Even if Ipsos had weighted to the 2009 turnout their final poll still would have been way off/

I suggest that the ALP do that the BC Liberals did when similarly unpopular - run a relentlessly negative campaign that is full of personal attacks and innuendo about Tony Abbott and make people scared sh**tless about what an Abbott-led government would actually mean for Australia. Wasn't it in 1993 that the ALP was supposed to lose and they unexpectedly won by making people scared of what John Howard would do...

EKOS: 40.5-34.5, Green 13, Tories 9.

I had a had in making the weights, so if it's wrong, I'm partially to blame. To bad we didn't do regional breakdowns.

Do you compensate in any way for the fact that in 24 ridings there is no Green on the ballot and in 30 there is no Bc Conservative?

One thing I find particularly interesting about the Angus Reid poll is a unique methodology they are using in this final poll. Instead of giving everyone the same generic vote question they figure out which of the 85 ridings everyone lives in and give each respondent an actual sample ballot for their riding with local candidate names listed. This means that if you are in a riding with no Conservative candidate you cannot say you are voting Conservative ditto for Greens and it would also give people names of independents some of whom are high profile and could win.

In 2009 AR used this same approach in their final poll and they nailed the final results almost dead on. They said Libs 44 and NDP 42 and it ended up 45-42, all the other polls in 2009 that were done by phone underestimated NDP support and gave the BC Liberals 9 to 11 point leads. We shall see who is right this time.

That one poll by Insight West had some minute sub-sample of people who were undecided who pushed for how they were leaning and they were very very slightly Liberal 29% to 25% - but we are talking about 29% of 15% of people in the poll who were undecided vs 25%. In other words 4.25% to the Libs compared to 3.75% to the NDP - and that's not even counting how astronomical the margin of error would be on a question asked of less than 100 people who were undecided on the first question.

Interior
Lib: 42 (+7)
NDP: 20 (-21)
Cons: 14 (+4)
Grn: 10 (-1)

Some wild swings going on in the low sample areas.

Actually the NDP is at 29% in Interior in that poll not 20% so down 11..not 21. Keep in mind that in most of the interior there are no Greens on the ballot!

Are the Greenies going the Lizzy May way and focusing their resources on those one or two seats or are they actually running a province-wide campaign?

One thing that really speaks volumes is the fact that in the 2009 BC election the Greens ran a full slate of 85 candidates and got 8% of the vote. This time they are only running 60 candidates and several of the ridings where they are not running anyone are very surprising. in Penticton they took 16% last time (their second best showing in the province), this time they have no candidate running there at all. They are also not running candidates in any of the Kelowna seats or in kamloops and in a Prince George seat, plus they have no candidate in  North Island, Alberni or Parksville-Qualicum...in the latter they took 11% last time and the riding is a major NDP target. I figure about 10% of people in that riding will go to the polls expecting to vote Green - they will see no Green name on the ballot, what do you suppose they will do? I suspect two-thirds will vote NDP and the rest will either spoil their ballot or vote Liberal.

PQ will wait for an election till next year most likely. As for Harper's call... he didn't delay Labrador. So we'll just have to see.

The PQ may not have a choice, the opposition parties may vote no-confidence and force and election later this year.

If Coderre resigns his seat in May, I expect Harper to wait a full six months before calling the byelection so that it would happen AFTER the mayoral election likely in December...by then the dust from Justin-mania will likely have more than settled and who knows if the PQ will even be in power anymore.

The boundaries and the demographics of Bourassa have changed enormously since 1993 and on top of that in 1993 the NDP was non-existent in Quebec so the BQ was the only place to go if you were the least bit left of centre and there was all that Bouchard-mania that year etc...Now with the Marois government incredibly unpopular and with the BQ broke, issueless and leaderless i think you will see an Outremont-like situation where the BQ falls into single digits and most of the old BQ vote stays home or takes flight to the NDP.

There are too many allophones in Bourassa for the BQ to have any chance, I suspect they will run a very perfuntory campaign there and get less than 10% of the vote.

Christy Clark herself and her charmless ex-husband Mark Marrissen are both dyed in the wool federal Liberals who were heavily involved in Paul Martin's leadership campaign and then in Dion's campaign in 2006 - her inner circle is filled with big L Liberals many of whom are refugees from the McGuinty regime in Ontario.

I think a weakness of the BC vote compass is a lack of questions that differentiate between the NDP and Green parties - the parties do differ on some issues.

Maybe not, but the NDP still has no seats.

And that's the problem. The NDP surge won't mean a thing if all it means is they finish a stronger 3rd in every riding instead of a weak 3rd. Gotta love FPTP.

