://twitter.com/nixtuff

We are the first of the major canadian election prediction sites* to offer this service. We are pleased to be leading the way here at niXtuff.

http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/
http://www.trendlines.ca/
http://www.electionprediction.org/

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

New Poll

We've added the new Harris-Decima poll to our matrix, however there is no overall change to our numbers, however many conservative ridings are now at striking distance for the Liberals and NDP

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

First BC Projections

The most recent poll, from Mustel, would yield the following results:
BCL - 71
NDP - 14

This seems a bit high for the Liberals. The NDP were recorded up by 5 points in an Angus Reid poll from November 2008.
NDP-51
BCL-34

An Ipsos poll, also from November 2008 would yield the following results:
BCL - 63
NDP - 20
GRN - 2
Very good for the Greens.

We, however, feel the most representative poll is the March 25th poll from Angus Reid, showing the Liberals at 43%, the NDP at 37%, and the Greens at 13%. These numbers would yield the following results:
BCL-53
NDP-32

Our official projection, however, as of this time, is as follows:
BCL-50
NDP-35

Monday, April 20, 2009

BC Election Update.

Thanks to Professor Werner Antweiler from the Saunder School of Business at UBC, we now have the proper redistributed riding data for the BC 2009 election, and I'm happy to announce, we will officially be following it, with an official projection to come before the polls close on election night.

The good professor and UBC are well known for running this popular projection page http://esm.ubc.ca/forecast.php which is used by many in the field of election projections as a useful first stop resource. Our own ElectoMatic shares many of the same assumptions that the UBC ESM forecasters do.

Friday, April 17, 2009

New Poll

We've added the new ekos poll to our matrix, as well we've re-balanced the matrix itself to 'clean' it, so to speak. Our numbers are as follows:

Lib - 123
CPC - 105
BQ - 50
NDP - 30

Sub-Regions:

Atlantic
Lib - 21
CPC - 7
NDP - 4

Quebec
BQ - 50
Lib - 21
CPC - 4

Ontario
Lib - 63
CPC - 33
NDP - 10

West
CPC - 61
Lib - 18
NDP - 16


British Columbia is where the trend is strongest. Our current numbers

CPC - 15
Lib - 11
NDP - 10

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Help me help you

Like me, you have likely run across website after website, attacking Elections BC for not offering a vote redistribution of the 2005 election on 2009 ridings. The reality, from my experience, is that only Elections Canada, Ontario, and Quebec does this. No website (that I know of) has these results... but we do!... sort of. Here's what I mean, take a look at this.

On the Elections BC website, a nice conversion excel file is found here:
http://www.elections.bc.ca/docs/map/redis08/Conv/2005_to_2008_Voting_Area_Conversion_Tables.xls
showing how to convert polling stations from 2005 to 2008.
So?
Well, on this web-page, also from Elections BC:
http://www.elections.bc.ca/index.php/resource-centre/reports/2005-voting-results-by-voting-area/
You can find the voting results by poll!

Say what?

Click tab ABC in the excel file. Go to the website and open "Abbotsford-Clayburn". Note near the bottom, poll number 100. Go back to the excel file, and under 2005, note "ABC100" is now poll 100 and 101 in riding ABS. There will be some overlap, but this will give you a far better idea of real party strengths in each riding than any other method would. The problem is that to calculate this (you have to do this for every single poll in the entire province really, with some exceptions*) requires quite a bit of manpower. I, sadly, do not have the time right now to do this myself. If anyone here is willing to help me do this as a joint project, please contact me at nixtuff @t hotmail d.t com and we'll see if we cannot work out something.

I'm willing to share my findings with the public, and any other website that wants to use it. Other webmasters are free to contact me if they wish.


*In some cases, chunks of polls move from one riding to another, these polls can be calculated as a single piece.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Info on the provinces

Province by Province:

Newfoundland is not expecting an election until 2011. There is no sign either the Liberals or NDP could knock off the Tories, who are, at this time, expected to win another large majority.

Prince Edward Island is also not expecting an election until 2011, and as above, the government is expected to retain it's majority.

New Brunswick is likely to see an election in 2010 or early 2011, and as with the above, the government is expected to win, however by a much smaller margin (though still a majority)

The Yukon could have an election by next year. Due to the political nature of the territory, any predictions would be closer to 'guesses' as personality plays a big role. Any party could potentially win, but chances are if the Government goes down it will be to the Liberals and not the NDP. If I had to 'guess' I'd put my money on a Liberal minority.

Quebec will not have an election until 2012 or 2013. Any 'predictions' this far out would also be 'guesses'. My 'guess' is a PQ majority.

Manitoba will be set for an election in 2011 or even 2012. The NDP will by this point be seen as a "tired and old" government and could well lose to the PC Party, however the current government is still popular, and it can expected to be a close race. My money is on the NDP.

Saskatchewan will also be due for an election around 2011. There is a history in this province of electing governments to a minimum of two terms, and unless the government manages to botch it, I expect this to continue.

