Talk Elections

Parliament will be dissolved tomorrow morning with polling day likely to be May 2.

For non-Canucks, I'll compile a list of sources you can use to follow.

Globe and Mail (globeandmail.com): Our equivalent of The Times but more centrist.

Toronto Star (thestar.com): Our equivalent of The Guardian .

National Post (nationalpost.com): Our equivalent of the Telegraph .

ThreeHundredEight.com (threehundredeight.blogspot.com): Canadian equivalent of Nate Silver's 538 blog.

CBC (cbc.ca): self-explanatory.


French


La Presse (cyberpresse.ca) : centre-right, Quebec version of the Globe .
RDS :  Radio-Canada, the French division of the CBC.

Thanks for posting those links, mate!

Thank you. What is the numbers of seats Conservatives need for a majority?

155/308 seats, roughly 40% PV.

     Given that recent polling has shown the Conservatives running about as well as they did last time, this seems like a potentially foolish move on the part of the Liberals. Has there been any significant criticism within the opposition of this move?

Yeah, as in "why now and not in any of the other months between the last election and now"?

Opposition believes contempt of Parliament and the recent slew of corruption/accountability failures with PurgaTories can help them. There's the Bev Oda fraud, the G20 bloated costs, the F-18 bids, 2 prorogations in a row, government refusing to give Parliament the cost of its programs and so forth. And the opposition probably just said that they had enough with Harper practically laughing in their faces and told him to go f himself.

Seems pretty likely the status quo will prevail, which is a waste.

So, yeah, May 2. Harper is going on with his lies.

He's going to campaign hard on the "coalition" and spread his lies about how coalitions are evil illegal things. What a pathological liar.

Yay! I'm going to be in the country for the election (for the first time since 2006).

Though I doubt this will change the Tories' talking points very much, Ignatieff has "categorically" ruled out participating in a coalition.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ignatieff-rules-out-coalition/article1958015/

On another note, are there any good Canadian politics blogs/forums/sites that people follow other than this one? Someone mentioned threehundredeight.com, which is one of my favourites, but I'd like to know if there are any that offer a more qualitative analysis of the parties and the campaign; preferably from a non-hackish perspective.

Ever since the Liberal civil war, they seem to have lost their nerve for internal coups and prefer to use the electorate as their Human Resources Department to dump their leaders. Until they write a new Red Book and make it more than a one-time shot like Chretien did, they can continue cycling through Stornoway. Frankly I'm far more interested in who the next Liberal leader will be: Kennedy or LeBlanc.

There has only been one coalition in Canadian history, which put the senior partner out of contention for the better part of over six decades. Even the other example, Lib-Lab, had the senior partner with the most seats and votes, which the Liberals do not.

While that's more likely than not, it's worth noting that the Canadian electorate can be a fickle thing, particularly during election campaigns.

What are the statistics on governments that lose a vote of confidence and then win the subsequent election? The chances don't seem great if Joe Clark and Paul Martin were any indication. Maybe the Liberals can at least hope that history is on their side?

If I remember correctly, the Conservatives were still polling behind the Paul Martin Liberals when the government fell in 2006.

The important factor is why they lost the vote of no-confidence. It's usually because of unpopular decisions, which should already be reflected in polling. As such, polling is almost certainly a better predictor of results than the means of a government falling, exceptions like 2006 not withstanding.

Discounting Trudeau's engineered 1974 defeat, all those brought down by NCMs have lost. Meighen 1926, Dief 1963, Clark 1979, Martin 2005.

People will eat it up. They do up in northern Ontario, and though everyone hates Harper there, they believe his verbal diarrhea.

Yeah, that's the sad thing about this country. People are stupid.

So this will be the second, and the defeat was also partially engineered by the government here. All the parties wanted an election for different reasons, it's foolish to believe otherwise. The opposition is tired of propping us up, Duceppe doesn't care one way or the other if there's a campaign, and the Liberals again want the electorate, not the caucus, to fire their leader.

It will be funny if voters reward Conservatives with a parliamentary majority on May 3rd -the exact opposite of Liberal hopes when they brought down this government.  

Is there any likelihood of this happening?  

There is a distinct possibility, though I refuse to believe it till I see it. The last time we had four elections in so short a time (1962, 1963, 1965, 1968) the fourth ended in a majority government. Already the PM has explicitly asked for us to be given a majority, letting the word slip once but emphasizing stability. Chretien didn't get his 1997 majority (in the Balkanized '90s) until the last 10 days of the campaign.

The full figures for the last election in 2008 were:
Conservatives 5,208,796 votes (37.66%) winning 143 seats
Liberals 3,627,891 votes (26.23%) winning 76 seats
New Democrats 2,512,880 votes (18.17%) winning 37 seats
Bloc Quebecois 1,379,991 votes (9.98%) winning 50 seats
Green Party 940,294 votes (6.80%) winning 0 seats
Independents 89,387 votes (0.65%) winning 2 seats
Other Parties 72,757 votes (0.53%) winning 0 seats
Conservative lead of 1,580,905 votes (11.43%) but short of an overall majority by 12 seats

In order to get an overall majority, they need a swing from Liberal of 2.32%. The most recent poll suggested there has been a swing of 2% to the Liberals

Depending on what polls are to believed, the Tories are on the cusp of a majority.

