New numbers

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National:
CPC - 127
Lib - 86
BQ - 51
NDP - 41
IND - 2
Grn - 1


Territories
CPC - 1
Lib - 1
NDP - 1

British Columbia
CPC - 23
NDP - 8
Lib - 4
Grn - 1 (Saanich)

Alberta
CPC - 28

Prairies
CPC - 20
Lib - 4
NDP - 4

Ontario
Lib - 46
CPC - 39
NDP - 21

Quebec
BQ - 51
Lib - 16
CPC - 6
NDP - 1
IND - 1

Atlantic
Lib - 15
CPC - 10
NDP - 6
IND - 1

Liberals closing in on government

National:
CPC - 123
Lib - 93
BQ - 50
NDP - 40
IND - 2


Territories
CPC - 1
Lib - 1
NDP - 1

British Columbia
CPC - 26
NDP - 9
Lib - 1

Alberta
CPC - 28

Prairies
CPC - 20
Lib - 4
NDP - 4

Ontario
Lib - 52
CPC - 34
NDP - 20

Quebec
BQ - 50
Lib - 17
CPC - 6
NDP - 1
IND - 1

Atlantic
Lib - 18
CPC - 8 (May is edging back on MacKay)
NDP - 5
IND - 1

* Note that we uurge caution with these daily-tracking numbers. Due to our three-firm average, these numbers can swing wildly. These numbers will be factored into our averages for Friday, which will be more robust. Saturday there will be no projections as we will be working towards our final projections expected to be posted by Sunday at Noon. This will include a riding by riding list, from east to west.

Nanos and the Polls

We think we've discovered why Nanos' numbers are so different from the other polling firms. It appears Nanos asks the voter "Who are you voting for?" and not "Will you be voting Green, Liberal, Conservative..." etc. This would explain why the Green and Liberal numbers are so very different. It is highly likely that many people who blurt out Liberal to one pollster, would say "Green" to another pollster if presented with that option.

What impact this has on the final results remains to be seen. There is a chance that those who blurt out Liberal will indeed vote that way, as they do not consider the Greens to be a "real" option. There is also the chance that when they get into the voting booth and see "Green Party" on the ballot, that they may vote that way.

We are reserving judgment on the issue and will continue to use our new three-firm poll average. New numbers will be out shortly.

NDP at 21 in Ontario

Which 21?

Hamilton Cen
Timmins-JB
Wind Wes
TorDan
TriSpa
Wind Tec
Parkdale (by a hair)
Sault Ste Marie
Nickel Belt
Hamilton M
Ott C
Hamilton E
Beaches
TB Superior
London Fan
Algoma
TB Rainy
Oshawa
Sudbury
Welland
Kenora

Fresh Numbers

We nabbed the newest Nanos poll the moment it came out. Here are the fresh projections for today.


National:
CPC - 121
Lib - 88
BQ - 51
NDP - 45
IND - 2


Territories
CPC - 1
Lib - 1
NDP - 1

British Columbia
CPC - 20
NDP - 13
Lib - 3

Alberta
CPC - 28

Prairies
CPC - 20
Lib - 4
NDP - 4

Ontario
Lib - 43 (Turner in)
CPC - 42 (Khan out)
NDP - 21 (List will be provided later)

Quebec
BQ - 51
Lib - 15
CPC - 6
NDP - 1
IND - 1

Atlantic
Lib - 22
NDP - 5
CPC - 4
IND - 1

Polls Pt2

Here are two examples:

In Ontario, Harris has the Liberals and Tories tied at 31% with the NDP at 20% and the Greens at 17%. Nanos meanshile has the two main parties hovering around 36% (one up a point, one down) The NDP at 22%, and the Greens at 7%

In Quebec, Harris says the Bloc has 37, the Tories 22, the Liberals 17, the NDP 13, and the Greens 8. Nanos has the Bloc at 41, the Liberals at 28, the Tories at 16, the NDP at 10, and the Greens at 6

Nanos reports to adjust numbers based on the census data. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. For example, it's known that younger people generally vote less often, adjusting them 'out' might make your poll more accurate, on the flip side if your 'adjustment' is a little off, so will your poll.

For this coming week we will be averaging Nanos, Harris, and Ekos polls to attempt to get a more clear picture.

Polls

We have this weekend a very strange circumstance.
Harris (Decima) has the Liberals at 22% nationwide, and the Greens at 13%.
Meanwhile Nanos (SES) has the Liberals at 30% and the Greens at 7% This is beyond the margin of error and something is going on here. I will attempt to investigate to get to the bottom of this strange occurance.

Ridings

What ridings could some of the parties expect to pick up? In particular this focuses on the Greens and the NDP which are polling in near uncharted territory during a writ period.