Alberta's next election will happen around 2012. The PC Party can, again, be expected to cruise to victory with a large majority. I do, however, expect the Liberals to win a 'surprisingly' large number of seats, especially in Calgary, and potentially set themselves up for a win in 2016.

Ontario is a more interesting case. For decades it elected PC governments, mostly to majorities but some minorities, and the PC Party governed in a moderate "Red Tory" style. Since the mid 80's, however, this has not been the case. John Tory should have won the last Ontario election, but his poor campaigning lost it for him. Now the Ontario PC Party has shifted to the right yet again, while Ontarians have not indicated that they want this. There is a very good likelihood that this will push the Liberals to a third victory, one that will outlast McGunity (who is a very weak premier) If current trends continue, and nothing suggests they will not, the Ontario Liberals will become the new dynasty. This, coupled with Federal success in the provinces, will allow Ontario to take on the role abandon by Quebec in the 80's, and become the Liberal party's new "bedrock" of support.

Finally we come to the two provinces with elections coming up.

Nova Scotia has a potential for an election this spring. The Liberals are trigger happy as polls show them as the #2 party. The NDP, while quiet, would also be happy as they have been polling over 35% since the last election and would likely win a very strong minority or even a weak majority in any election. Current trends point towards a weak majority for the NDP, as voters in the province are becoming more comfortable with the idea of an NDP government (IE, it does not scare them anymore) and are likely to jump on the bandwagon and vote for the winner. The Liberals meanwhile could well supplant the PC Party as the second most popular party in the province, and become the official opposition. Should this happen, however, it will likely mean that minority governments are still in the future for this province.

BC has an election scheduled to take place in exactly one month. While individual polls have jumped about, the general trend has been stagnant since the middle of the last election. This is also a general trend that was, generally, true for most of BC's modern history. In short; the governing party is a free-market coalition of all sorts that tends to win 60% of the seats, while the main opposition, socialist in nature, wins the other 40%. This would gives us numbers of 51 and 34, and I still expect the final result to be close to this, though likely with a few more seat for the NDP.

New Projection

We have updated our trendlines and baselines and have a new projection that is as follows:

Lib - 121
CPC - 113
BQ - 49
NDP - 25

Note that we have not included the Nanos "Poll" mentioned earlier. Rather this update is based on, to put it in a simple way, "pulling" the data forward. We effectively have re-weighted polls based on date, thereby "pulling" the matrix forward in time; This has also caused it to slide further up our trendlines, and be further balanced with the baselines.

What's important is where the parties stand in the provinces. Specifically, Ontario and Quebec.

West:
CPC - 66
Lib - 15
NDP - 14

Atlantic:
Lib - 21
CPC - 7
NDP - 4

Quebec:
BQ - 49 (Trendlines favour a seat target around 48-51)
Lib - 21
CPC - 5

Ontario:
Lib - 64
CPC - 35
NDP - 7

These numbers are closer to the CPC's 2006 targets in Ontario. Here is a map of what this might look like according to our riding by riding numbers:


New "Poll"

Nanos put out a poll - Click Here - that identifies "second place" support for the parties. It is an interesting read for that alone; However at the bottom it lists the number of answers for the first question - which party do you support. The national breakdown is as follows:

Lib - 36%
CPC - 32%
NDP - 13%
BQ - 10%
Grn - 8%

Compare this to the most recent poll form Strategic Counsel:

Lib - 34%
CPC - 32%
NDP - 15%
BQ - 10%
Grn - 9%

And the last poll from Nanos, 3 weeks ago:

Lib - 36%
CPC - 33%
NDP - 13%
BQ - 10%
Grn - 8%

It seems that the plateau continues.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

More on the last poll

After taking a look at the official PDF file for the poll we spoke of earlier, we have been able to reverse engineer a result from the Atlantic provinces:

Lib - 36%
CPC - 35%
NDP - 18%
Grn - 11%

However, since this did not come directly from strategic counsel, and since our methods of reverse engineering can add incongruities, plus the large margin of error that we are likely facing here; we have not added it to the matrix.

New Poll

A new poll reported by CTV (found here) has been added to the matrix. While there were quite a few changes to our popular vote numbers, our seat numbers remain stable, confirming the current'plateau' of support for the Liberals.

Lib - 121
CPC - 115
BQ - 47
NDP - 25

Also in the report, CTV says that "Pollster Peter Donolo of the Strategic Counsel says the Conservatives should be concerned about the trend line, which firmly shows their support dropping and the Liberals' support growing since January." all but indicating that we were spot on with our post from yesterday (before this story broke)

We continue to have confidence in our numbers and our trendlines.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Libs solidify

Not much in terms of hard numbers, but rather a reflection of feelings:

The Liberals seem in a much better place to win this coming election than the Tories. Iggy is more popular than Harper by certain measures, and does not have to wear the recession. As well the Tories pretty well "maxed-out" last election, while the Liberals have room for growth.

At this time we are projecting a Liberal win, but at this time we also feel it will be a minority.