Here's where we shape up:
Greens: 0 (no one thinks Elizabeth May will win)
NDP 25-40
BQ 45-55
Liberals 55-75
Tories 145-160

Eugh, I hate how centre-left parties seem to be doing so badly, all over the world.

Whether the Conservatives can win a majority may well depend on how well the BQ does.  If the BQ does poorly, while it would help the liberals even more, the Conservatives could conceivably gain as many as 3 seats in Quebec as a result.  Conversely if the BQ does well, they could cost the Conservatives 1 or 2 seats, plus the nominally independent André Arthur.

Well, according to polling, in Quebec City area, Conservatives are now polling behind BQ, mainly because Conservatives don't want to fund the hockey rink project of Quebec City.

Such blanket statements are never accurate. At best they're true for a small subset of the world.

At any rate, the Liberals aren't really of the left in any sense.

I know that, but if you look at the Canadian party system in a completely black-and-white sense. Oh well, i'd never vote for the Canadian Liberals, i'd just prefer them to the Harper Tories.

Well observed. The similarities go deeper: the first election saw the ruling party reduced from majority to minority rule and the middle two elections saw the former opposition rule with minority governments while the formerly-ruling party squabbled bitterly over its leadership (Diefenbaker and Stanfield).

It's worth remembering, however, that the fourth election saw the ruling party replace its leader for a new, charismatic bachelor named Pierre Trudeau. His eponymous mania, combined with his sangfroid at the St. Jean Baptiste Day riots, won him a majority. Anyone see that happening with Harper?

I don't see that. Harper has exerted so much control over the party that there are no credible challengers to his leadership, and has turned the party into a complete one man show. And none of the CPC frontbenchers spell charisma in any way, shape, or form. To date he has never named a Deputy PM, which is not a healthy sign that he tolerates any dissent within the caucus.

If the election results in a Liberal minority (unlikely now, but who knows), Harper gets turfed. If the election results in a smaller CPC minority, he will probably be forced to step aside in the caucus meetings. But at this stage there is no one to fill the vacuum if he steps aside, and my hunch is that a big part of the party rank and file will tune out of the leadership race and party donations will drop (if they haven't already been banned by court ruling by then).

Such are the risks of turning a party into a one-man personality cult.

What's the absolute best case scenario for the NDP? I take it that even with Layton cashing in on being the most likable federal politician for the past 3-4 years official opposition status is way out of their reach?

That's if you believe the IR poll. There is a good chance that the Grits will win more seats than in 2008 and there is a chance that the Tories will win less seats than in 2008. A more accurate view would be:

Greenies: 0, low chance of 1
NDP: 25-40
Bloc: 40-55
Liberals: 60ish-high 80s/low 90s
Tories: high 130ish-low 160s

Harper's goal seems to be to win a majority without winning over 30% of the pv in Quebec which has, afaik, never happened but which isn't to say can't happen. I fathom Harpy hates Quebec ever since arts cuts 2008/coalition 2008 and certainly his whole "coalition with teh separatist!" doesn't scream Quebec brown-nosing 2006-2008 style.

The talented Éric Grenier calculated 44 seats. I suspect this is an understatement. The NDP can hope for 50-60 seats if there was a real collapse of the Liberal Party - mind you, this would almost certainly result in a 200+ seat majority for the Tories, so it would be a rather Pyrrhic victory. 

http://threehundredeight.blogspot.com/2011/03/february-2011-best-and-worst-case.html

Realistically, I have trouble seeing them gain much more than they have. They might hit 40 seats if the Liberals do badly, but that assumes the Liberals would be worse off now than they were in 2008 under Dion running on the Green Shift. Conversely, their floor is probably around 18-20 seats.

It is out of reach, although there's a chance that Duceppe could become Leader of the Opposition should the Liberals be destroyed.

Would Layton survive a 20-seat loss? Or even any type of losing seats?

Good question. Layton's only returned positive results for the NDP. Having never suffered a loss before (Winnipeg North being a possible exception) it's difficult to gauge how he'd be affected.

I think he's popular enough with the party that he'd be the favourite to win if there was a leadership challenge. But he's 60. There are questions about his health. And Thomas Mulcair wants his job. Kind of a coin toss. And Dippers want to comment?

I have to say, Mulcair looks like an epic leader. Why do so few politicians these days opt for even the most modest of beards?

Their image advisors tell them not to.

Mulcair is an opportunistic egomaniac.

I think most people think that this is Layton's last campaign - regardless of the results. It will be his fourth election, he will have been leader for 8.5 years and its a grueling job...especially when battling cancer and being treated for a hip fracture. The party would never push him out - he is extremely popular and runs well ahead of the party. Whatever the result, people in the NDP will unanimously thin that they did better with him as leader than they would have done without him. He will retire at a time of his choosing and most people think that he wants Mulcair to succeed him.