Lets start with the Greens. There are really only 4 ridings that have a real shot at. They are, in no particular order:
Nunavut, Guelph, Saanich--Gulf Islands, Central Nova
To win these four they will need to get around 14% of the national vote. If they want to win many more than these four they will need to get more than that, and this is something that is just not lining up for them at the moment. What if it did?
Ottawa Centre, Calgary Centre, Bruce--Grey--Owen Sound, Calgary Centre-North, Dufferin--Caledon, Perth--Wellington
all of a sudden become vulnerable. Currently, we dont see the Greens raising in the polls far enough to make any of this possible. We also feel the local campaign in Nunavut favours the Conservatives. The Greens will end this election with between 0 and 3 seats.

How about the NDP?
First, in Quebec. They likely will win Outremont. Both Hull--Aylmer and Gatineau are also under attack from the NDP, but the party needs to pick it up to win here. At a time they appeared ready to take more, but with current poll numbers that seems unlikely.
Edmonton Strathcona is in danger of falling to the NDP, as are numerous ridings in Saskatchewan and BC, where the party has historically been strong. The NDP also appears ready to take St.John's east. Election results in Nova Scotia this election may be similar to 1997 for the NDP. In New Brunswick there are limited opportunities, but Madawaksa could fall. What about Ontario? The NDP could really pick up seats, but where? Places like Algoma, Thunder Bay, Oshawa, Davenport, Sudbury, Welland, Kenora, Peterborough, London, Essex, Chatham, Guelph, and even Ancaster (in that order) could be vulnerable. St. Catharines has been called Canada's modern bellwether. If the NDP is truly to take the official opposition, expect them to take that seat.

Update

Please note that we will continue our daily tracking on Monday and follow it though until our final projection at noon on the 13th.

National:
CPC - 138
Lib - 78
BQ - 51
NDP - 38
Grn - 1
IND - 2


Territories
CPC - 1
Lib - 1
NDP - 1

British Columbia
CPC - 22
NDP - 11
Lib - 3

Alberta
CPC - 27
NDP - 1 (Strathcona, by a marginal margin)

Prairies
CPC - 20
Lib - 5
NDP - 3

Ontario
CPC - 51
Lib - 37
NDP - 18
* (Greens within striking distance in Guelph)

Quebec
BQ - 51
Lib - 12
CPC - 10
NDP - 1
IND - 1

Atlantic
Lib - 20
CPC - 7
NDP - 3
Grn - 1
IND - 1

National Numbers

We are still working on our new calculation system, but we do have new national numbers.


CPC-148
Lib-72
BQ-48
NDP-38
IND-2
Grn-0

Update by monday night

I'm getting the new "projection engine" up and running as well. We will now be able to make projections that are more accurate than ever before.

Please accept my apologies.

I am having personal problems right now, and have had limited time to update this blog. Please accept my apologies. An update should be here by Friday at the latest

Liberals down, NDP up

We are still working on our new calculation sheets, but I can tell you now that in general, the Liberals are down and the NDP is up. This is likely only a minor difference of a few seats, but something is going on in Quebec. Exactly what, remains to be seen.

Methodology Update

Due to radically differing polls (Nanos showing the Liberals making a shocking recovery, and Angus Reid showing them skirting the lowest poll numbers ever) we are going to re-tool our methodology. The new weighting system will be designed to weight polling firms more equally. Currently, we feel we are over-weighting firms that post polls often. This will also allow us to add pollsters who do more limited polls (like Leger in Quebec)

Trends

We've made a graph of the trends from our projections. Note that the first projection has the corrected numbers of 123-121 as our original projection had a input error in saskatchewan.

Numbers still stable

The numbers have not moved much in the past week. Seats have changed hands here and there but all within a narrow range. The numbers, it seems, remain fairly stable.

Update Delayed

Unfortunately our update for this afternoon will have to be slightly delayed (hopefully just to tonight, if not then tomorrow) due to serious connection problems on my end.

Numbers stable again

There are no changes to our projections with the addition of today's polls. There are many seats, however, that are on the cusp and are in danger of falling. One is Hull, where our current projections have the NDP winning by less than 500 votes over the Liberals. As before we will include our numbers in text format for those with disabilities to improve the accessibility of this site.


National Numbers.
Conservative Party / C.P.C. = 151 seats.
Popular Vote = 37.79%

Liberal Party / Lib = 89 seats.
Popular Vote = 29.09%

Bloc Quebecois / B.Q. = 37 seats.
Popular Vote = 7.75%

New Democratic Party / N.D.P. = 29 seats.
Popular Vote = 17.08%

Green Party / Grn = 0 seats.
Popular Vote = 9.74%

Others / Oth = 2 seats.


