Canadian federal election - October 19, 2015 (Official Campaign Thread)

[Hatman 🍁]

Jesus, you guys, stop paying attention to that guy.

[Hatman 🍁]

Our old friend Teddy is also doing projections and of course there is also electionprediction.org

Wilfrid Laurier University's Barry Kay (LISPOP) and Bryan Breguet at 2closetocall also do seat projections, though only Breguet and Grenier do individual seats. Breguet has Ashton safe. Grenier has greater prominence in English Canada though.

I'm doing something too, and I have Ashton relatively safe. Keep in mind this is the first time I'm doing something like this, so I'm still learning the ropes, but I hope the numbers make sense.

http://www.election-atlas.ca/fed/projection.php

Your projections are pretty sound, but you've over inflated Liberal support in Ottawa. The Liberals are running a star candidate in Kanata-Carleton, but they've done that before to no avail. It's a fairly safe Conservative seat. Also, you have the Liberals at 61% in Ottawa South, which would be their strongest result since 1993.

[Hatman 🍁]

What other places are there to go that have detailed riding-by-riding projections? As long as Grenier has a monopoly on that, he'll be able to attract attention.

Look--you have to regard Grenier as the psephological equivalent of the talking GPS girl.  Giving directions from the "data available", but no substitute for the ability to navigate oneself and get one's feel for the lay of the land.

An excellent analogy.

[Hatman 🍁]

Because constituency polls of questionable accuracy are fun, Mainstreet Research has released three: in Ajax, Ontario, Conservative incumbent Chris Alexander leads Liberal former MP Mark Holland 33-31; in Spadina--Fort York, Ontario, prominent former NDP MP Olivia Chow leads Liberal incumbent Adam Vaughan 34-30; in Calgary Confederation, Alberta, Liberal candidate Matt Grant leads Conservative former PC MPP Len Webber 33-32.

All three would be surprises. (Cue Al to warn us about constituency polling in 3...2...1....)

I think the Liberals will win Ajax; and the Tories will win Cgy Confederation. Spadina-Fort York might be that tight actually, but I figured Olivia had more of a lead. Then again previous polls there were done by LOLFORUM.  One thing about that riding is its full of condos, which are less likely to have landlines or at least less likely to have landlines listed by sampling companies, as they are new condos. (this is why polling done in ridings made up of mostly brand new housing should be very suspect as well). Then again, Forum did quite well in recent by-elections in downtown Toronto. But a stop clock is right twice a day.

[Hatman 🍁]

Soo.. two Polls, two different leading parties...

Forum:
CPC - 32%
NDP - 30%
LPC -  28%
http://www.thestar.com/news/federal-election/2015/09/17/conservatives-take-narrow-lead-new-poll-shows.html

Environics
NDP - 34%
LPC - 29%
CPC - 26%
http://assets.nationalnewswatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/poll-sept.-17.pdf

lol

[Hatman 🍁]

... speaking of Riding level polling to be taking with a grain of sail, CROP has the NDP leading... Papineau
NDP - 46%
LPC - 35%
BQ - 10%
http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/election/trudeau-in-trouble-in-papineau-riding-poll-1.2568576?hootPostID=7b14fa55793444883a6592832cbc868a

Entirely plausible result

[Hatman 🍁]

Some more riding polls (by lolForum):

University-Rosedale:
NDP: 46
Lib: 32
Cons: 17
Grn: 5

(plausible, but it's likely much closer)

Toronto Centre:
NDP: 41
Lib: 40
Cons: 14
Grn: 4

(this was always going to be close)

Ajax:
Liberal: 46
Cons: 35
NDP: 17
Grn: 2

(This contradicts another company's poll, but these numbers are probably closer to reality)

[Hatman 🍁]

Who do you think the newspapers will endorse? I bet the Star endorses the Liberals and everyone else will endorse the Tories. While no one pays attention to these kinds of things, even a 1% boost in the polls could be the difference in this election.

[Hatman 🍁]

I'd expect much of the harder to reach people in Toronto Centre are more likely to vote NDP, which would explain why the 2011 vote #s are low for the NDP.

Even though the new boundaries are a perfect fit for the NDP, the NDP has never represented the area, so the voters there aren't as willing to vote NDP as they would in other ridings.

[Hatman 🍁]

The Island of Montreal seems to be the only area where the Liberals are losing support, or at least not gaining as much as the NDP.

[Hatman 🍁]

If both opposition parties get over 100 seats, there is probably no way a coallition/partnership between the two lasts a full term. If we're lucky, it would last three years. Of course there is a chance the junior partner gets LibDemed, and tank in the polls, and may wait a full four years in fear of getting destroyed in the next election.

In all likelihood we'd be heading back to the polls in a year or year and a half.

[Hatman 🍁]

In true journalist fashion CBC completely fails at election analysis. They have a piece about "where your vote counts most in Toronto" and then proceed to talk about a bunch of close races from 2011... you know, the seats the Tories barely won that will be easy Liberal gains this time.

If they really want interesting races in Toronto, there's Eglinton-Lawrence, Ajax, and some of the Brampton ridings, which will actually be close on election day

They failed as soon as they chose Eric Grenier to work for them. It's been all down hill since.

[Hatman 🍁]

In which the Toronto Star doesn't get that the polling swings have all been within the margin of error.

Seriously, the Tories were at 30% on day one. They are at 30% now. There is no massive comeback going on.

The amount of "#analysis" coming from the media in this election is really driving me crazy

[Hatman 🍁]

Harper haters in Central Nova don't know who to vote for. I figured the Liberals would win the seat.

[Hatman 🍁]

Akin and Poitras were discussing on Twitter how limited NDP offensive capability is in the Maritimes. Apart from South Shore-St. Margaret's, Akin thinks Dippers should be playing defence out East. Fun fact from CBC's David Cochrane: all 3 SJSMP candidates are journos. 2 TV (O'Regan and the Tory), 1 print (Cleary). Only one of them nationally famous though.

NDP has a better chance at winning Saint John than South Shore IMO.

[Hatman 🍁]

Where are you guys reading that we're releasing a poll tomorrow? News to me.

[Hatman 🍁]

Hash had some ration un-nice things to say about Harper back in the day, so the double standard is surprising.

[Hatman 🍁]

I don't see the point of it either. Most people on this Forum have already made up their minds about Harper.

[Hatman 🍁]

At this rate, I just want this stupid deadlock to end.

Why do you hate fun?

[Hatman 🍁]

Why are Canadian parties so bad at screening candidates? Obviously this sort of thing happens everywhere and is unavoidable to an extent (because people lie and no one has the time to check out everything about the paper candidate for Unwinnable East), but the sheer number of occurrences given the relatively small number of seats? Every election?

It's more to do with how vigorous opposition research is. It gets nastier and nastier with every election.

[Hatman 🍁]

Cast a special ballot for Mississauga—Lakeshore's Stella Ambler from Vancouver Centre the other day. Feels nice to cast a ballot that might actually matter. I guess it comes with the territory of living in a downtown riding, but as long as I have a claim to residency in the swingy 905, I'll take it for voting purposes.

And yes, the Cabot Trail is beautiful. Sydney, however... Well, I'll just say I didn't really find it offered much by way of things to do.

Vancouver Centre is a potential 4-way race, though I reckon the Liberals will likely hang on.