The latest round of polls has the NDP at 19% - with big gains in Quebec and that would actually be a slight improvement over last election when they had 18%. The NDP also tends to win more seats when the Liberals are doing relatively badly since there are a lot more Liberal/NDP marginals than Conservative/NDP marginals. As things stand now, the NDP would probably gain a couple of seats in BC and has one or two seats that are good chances at pickups in Sask, Ontario, Quebec and in Atlantic Canada. Of course there are also some vulnerable incumbents. If Layton's campaign catches fire and the NDP gets over the 20% mark - who knows what could happen - at this stage its likeliest that they will get a small increase to just over 40 seats. I think Layton would love to get 44 or more seats and beat the best ever NDP seat count of 43 in 1988.

If the NDP can hit 35% in Ontario and Quebec (and that is very unlikely) they would start picking up seats by the bucketfull.

This will be the first Canadian election I've really followed (last year's British election was the first non-U.S. election I followed closely), so I'm looking forward to this.

Thanks to RogueBeaver for the links. :)

It's Canada. They're fine.

Weather you consider the Liberals left or not depends on if you go by their platform, policies, and statements, or weather you go by their governing record.

Perspective is important here- by either metric they're to the left of both US parties.

Paul Martin was not to the left of the Democratic Party's center of gravity. Not by any stretch of the imagination. (Jean Chrétien or Pierre Trudeau, otoh...)

If you were to suggest a combined public-private health system, you'd be called a radical right-winger in Canada, and a radical left-winger in the US. When you take those things out, you see that Martin, and even Chretien, were pretty well moderates, but Trudeau was a socialist.

Quite the opposite. What man on Earth would opt to run for a party that has no history of winning in the province, when he could have just as easily run for the Liberals, and would have worked far less hard to win the seat.

Well, perhaps he really wants to be a party leader, but he's not opportunistic enough to want to be Prime Minister, unless he foresees some cosmic realignment that will make the NDP win an election?

I haven't seen any signs of the NDP gaining seats this election. Most likely there will be some modest losses, meaning that Layton will be out for sure. Mostly because of his health. I for one welcome our new supreme leader, Thomas Mulcair. However, I will probably work on the campaign of Peter Julian's leadership, because I've worked for him on the hill. (rumours have been that he will run as well).

I've seen plenty of signs that the NDP will gain seats - I can rhyme them off - Surrey North, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, Newton-North Delta, North Vancouver Island, Edmonton East, Palliser, Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Parkdale-High Park, Davenport, Gatineau, Dartmouth, South Shore-St. Margarets, St. John's South-Mount Pearl.

I'm not sure what "signs" you need to see that the NDP can and probably will gain seats. Most polls have the party slightly above what it got in the last election and a rising tide raises all ships.

I can also rhyme off a whole bunch of vulnerable NDP seats in a list which might be just as long. Let's stop being hackish and get the head out of the sand and realize that while nothing says the NDP won't gain seats, nothing says the NDP won't lose seats.

Have there been any boundary changes?

No. There should be some by the next election.

I'd never argue otherwise.

Divided support for the Left....*sigh*.

Boundary changes will occur after the 2011 census. The legislation to change the formula to end the under-representation of the faster-growing provinces didn't end up getting passed, so it's still uncertain whether it will get passed in the next parliament in time for the post-census redistribution.

A little surprisingly, both the federalist opposition parties were sort of wishy-washy about the legislation, even though it's clearly in the NDP's interest. There were some very weird statements from some of their members that I thought suggested there was a fight between Mulcair and possibly Layton and the rest of the caucus about it, but they wanted to keep it private.

Edit: Sorry, I realize this was unclear. I meant (Mulcair and possibly Layton) and (the rest of the caucus) as the two sides.

While I wish this were true, the truth is the NDP is likely to not win any of those seats. I'll break them down:

*Surrey North: After Winnipeg North, this is the most likely chance of an NDP pick up. It is a traditional NDP riding. If the NDP runs a good campaign there, they can win it, but Dona Cadman has lots of name recognition and it will be tough- especially with immigrants starting to vote for the Tories.
*Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca - could be an NDP pick up, as it will be an open seat and anything could happen. The NDP did finish a distant 3rd last time, however.
*Newton-North Delta - this was a target in previous elections, but in 2008, the NDP was squeezed into 3rd. Perhaps enough Tory/Liberal vote splitting may have the NDP come up the middle, but it is doubtful.
*North Vancouver Island - this one may be close again, but I see the gap widening, especially now that Catherine Bell won't be running.
*Edmonton East - Same race as 2008. I see the NDP may make some inroads, but not enough to win it.
*Palliser - oh please, Saskatchewan? I've had hopes for a long time to win back some Saskatchewan seats, but I lost faith in that now.
*Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar - see Palliser. SK Premier Brad Wall is very popular right now. It's not a good time to be a dipper in Sask.
*Parkdale-High Park. Nope. Kennedy is way too popular.
*Davenport. Hahahaha. Really?
*Gatineau - this is my wet dream, but a recent poll showed Boivin in a distant 3rd. She will probably finish 2nd... or could even win, but she'll have to work really hard again.
*Dartmouth-Cole Harbour - Nope. I've been hoping for a change here since Wendy Lill retired in 2004. Savage is too popular, and with the NDP falling provincially, there will be few if any gains in the province
*South Shore-St. Margaret's. Another Earle vs. Keddy fight that will be just like the others. In fact, the gap will probably widen some more.
*St. John's South-Mt. Pearl - same race as last time. The NDP could win if the Tories which will do better in NL this time steal enough Liberal votes. But, I think most Tories voted NDP last time, so that's not going to happen.