Atlantic Canada.
C.P.C. = 9
Lib = 17
N.D.P. = 5
Others = 1

Quebec.
B.Q. = 37
C.P.C. = 18
Lib = 17
NDP = 2
Others = 1

Ontario.
Lib = 49
C.P.C. = 48
N.D.P. = 9

Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
C.P.C. = 23
N.D.P. = 4
Lib = 1

Alberta.
C.P.C. = 28

British Columbia.
C.P.C. = 24
N.D.P. = 8
Lib = 4

The Territories.
C.P.C. = 1
Lib = 1
N.D.P. = 1

Regional shifts

There are some significant shifts with the addition of today’s polls. The weighting of the pro-Tory trend in the Atlantic has come out in full. The Tories are projected to win at least 9 seats here and have knocked the Greens off the board. Meanwhile, the Tories have lost support and seats in Ontario and Quebec. The Bloc is also staging a resurgence. Not due to increasing poll numbers, but due to weakening Conservative ones. I'm very curious to see where this all stands at the end of the week

No changes from this morning

This afternoon's polls have been added to the matrix, but there is no change in seats from this morning. The Tories are very close to losing seats in Quebec. Here are the numbers for those who are vision impaired who may be using computer-assisted devices reading this blog.

Tories - 148
Liberals - 92
Bloc - 35
NDP - 30
Green - 1
Indp't - 2

Liberals up in Quebec

A growing liberal resurgence in Quebec is becoming the new trend. Right now the numbers are not enough to change many seats, but that could change by the time that this afternoons polls are weighted into the matrix.

Bloc overtakes NDP in seats

The Bloc Quebecois is projected to win more seats than the NDP. This is partly due to NDP weakness in areas like British Columbia, and a resurgance of Bloc strength in Quebec. The NDP still stands strong in Quebec, we expect them to win two ridings, and there's a small possibility they could take up to five (including that of Bloc leader, Gilles Duceppe!)

The Greens are edging closer to a seat in BC. Not Blair Wilson's seat (that one is going solidly Conservative) but rather the riding of Saanich--Gulf Island where senior Green, Andrew Lewis is running. They are within a few points here and with polls shwoing up to 25% of canadians are willing to vote strategically to defeat the Conservatives, its not out of the realm of possibility that they can win here. Having two MP's in Ottawa will help the Greens emmensley; someone needs to second your bills.

The Greens are also threathening a win in Ontario, in Ottawa Centre. Beyond that, how the recent by-election has changed the field in Guelph remains to be seen, knowing that the Greens are best positioned to unseat the Liberals here, we might find that NDP voters have moved to the Greens. This, of course, remains to be seen.

The Liberals have seen a rebound, and the Tories have dropped from majority status. This is partly due to our updated projection methods in Ontario.

Note that our riding by riding projections have been updated as well.

More on Methodology

Questions have come up as to exactly what our Methodology is, and how we differ from other prediction websites out there? That's simple. Our projections are, at their base, a geometric projection. This is done by taking the poll numbers and applying it to the last election in a way so that if a party is polling at 10% in a province they polled 5% in last election, then all their numbers are doubled. Therefore a riding where they took 5,000 votes, we project they will take 10,000 this time.

What makes our methods different is how we arrive at those polls. Rather then use a straight 5-poll average, we average out all the polls in the past 7 days. We give each poll a "Weight", the default is 9. If the same polling firm has put out many polls in the past 7 days, the "Weight" of their older polls is less then 9 (7 for the second poll, 5 for the third, 3 for the fourth, etc) Also, polls 4 days or older are given a weight below 9 as well. This gives us a full range of opinion that is affected less by one-poll changes then a 5 poll average is. Currently we have 15 polls in our "average", and half of the "weight" comes from the 5 polls taken over the past 3 days.

The second way we differ is what we do once the geometric projection has been completed. We use that projection to find seats that are close, say within 3% or less. We then look at each of those ridings individually and judge if there is any reason the numbers might be wrong. Did a star run here last time who is not running this time? Is the opposite true? Has the incumbent resigned? so on and so forth. When combined with the numbers this gives us a powerful picture of what is going on electorally across the country.

The differences between our methodology and that of others comes out most clear in Quebec. Currently we are projecting the highest numbers for both the Tories and NDP, and lowest for the Liberals and the Bloc. This comes from our Quebec numbers. There is often doubt and people want to discount the numbers when they tell you something that seems incredible (like the NDP winning Hull) but we trust our numbers and methodology in this case. It was my using of these numbers to project 10 Tories in Quebec (and going against every prediction website in the country in doing so) that motivated me to run my own site this time. We have strong confidence in our Quebec numbers.

Numbers stable

The addition of 5 new polls and dropping of 2 old ones has a net change of only two seats on the numbers. The "Election Norm" appears to have set in, and this is where the parties will be fighting from for the next month.