Rothesay and Kent are two of the least winnable and most inhospitable ridings in all of NB for the NDP. If they can make a strong high 20s showing in those ridings - it means that they ought to be very much in contention in ridings in Saint John, Fredericton and Moncton where there is already an NDP base to build on and where there will be more three-way races.

Maybe not, but the NDP still has no seats.

An essential ingredient to winning seats in 2014 is for the NB NDP to be seen as a serious player by the local media...that rubicon has been crossed. It it is one factor that is necessary (though not sufficient) to win seats.

There have now been two byelections in New Brunswick since the 2010 election. Kent last night and Rothesay last June. The ridings are very very different from one another, but in both cases the pattern was for the Tory vote to crash, the Liberal vote to hold steady and for the NDP to go way up from low teens to high 20s...

I think at the very least it is fair to say that New Brunswick is becoming a party with a three party political system and one consequence of the NDP making such credible showings in these byelections is that between this and the latest polling numbers - the media is now starting to treat the NDP as one of the "big three" in a way they never did before. In the 2010 election the moment the writ dropped the media coverage made it out to be the traditional "Hatfields vs. the McCoys" Tory vs Grit run-off with the NDP treated as a fringe party along side the Greens and the so-called Peoples Alliance...that will not be the case in 2014.

If the Conservatives want to remind Quebecers of how Borden shoved conscription down their throats in 1917 it will INCREASE NDP support in Quebec.

Can someone explain what exactly was wrong with Boulerice's blog post. I was under the impression that just about everything he said is true:

World War One was a capitalist war - TRUE it was...anyone care to come up with any other definition of it?

Just about the only people willing to resist the jingoist call to arms in 1914 tended to be communists and socialist - also true

The vast majority of the soldiers who got slaughtered in unbelieveable numbers in World War One were 18 and 19 year sons of peasants and factory workers (in those days about 95% of the population fell into those two categories = true

At Vimy Ridge tens of thousands of Canadian boys died capturing one hill all in futile inconclusive war about nothing - also true

BTW: I personally think the Crusades of the 11th century were also a mistake - sorry if I insulted any veteran Crusaders or their descendants

Also, I'm sure a deal has been cooked up in advance whereby after Penashue loses he will declare that his new permanent address is in Ontario and harper will name him to the senate.

I think people in Labrador have made up their mind one way or the other about Penashue. I expect him to come in third. All this talk about how the NDP needed to stand aside because he could only lose to a single opposition candidate are obviously absurd. I have a feeling Harper is now going to stall calling this byelection for as long as possible since it is certain to be a Tory defeat, but they may try to use Labrador as a laboratory to test attacks on Justin Trudeau after he is crowned...though even if the Tory attacks on the Liberals work - it will probably only shift votes from Liberal to NDP and bypass the Tories completely.

Seems that Mike Goosney who could be the NDP candidate in Labrador is a big fanatic about singing the national anthem! What the heck, imagine having him in caucus in Ottawa along with musicians like Andrew Cash and Charlie Angus...

http://www.cbc.ca/labradormorning/episodes/2013/01/30/labrador-city-man---loves-to-sing-national-anthem/

Goosney is a city councillor in Labrador City and is a pipe fitter and a hockey player etc...

Borlase is a young guy from Goose Bay who seems to have some stellar academic credentials etc... More here

http://harryborlase.wordpress.com/

I don't know if i would describe the Inuit or the Innu as "Tory-friendly" or unfriendly for that matter. I think people in those communities tend to vote en masse for a candidate who is from that community who is respected and if no one is running who fits that description, they tend not to vote at all. If Penashue had been recruited to run for the Liberals or the NDP, I will bet yu that 99% of the votes he got in the Innu reserves would have voted for him regardless of party.

What is the difference between the Innu and the Inuit? I was always under the impression that "Innu" was the name given to Inuit people living in Labrador...but apparently they are actually different people.

Interesting to see those provincial riding breakdowns. The NDP managed to win the Labrador West area (essentially Wabush and Labrador City) with no campaign at all...I guess it helps when that area is essentially all steelworkers! Seems to me that the path to the NDP winning Labrador is to hold and expand support in Labrador West, not worry too much about "Torngat Mountains" where there are almost no votes anyways and not worry too much about Carwright-L'Anse au Clair either - esp. if Yvonne Jones runs for the Liberals...the place where the riding could be won is clearly the Melville Lake riding which includes the population centre of Happy Valley-Goose Bay. The NDP only took 12% of the vote there in the 2011 federal election, but running Arlene Michelin provincially (who is a city councillor in the Goose Bay), the NDP vote climbed to 35%...she is apparently being courted to run federally for the NDP now.