And seats where the NDP may lose?
Welland, Sault Ste. Marie & Burnaby-Douglas are some good bets to start with.

Shouldn't NDP organizers be less depressing? :P

Provincially, the NDP won it with more than 50% of the vote, didn't they? I'm really hoping that there's a good party structure there that will help the NDP defend it, although if not, vote splitting could see it go Tory and help gain a majority. I've sort of assumed that with it being provincially held, if the incumbent is half decent, there should be some consolidation of the NDP vote there.

In 2008 the popular vote in BC was Tories 45%, NDP 26%, Libs 19%. Most polls now show the Tories falling to about 40-41ish and the NDP rising to 28-29ish (bear in mind that the NDP took 29% in BC in the '06 election. If the Conservative/NDP gap in BC goes from 19 points to about 10 or 11 points - seats WILL be gained.

Party workers are usually glass entirely empty people. It's usually better that way as well...


Incumbent provincially is massively - absurdly even - personally popular.

Manna from Heaven for Harper.  :D   

Indeed, Peter Kormos is very popular. Not to say Welland isn't NDP friendly, as it has a NDP pockets- and the candidate in 2008 was not the same as the 2006 candidate (he lost the nomination in '08 and ran as an independent). So, there is a definite basis there.


Well, in the past some of my few failed predictions have come from over estimating the NDP, so I've tried a different approach ;)

While we're briefly on the topic of possible NDP pickups, the big northern SK riding is a possibility - the 2006/2008 results are irrelevant, since they've got the Chief of the Saskatchewan Federation of Indian Nations as their candidate instead of the unknown dude they had the last couple of rounds. (Turnout patterns and internal Liberal/NDP politics up there are very hard to predict from the outside, though).

Interesting. A quick look at electionpredictions.org indicates that the last three predictions have been for the NDP. Not a riding that I've thought about lately. Will have to keep my eye on it.

FYI, the "unknown white guy" you refer to as having been the NDP candidate in northern Sask was actually First Nation - though i agree not very well-known.

Polls ?

The NDP will gain seats if the Liberals are weak, and the Liberals are currently weak. When it comes clear that Harper will win a majority, people will be "free" to switch to the party they "truly" support. Some of the NDP's best elections have been during Majority governments, because there is no pressure to vote for Party A to keep Party B out.

oh sorry - I'll fix the earlier post, thanks.

     I found them on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_in_the_Canadian_federal_election,_2011), though unfortunately no provincial-level polling.

Several new polls today:

Harris-Decima: Cons 38% (+4), Libs 24% (-4), NDP 19% (+2) and Greens 7% (-2)
Forum: Cons 41%, Libs 24%, NDP 19%
Abacus: Cons 36% (-2%), Libs 27% (+1), NDP 20% (+1)

There have now been 5 polls out since the government fell and all have had the NDP at 19% or 20% - which would be almost an all-time high

Will the fact that Liberal leader Ignatieff spent more than three decades away from Canada come back to haunt him in this campaign?

He was a university professor teaching mostly in Europe and the U.S.

Already featured on Tory adverts. Not pleasant, even if it's mildly amusing to see the leader of a nationalist party on the wrong side of a base appeal to nationalism.


He was also a late-night arts tv presenter on the BBC! So strange to see him as a senior politician. Whatever next? First Minister Wark?

Dippers in the 18%-21% range is consistent with practically all of the later 2008 polling (http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/polls-2008.html). 


Caveat Emptor on provincial-level polling.  In past cycles, provincial "polls" usually were just subsamples of the national polling.  MoEs for most provinces were notoriously large - sometimes double digits for Atlantic Canada and Western Canada, if B.C. wasn't included.  Even B.C.'s MoEs were often high single digits.  Ontario's subsample was often large enough to draw some conclusions, and Quebec had one or two Quebec-only polls, IIRC.   Atlantic Canada also might have had one true regional poll, but it wasn't run frequently enough to determine trends.

     I thought that it was odd that there weren't any provincial-level polls there, but that explains it. It seems that sub-national polling, let alone polling of individual legislative races, is a mostly American phenomenon.

Each PDF file breaks down the poll. You never see a national-only poll, at least, in 26 years of my life, I've never ever seen one.

