Canada Election 2006 polls
Very strange polling. The SES polls consisently show a 3-5% bias in favor of the Liberals compared to those of Strategic Counseling, which is pretty serious because that can be the margin between the Conservatives or Liberals getting the most seats (if the Conservatives are only behind 3%, they might get more seats because their vote is more strategically concentrated), or the margin between a Liberal minority and majority (if the Liberals were stronger, more in the 41% area).
The bias seems to come from the remaining four parties rather equally (1-2% from the Greens, BQ, Conservatives and NDP -- hard to measure all that precisely with a good degree of precision).
The NDP is polling lower then they did outside of election season. I'm beginning to suspect the federal NDP does best in the polls when they aren't campaigning because voters don't see them as having any chance at government, and because they have a smaller campaign budget - though, I am guessing that in some years the NDP has had an impressive campaign budget due to having a relatively large membership base (and union support). The Greens are a good example of a unelectable party doing well in the polls, but not as well in the election. They'll probably get 3-4% (unless the Liberal scandal agitates people enought that die-hard liberals revolt and go to the Greens as a protest vote).
Weird Polls
41% Liberals vs 26% Conservatives is a very different result (probably a Lib majority?) than 33% Liberals vs 31% Conservatives (a narrow Conservative minority). Either the election is wide-open, or the polling sucks. My guess is the latter.
Possible polling problems could revolve around how they count the undecideds (there are apparently a lot of them). I remember in the US election there was controversy (in polling circles, aka Zogby) over how to sample Republicans vs Democrats. Eg they'd do a polling sample and weight the results so that they'd be assuming say 50% republicans and 50% democrats (Zogby thought this was too many Republicans, but either ended up being wrong or someone committed some serious election fraud as Bush did 2-3% better than most people expected). Though I'm not sure Canadian pollers use party identification in sampling as it doesn't seem to be as common to refer to identification, despite the political structure that has a much stronger party system, than in the US where people register as a party to vote in primaries. Hmm, maybe Canadian parties are narrower and deeper than the US.
- Login to post comments
Latest Polls
Latest polls (Jan 1 or so, based on a three-day rolling average) by both polling companies show the Liberals and Conservatives aproximately equal at 33%. The Conservatives have momentum, but it would take a lot for them to get a majority. The NDP is stuck at 15-16%, but might take away a couple seats from the Liberals and thus pick up seats (NDP is probably targetting Ontario and BC) even if it gets the same percent it got in 2004.
It's hard to win a majority when 55 of the 308 seats are out of play because the BQ is going to win them. So the Liberals need 155 seats out of the remaining 253, or the Conservatives need 155 seats out of 233 (because Quebec is completely out of play for them). The BQ vote in this election isn't going anywhere (other than slightly up).
Possible Conservative Majority
Conservatives are ahead 39% to 30% for the Liberals. The BQ vote is slipping (perhaps from 55% to 45% in Quebec), perhaps because people are moving from them to the Conservatives for their anti-Liberal protest vote (due to the scandals). Conservatives are leading in Ontario, Quebec, and neck in neck in Atlantic Canada.
The NDP might still do ok, if they pick up seats from the Liberals and if they sway some voters who are currently parking their vote with the unelectable Greens, or bad if their vote collapses in last-minute tactical voting for the Liberals.
For some reason the media decided the Conservatives are great, whereas before they were constantly trashing them and saying the party was a mess ("leadership" problems) and too rightwing for the views of most Canadians.
The Conservatives are currently set to get around 140 out of 308 seats, or 15 short of majority.
This kind of thing doesn't seem to happen in US politics. Basically two parties who were at 40% and 30% roughly, switched positions in a couple weeks. 10 points is a big change. I wonder if the shorter Canadian campaigns have a major impact upon this? Canadian election campaigns can be as short as 1 month. This one was a week or two longer though - and there has been a low-level campaign for many months before, because the Liberal minority government could easily have fallen.