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

[Boston Bread]

308 has a list of Green and Bloc target seats:
http://www.threehundredeight.com/2015/03/the-quest-for-official-party-status.html

That was done when the NDP was much weaker, though. Move some NDP-held target seats away and both the Greens and Bloc have very limited options.

[Boston Bread]

My seat projection using the Forum poll.

The only thing preventing an NDP majority is 1) vote inefficiency in Ontario 2) losses in Quebec, mostly to the Libs but a few to the CPC

[Boston Bread]

The indy is Inky Mark, a former Reform/Alliance MP who is running as an independent. Other is polling enough in MB/SK to make him narrowly lead in Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa in a three way race between the CPC and NDP candidates.

[Boston Bread]

Charlottetown is pretty close to going NDP in my model. Libs lead by 5. If it went NDP then the NDP will have a seat in every province.

[Boston Bread]

Markham-Thornhill looks decent for the NDP in a majority scenario. Can't think of any other Halton/York NDP pickups, though.

[Boston Bread]

I wish someone would actually poll SiD, so we can see whether SiD support actually exists.

[Boston Bread]

I think some here are being too conservative with NDP pickup prospects. Nothing ridiculous about the NDP winning Central Nova if they do well in the Atlantic, considering how badly the Conservatives are polling there. And the NDP not winning Lethbridge would be a surprise.

[Boston Bread]

NDP is at 33.6 not 36.6 in the EKOS poll.

[Boston Bread]

NDP: 83%
Green: 81%
Liberal: 72%
Conservatives: 43%

Odd that political compass thinks Greens are to the right of NDP and vote compass to the left. The NDP's position looks unfortunately crowded.

[Boston Bread]

Looking at the riding polls, I counted 18 where the NDP fares better than in the 308 projection, 4 where they fared worse, and 5 where they agreed within 2 points. So there is a trend of the NDP doing better in riding polls than national polls.
I believed some of the riding polls where purposely conducted in places where pollsters believed had strong potential for NDP growth (particularly BC, and some urban Ontario ridings like Guelph, Kingston). So it's possible that the national and riding polls are both right if the NDP is underperforming in other areas.

[Boston Bread]

Nanos actually has the NDP leading! http://www.theglobeandmail.com//news/politics/half-of-canadian-voters-undecided-poll/article26170445/?cmpid=rss1&click=sf_globe

Since their numbers are averaged over 4 weeks, the NDP must have been up significantly this week.

[Boston Bread]

I don't think there is a non-xenophobic reason to worry about a gradual demographic change, at least in regards to Canada. We do a better job of integrating (rather than ghettoizing) immigrants and as a result the values of immigrant groups tend to converge towards Canadian norms after a generation.

[Boston Bread]

Anybody been checking Threehundredeight lately?   Parkdale-High Park going Liberal?  Yeah, not going to happen Eric.  That Trudeau hard on this guy has, though.

It's more Nanos than Eric. Nanos usually has the NDP extremely low in ON, and they've been releasing polls rapidly as of late.

[Boston Bread]

Forums comes to save the day.
http://poll.forumresearch.com/data/dc73aa58-fbc8-40e3-9374-ce8b254cc004Federal%20Horserace%20News%20Release%20(2015%2009%2010)%20Forum%20Research.pdf
36-29-28
At the very least 308's projection should no longer be 90% Nanos.

And the NDP leads in ON for Forum but is a distant third for Nanos? Ok...

[Boston Bread]

So the NDP is either in first place, second place or third place while taking the EKOS numbers into account. Cool.

It's worse than that, actually. In the last 3 polls, all three big parties have placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in a poll. So the Liberals are 1st/2nd/3rd, as are the Conservatives.
It's odd that Ekos is the one to show the Conservatives leading, in 2011 they underestimated them and generally had them the lowest.

[Boston Bread]

The sign war in my street has gotten interesting. Usually there is a flood of Conservatives and one or two Liberals. And it's in a poll that always votes Conservative (67% in 2011).