The trouble is that regional breakdowns are often worse than useless... but that you have to look at them anyway wrt Canada for obvious reasons.


It's a financial issue, mostly.

Saw one of them when I was in Canada. My group was thoroughly bemused by the idea that the Conservative Party was making those attacks.

Keep in mind that the Ignatieff campaign is more a question of trust than a question of loyalty. Ignatieff could have fought off terrorists in the Congo for thirty years and still be subject to the same claims*. This is why the Conservative slogan for the campaign is "Ignatieff: he didn’t come back for you."
Steven Harper, however, is being portrayed as a diligent patriot, and Ignatieff is the anti-Harper; therefore you see Conservative activists falling into a bonus false equivalency.

*Cf. Romeo Dallaire?


Let's take a look at the battlegrounds of this election.

The 905:  These are the suburbs of Toronto, named for their area code. Less socially liberal and cosmopolitan than their downtown counterparts. The Progressives Conservatives rode into power on these ridings' coattails. The Conservative Party has hanged onto them nicely. But the Liberals crave these ridings, because they're a hell of a lot easier to take than Western Canada. These ridings went for Chretien during his majority years, and swiftly went to Harper in 2006. In the greater context, the Liberals' results in this area will show whether they still maintain their big-tent appeal.
Newfoundland & Labrador:  Results from 2008 can be deceiving. Canada's easternmost province only swept the Liberals into power because Danny Williams--then the most popular premier in Canada--launched a "Anything But Conservative" campaign over equalization payments. But Williams was still leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, and after his retirement the Newfies may drop a few seats for the Tories.
Toronto and Vancouver:  Harper wants the immigrants to vote for him. Pundits are quick to note that these immigrants are "socially conservative", but I think the switch is more superficial. Immigrants have lived through Harper for five years, and, not caring to note the subtle nuances, wish to keep a steady hand on the wheel. This can only be good news for the Conservatives, who have seen their MPs settle deeper and deeper into these cities. Vancouver is by far the easier of the two, with one riding - Vancouver South - settled due to a 20-vote margin.
Quebec:  This is not exactly a battleground, for the Conservatives are trying to gain a majority without Quebec. The Bloc Quebecois, however, is hoping to cement their stranglehold on the province by gobbling up some MPs. Liberal Justin Trudeau - Pierre Trudeau's son - is facing stiff competition from the Bloc, as will NDP Thomas Mulcair. Conservative seats in Quebec City will be targeted after money for an Arena there were taken away.

But I suspect all this speculation to be naught, since it's been three days and there has been little buzz. I fear a Germany '09 is in the making.

I think the most likely outcome is a result more or less status quo.

There are a couple reasons to believe a Conservative majority may be possible.

1) - There are some signs voter turnout might be a bit better this election as the attitude "What the %^$% another election?" gets some traction - this might help the Conservatives.

2) - NDP leader Jack Layton (even though I personally think he comes across as a sleazy used car salesman) has a LOT stronger personal ratings than the liberal leader (Who has horrid personal favorability, trust, etc...)  To the degree that this widens the Conservative/Liberal gap (or narrows the Liberal/NDP gap, depending on how you want to look at it),  the Conservatives do better.  ie if the popular vote is Cons 40%, Libs 25, NDP 20, the conservatives get more seats than if the Cons still get 40% but the Libs and NDP carve up their 45% say 30%, 15%

3) Both sides have an issue that is semi-working - The Coalition mantra of an aloof, arrogant Harper has gained a bit of traction, but so has the Conservative mantra of a power hungry coalition desperate to do anything it takes to reach for the brass ring...  We will see which narrative takes hold....

In 2008, as the following graphic illistrates, the Conservatives also underpolled in every single poll, as well as having the Conservative/Liberal gap understated, so the polls, while a guide, have ben less than perfect in Canada.

()

The "NDP best case" is really why Layton forced the election.

Ignatieff is so tragically flawed that a liberal decimation with the NDP rising as the "true opposition party" (ie setting up a two federalist party scenario, with the NDP as one of the final two...) is possible...  Not likely, but possible..

It would represent an historic breakthrough for the NDP.. I could happen if Ignatieff  were to seriously frack up his campaign.....

A clear and well stated point upon which you are correct.

I don't see why all talk must always be that this will be an epic Liberal rout, that the Liberals are doomed and so forth. Sure, Ignatieff is a poor leader and the odds aren't good. But Ignatieff is probably a marginally better leader than Dion - who also had sh**tpoor leadership numbers and when expectations are so low anything marginally positive can boost you up. Remember 1988.

At any rate, a Tory majority would be awful for this country; but if the people are retarded enough to go for it, then maybe the idiots should suffer the consequences and live with it afterwards. But for those who aren't idiots, it will be awful.

Really hard to see it happen...

The BQ, baring some really unforeseen game changer, is unlikely to get under 50 in Quebec, and in the absence of an near total Liberal meltdown, it pretty hard to paint a scenario where the NDP gets over 50...

