Newfoundland election, Nov 2015

[DL]

Not sure what thread would be most appropriate for this, but here are my predictions for the results of the next provincial election in each province (and Yukon):

Manitoba: Liberal majority
I think the NDP will collapse, letting the Liberals win with Winnipeg. The election would look a lot like an Ontario election, with NDP in the north and a few urban ridings, most urban areas going Liberal and the rural south going PC. Despite the current PC lead, having a single big city greatly helps the centre-left in Manitoba as compared to Sask in terms of vote efficiency, not to mention Pallister is also quite unappealing himself.

I have to disagree with you on this one. The Manitoba Liberals (unlike their federal counterparts) are very much a fringe party. They only have one seat and have been crushed in recent provincial byelections - their leader is widely viewed to be very very weak and there have been constant attempted palace coups against her. The party - small as it is - is very divided and is very weak. I predict that once people refocus on provincial politics it will quickly go back to the old NDP vs PC polarization and the Manitoba Liberals will get no more than 2 or 3 seats. I think its the PCs turn to win after 16 years of the NDP in power  

[DL]

MQO Research: 74-17-9
http://ntv.ca/liberal-support-moves-into-danny-williams-territory-ntvmqo-poll/

Although even when Danny Williams won elections with lopsided popular vote margins like that - he never managed to win every single seat.

[DL]

I'm not sure that there are "ridings that will always go Liberal" in NL. The Liberals have been reduced to as little as 4 seats in the Williams landslides and there was a certain randomness to which seats they held on to (usually very narrowly) - in most cases it was just a particularly popular local MHA who managed to buck the trend and where had that person retired it would have certainly been a PC pick up.

One thing that COULD happen in NL over the next three weeks is that the Liberal landslide becomes such a foregone conclusion and there starts to be so much speculation as to whether there will be ANY opposition MHAs elected at all - that people start to want to elect a few strong opposition voices. I think back to the 1984 federal election where once it became clear that Mulroney was headed for the greatest landslide in Canadian history - some popular NDP and Liberal incumbents managed to buck the trend and get re-elected because people started thinking about electing an opposition.

Not saying this will happen - only that it could.

[DL]

Cleary's political masochism knows no bounds: down 74/16/10 in Windsor Lake.

I'm not at all surprised - what the hell was Cleary thinking! The ultimate humiliation for him would be to finish behind the no-name NDP candidate as well!

[DL]

But, running 4 telephone surveys amounting to 2000 cases in such a small geographical area must've been very expensive. This is why most riding polls are done via IVR these days.

It would be almost impossible to do IVR polls in provincial ridings in Newfoundland. These are tiny ridings that in most cases only have at most 8,000 eligible voters and the number of live phone numbers is so small that an IVR poll with the typical 4% response rate would barely get over 100 completes!

[DL]

But, running 4 telephone surveys amounting to 2000 cases in such a small geographical area must've been very expensive. This is why most riding polls are done via IVR these days.

It would be almost impossible to do IVR polls in provincial ridings in Newfoundland. These are tiny ridings that in most cases only have at most 8,000 eligible voters and the number of live phone numbers is so small that an IVR poll with the typical 4% response rate would barely get over 100 completes!

We're doing internal IVR polls right now, and I can say this is flat out wrong, but I would agree that 500 would be impossible using IVR. Obviously phone surveys are going to be better quality, but they're very expensive. And you don't need 500 cases to know that these four ridings are going to go Liberal.

When the trend is overwhelming enough - you don't need much of a sample. A survey of 100 voters is accurate if candidate A has a 50 point lead over candidate B - since even an n of 100 has a margin of error of plus or minus 10 points. If a seat was closely contested, you could not get away with such a small sample...and as I mentioned the populations of NL provincial ridings are TINY. Even doing a CATI survey is challenging when in most cases you may only have a couple of thousand phone numbers in the riding and you could literally dial every single number 20 times and be stuck with just 200 responses...In this day and age about 90% of the population won't even pick up the phone unless they can recognize the phone number on their call display! and let's not even get into the issue of the total impossibility of getting cell phones at the individual riding level - meaning that any riding poll is actually just a poll of old fuddy-duddies who still have listed landline numbers and may have virtually no one under the age of 35 unless someone lives with their parents and happens to pick up the old rotary dial phone in the parlour.

The only saving grace is that there is some anecdotal evidence that Newfoundlanders are more willing to respond to surveys than other Canadians.

[DL]

Astonishing results in Burgeo - La Poile

Liberal 3998 votes
PC 93 votes
NDP 53 votes

in %, Lib 97%, PC 2%, NDP 1%

North Korea!!

[DL]

I'm actually pleasantly surprised that after all that has happened the NL NDP managed to re-elect its two incumbents and came close in a couple of others...and so much for all those predictions of the Liberals winning every single seat - they actually lost in 10 of them - not even close!

[DL]

There have been some provincial elections in Quebec where in 99% anglophone d'arcy McGee riding the Quebec liberal candidate beat the PQ with close to 99%

[DL]

Higher than D'Arcy-McGee. Wow.  I suppose both the NDP and PC candidates there were paper candidates from away?

Its worth noting that just two elections ago in Newfoundland it was the PCs who won almost every seat and the reduced the Liberals to 3 seats. in fact some of those ridings that went over 90% Liberal were PC held just a few years ago.

[DL]

Speaker, Dale Kirby

I'd be surprised if they appointed as speaker someone who recently switched parties creating a lot of acrimony and hate...usually the speaker is someone viewed as more non-partisan who is well liked in all parties...