When I put my NDP lawn sign down a month ago, it was the first one in my street that I can remember. Now NDP signs outnumber the Conservatives! By one sign, but still, it came as quite a surprise to me. Not a Liberal to be found, and the one house that reliably put out a Liberal sign before is one has become an orange convert. While I don't expect the NDP to win in my riding, but it's refreshing to see such a change.

[Boston Bread]

Its pure rightwing populist xenophobia and pandering...

That is quite possibly the motive, but since it is basically a reasonable demand it seems stupid to oppose it. "We are against this because we do not want to be on the same side as the bad guys" is always a stupid reason. You need to evaluate issues on their own merit and sometimes you then end up on the same side as people you do not like.

The Supreme Court struck it down, isn't that evidence against it being a reasonable demand?

Also for the Victoria Grit, are they going to be able to find a replacement? The deadline to nominate candidates has passed.

[Boston Bread]

I don't back the veil but it doesn't mean I want to force women not to wear it against their beliefs. As for indoctrination, every religious or cultural tradition can be labelled as that.

Allowing the wearing of a veil in the citizenship ceremony is also a "reasonable demand", albeit a demand that makes life easier and not more frustrating for the 2 women who wanted to do so. And keep in mind that by that point of the ceremony, their identity has already been confirmed so whether they take off the veil or not makes absolutely no difference.

[Boston Bread]

Maybe this will be a dumb comment, but could it be that national NDP support dropped mostly because NDP support dropped in ridings where they were losing anyway? In other words, could it be that the push towards strategic voting sent Dippers flooding into the Liberal column in places like, say, Mississauga, where the NDP would not have ever won?

If we take both the riding polls and national polls at face value, this is the only valid conclusion. For the most part, the NDP have held up well in riding polls in places where they are usually competitive, better than what the projections suggest. Most of the riding polls where they are underperforming projections are indeed places like suburban Ottawa and Toronto where they were never competitive.

[Boston Bread]

The NDP won't form opposition if the Liberals win a majority. Quebec would need to switch to the Liberals en masse, depriving the NDP of too many seats for them to be competitive with CPC.

However, an LPC minority where it's LPC-CPC-NDP in terms of votes and LPC-NDP-CPC in terms of seats is not out of the question if look at the province wide spreads in the EKOS and Nanos polls. The NDP would still sweep most of Quebec; if the Conservatives are also crushed to Hudak levels in Ontario that would put the NDP's seat count within reach of the Conservatives despite having less votes.

[Boston Bread]

Innovative: 38/30/22. Liberals up 20 in Ontario, potentially allowing a majority.

http://one-org.s3.amazonaws.com/us/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/14164737/ONECanadaPollResults.pdf

 A word of caution though; this pollster underestimated the NDP by 7 and overestimated the Liberals by 6 points in 2011, one of the worst pollster performances that election.

[Boston Bread]

I recall the advance polls in the Ontario election having much higher PC numbers than the overall results (35% vs 31%) and slightly lower NDP numbers. The pattern could repeat again.

[Boston Bread]

Mulcair losing seat is fairly realistic based on current polling. If the polls are right, Mulcair would need a strong local effect like what saved Trudeau in 2011. Especially since the Liberal surge is likely concentrated in the parts of Montreal that they don't currently hold. However, if the Liberal vote is too concentrated in Montreal, we could see both Mulcair losing his seat while the NDP still wins 40-50 seats in Quebec.

[Boston Bread]

I guess that makes Coyne an Ignatieff-Hudak-Mulcair voter. What an odd combination. Although he's voting NDP only to prevent a majority.

I don't know what's funny about the territories. I think the Liberals will sweep all three of them, that's what both my model and 308 is showing atm.

[Boston Bread]

I'm assuming Earl only uses Ekos numbers, which have the Bloc only 3 points behind the NDP, in which case 16 Bloc seats make sense. Other polls have a larger gap.