Speaking as a Quebecer, the BQ will pick up Brossard and Portneuf, which leaves them at 49. Duceppe's top priority is trying to unseat Trudeau in Papineau, though Trudeau will (thankfully) win again.

The poll numbers are not budging for Iggy nationally, and there is no animating issue to this campaign, all tax credits, mudslinging and spreading some corporate wealth around (to paraphrase POTUS) to students. He will lose 5-10 seats.

There are a few, but they aren't very good. Our districts are much smaller than in the US.

I don't know about you, but it appears Harper's excellent tendency to shoot himself in the foot whenever things are going well has been proven again. As soon as the election was called he immediately accused the opposition of plotting to form a coalition (instead of doing the safe and sensible thing, which is to focus on the economy). This issue might be coming back to bite him with accusations of his own coalition attempts. Expect the Liberals and NDP to seize this case and use it build their theme of a government of "contempt".

To be fair to Canada, even if the Tories do win a majority, it'll be with something like 55 to 60% of the country voting against them.

...and, of course, the Canadian electorate is a remarkably volatile thing. I mean, even the volatility during campaigns is real, unlike here.

Which isn't to say that the Tories aren't the favourites to win (and maybe win outright?), but a foregone conclusion this is not.

But with the NDP and Libs presumably splitting the non-tory vote outside Quebec (perhaps in it too), isn't it virtually impossible for the tories not to have the most seats?

How can the NDP and Libs possibly make the case that (if the worst the Tories can do is form a minority gov't)...that they should be offered the chance to hold government...would the BQ really be a suitable ally either in coalition or for supply?

Per the Montreal Gazette (http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Liberals+facing+rout+Quebec+results+poll+stand/4524447/story.html), the most recent Quebec polling is downright disastrous for the Liberals:

Leger Marketing:
Bloc: 39%
Conservatives: 22%
Liberals 18%
NDP: 16%

CROP:
Bloc: 38%
Conservatives: 23%
NDP: 20%
Liberals: 11%

Leger's poll was a subsample of a larger national poll.  CROP's poll was Quebec-only.  CROP's poll also shows the Tories holding their own in the Quebec City region despite opposing federal funding for a new hockey arena, trailing the Bloc by 3.

I've seen the Tories trailing in Quebec City, and I see them losing a few seats there. I like the CROP poll. If the NDP is at 20% in Quebec... wow...

Well, that is an interesting thing, not only saw in those polls. In general, since a few months, NDP polling in Quebec depends much on the pollster.

Federal polling, Quebec-subsample: Around 14%
Quebec polling, federal voting question (Léger Marketing and CROP): Around 20%

Why? Does asking provincial voting intention first is raising NDP votes?
It doesn't seem quite logic.

You live in Outremont, right? What are things like there so far? the rest of the island?

NDP often polls well but if you check 308 it doesn't translate into seats. They'll keep Mulcair's seat and that's it.

Re contempt: polls show that the economy and healthcare are by far the most important issues. It doesn't poll well outside the Hill-verse. 62% think the economy trumps ethics, so once the PM starts discussing the economy the Liberals can keep prattling on about the irrelevant issue.

This thread is turning into a real hackfest.

Using a simple "uniform shift" model in Quebec based on the last election:

The CROP Leger poll projects:

BQ = 51
Tories 10
Dippers 2
Grits 12

The Leger Poll CROP projects:

BQ = 55 (+5)
Tories 12 (+2)
Dippers 6 (+5)
Grits 2 (-14)

The Liberals at 11% seems... deeply unlikely......

I regret breaking the hackfest, but here's Nanos' poll. It's the first serious reliable poll out there since EKOS/HD.

Purgatories 38.4
Libs 28.7
NDP 19.6
BQ 9.1
GRN 4.1

Nanos was best in 2006, but Angus-Reid performed best in 2008.

For the (tiny) bit it is worth...

Punching the Nanos numbers into a regional uniform shift model suggests..

Tories:    148
Grits:        76
Bloq:         50
Dippers:    34

Why are we having an election again?

Nanos was (scary) accurate in 2006, out by a fair bit in 2008,

Why are you having an election again...is there a serious chance that tories wouldn't be the largest party (out right majority or plurality) in the commons?

How would it work where they wouldn't be asked to form the government...and how stable/viable would that situation be?

In theory....

Tradition in Canada (indeed the whole Commonwealth) is that The Governor General asks the leader of the party with the most seats to form the Government... the GG could, at least in theory, ask somebody else....

There is also precedent (not in Canada but other British Style democracies) for a so called vote of "Constructive Confidence" where multiple parties vote to create a government out of multiple parties...

In theory... The Grits, Dippers, and Bloq could do this.

In 1980 the Grits under Trudeau and the NDP under Broadbent formed a defacto coalition government though it was never "officially" a coalition.

So, you are right, Hashemite, so, I'll try to not be an hack, even if I'm member of a party, now.

Vorlon, I think you switched Léger and CROP in your numbers.

Nanos' poll seems to be quite in line with other polls, i.e. status quo.

Earl: If you look subsambles of NDP numbers since last elections in Quebec polls, the progress (not saw by national polls) is in Quebec City and outside Montreal and Quebec RMA. So, "rural" Quebec. But, sub-samples, so caution.

But  that could be possible, I know people in my native area which would consider voting for them in the good circumstances. Which is totally new, there.

So, yes, I'm in Outremont. Situation there is a race between Mulcair (NDP) and Martin Cauchon, former Justice Minister of Chrétien (Liberal). BQ and Conservatives are not in position of winning.

So, Montreal Island.

As usual, I would say than most races are boring. Check Papineau (Trudeau against Barbot(BQ, former MP)), Ahuntsic (BQ against Liberals), Lac-Saint-Louis (Anglo suburban, hyper-wealthy seat, on West Island. Conservatives are running Larry Smith, senator and former president of the Montreal Alouettes, a football club.). Jeanne-Le Ber, perhaps, I don't know. For an NDP gain in Quebec, I would check more in Gatineau or Hull-Aylmer (??). With a big question mark, especially for the latter.

I follow more my native region, Abitibi.

In Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the BQ incumbent, Marc Lemay will be reelected. NDP is nobody yet are are irrelevent there. Conservatives are running a 26 year old candidate, a political advisor to Pierre Corbeil, a provincial minister in the impopular provincial government (and Pierre Corbeil's riding is in the part of Abitibi which is in the other federal riding, so, wrong area). Liberals are running an unknown woman, which said than she will run a new style campaign, on social networks, without signs or an electoral office (that is code for saying "I have no funds at all, the party doesn't care about that unwinnable riding").

In Abitibi-Baie James-Nunavik-Eeyou (ABJNE), my native riding and the one where I'll move back during the campaign, there is a 3-way race, for now.

The Bloc incumbent, Yvon Lévesque, running again, at 70 years old.
The Conservative candidate, which finished 2nd last time, the mayor of Senneterre, Jean-Maurice Matte. Last election, Harper went to the main city in the riding during the election and said he could be named minister if elected and Harper visited the riding twice in February-March this year. A clear target, I think.
The Liberal candidate, Léandre Gervais, a guy which founded a powerful engineering firm in Abitibi. The business people in the area should side with him, he is well-known, too. Could be difficult with voters, because of all the scandals of engineering firms funding illegally the provincial Liberal party.
Again, NDP is irrelevent, unless the rumors of a star candidate in the riding comes true, this time (there was some in 2006 and 2008). According to Elections Canada database (and credits to Pundits' Guide website for finding that), they named a sociology teacher in Chibougamau, in the North as their candidate in January, but never notified the media, which acts as there is no candidate, for now.
For now, as the Liberal candidate is stronger than last time, I forecast a BQ win, but tightly.

And I would like to signal to NDP and Conservatives than a good website has a candidate list! Those parties don't, it is quite bad. By the way, the French NDP website doesn't even seem to have an MP list.

I understand that the GG could, ask another party/coalition to form the government even if they don't have the most seats.  Its hard seeing the tories finishing 2nd or worse in overall seat numbers.

I just mean, either with a tory minority government for another period, or some sort of Liberal government with NDP/Bloc support on supply/confidence motions or even in coalition...how stable is that going to be?  As long as the bloc takes enough seats to make it virutally impossible for the tories or the libs (or libs/NDP) from having a majority...and there isn't a major shift in voting patterns (realignment/scandal) whats an election going to solve?  How is it going to usher in a government that can serve out its full term?

That's first-past-the-post for you... I don't know about Canada, but the government never winning a majority of the popular vote is hardly ever an issue in the UK. Even Blair and Thatcher missed 50% by a fair bit.

PS: The NDP is also heavily targetting Hull-Aylmer where they are running the former President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada in a riding that is full of low level federal civil servants right across the river from Parliament Hill. If there is an NDP breakthrough in Quebec, Hull-Aylmer will be the next shoe to drop after Gatineau (and holding Outremont of course)

They came true, finally.
Romeo Saganash, a important guy in the Cree community.
To me, that clearly kills the Liberal candidate odds of winning, since I suppose he will rack the Native vote this time, while that vote is overwhelmingly Liberal, usually.

Nanos day 2

Purgatories 39.1
Liberal 32.7
NDP 15.9
BQ 8.7
Green 3.7

Very good for the Liberals, no? How long has it been since the gap between them and the Tories was this close?

Hell, that looks worse and worse.

If they're doing daily polls, then the numbers will bounce around wildly.

Likely just noise - Tory gap actually grew in Ontario.

Projected Seats         
Tories   Grits   Dippers   Bloq
6           23   3           0
10           18   2   45
64           27   15   0
40           11   5   0
20           11   5   0
1           1   1   0
141   91   31   45

It's actually a three day tracking poll. so daily changes are based upon 1/3rd of sample - ie Daily sampe in Ontario is about 90 or so, Quebec 75 or so,  Atlantic Canada about 30 or so...

There is also the issue of not being demographically/age balanced within each subsample.

400 a day is barely enough to balance the sample nationally each day, but no where near enough for each region.

For example, Ontario may have too may men one day while Quebec might have too few.. the next day, the balance may shift, which will, in addition to (huge) random error, also cause substantial systemic error regionally.

We will (of course) look at the regional samples cause we are all junkies, but they need to be taken with a megaton of salt...

I think you're underestimating the size of Nanos' Ontario and Quebec daily samples.  If he's polling 400 people per day, Ontario's should be about 120, and Quebec's 100.  FWIW, Nanos' Prairies (which includes Alberta) should have a daily sample size of about 80, British Columbia about 60 and Atlantic Canada around 40.  

All are far too small to reach any real conclusions based on one-day trends.  Heck, even the three-day samples have regional MoEs in the 5.2% to 10.0% range - better than some other pollsters who poll 1000 or less voters nationwide, but still relatively high.  Atlantic Canada and B.C.'s MoEs are too high to make even three-day trends anything close to reliable.  Pollsters who separate Alberta from the rest of the Prairies generally get real crap subsamples in both instead of mixed results that make little sense unless unpacked.

Edited to add: I was looking at an earlier poll when I came up with the numbers.  Nanos might be polling less than 400 per day - it's hard to tell.   From this link (http://www.nanosresearch.com/election2011/20110330-BallotE.pdf), it appears Nanos is only polling about 313 per day, which makes your numbers closer to correct.  In any event, every subsample is far too small to reach any short-term trend conclusions.

I love this thing:

http://predictor.hillandknowlton.ca/predictor/

Is it accurate?

Though this article does not say so explicitly, it suggests that a Conservative parliamentary majority would be good for the Canadian left, bringing greater pressure to bear on the Liberal, New Democratic, and Green parties to unite in a merger 'formal and definitive' the way the various parties of the right eventually fused to form the Conservative Party after more than a decade of Liberal electoral dominance:

Defection, debate challenge may signal seismic shift in Canadian politics (http://www.vancouversun.com/news/thewest/Analysis+Defection+debate+challenge+signal+seismic+shift+Canadian/4538662/story.html)
 
By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News
March 31, 2011 4:26 PM

Erstwhile NDP candidate Ryan Dolby's defection to his Liberal rival in London, Ont., on Wednesday — an apparent bid to prevent vote-splitting and thus defeat the riding's Conservative candidate — was cheered by Liberals but has prompted accusations of betrayal from the jilted NDP and "coalition" from the Conservatives.

But on a day when Green party leader Elizabeth May also faced exclusion from the televised leaders' debate, and NDP leader Jack Layton was left out of a proposed one-on-one showdown between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, could Wednesday's campaign highlights portend a much deeper, even seismic shift in the Canadian political landscape?

Eight years after the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada ended a long and bruising battle to "unite the right" and set the stage for this election's potential Harper majority, Dolby's shocking bolt and the proposed narrowing of debate lineups — each storyline raising the spectre of consolidation on the centre-left side of the country's political spectrum — offered a glimpse of what may be the ultimate solution for so-called "progressive" Canadians aiming to halt the rise of the right.

No. Swings rarely work and work even less in Canada. If I recall correctly, this is from the same thing which predicted Mario Dumont would lose his own seat in 2008. So, yeah.

My own personal hand-made predictor: http://www.ridingbyriding.ca/ElectoMatic/ELECTOMATIC.xlsx
is accurate.

The Liberals are on the centre of the Canadian political spectrum, so I don't know why anyone thinks the NDP and the Greens should merge them.  I would be in favour of a green-NDP merger, however. Even bring on the BQ, eventually.

Not correct actually.

Nanos samples about 400 perple a day but uses relatively mild screening questions to sift the sample down to "committed voters" - "very" roughly his equivalent of a "likely voter"

Fot the last two days these screens have reduced the original sample of about 1200 people down to 939 and 940 people respectively.

In Ontario, the three day samples were 279 and 281 persons respectively (or about 93 or 94 people a day)

In Quebec the sampes were 233 and 224, of 75 people give or take.

Only something on the order of 77% or so are deemed "committed" - hence the difference between the reported sample sizes.

The daily numbers are pretty well meaningless.... The trend line over a number of days might sort of kinda be a bit useful.. maybe.....

Nanos also has issues with sample balancing within each day.

He reports a leadership Index which he reports out of each daily 400 person sample (ie each day is a new 1 day poll)

On Monday Harper beat Ignatiuk by 84.8 to 43.4......  On Wednesday Harper won by 105.3 to 46.2

The gap expanding by 50% in two days seems... unlikely.....

Nanos also had a... not great year in 2008... though in 2006 he nailed it.....

Uniform shift models "sorta kinda" work - They will get you in the right general ball park, but they are no replacement for riding by riding common sense.

Day 3

Conservative   39.4%   +0.3   
Liberal   31.7%   -1.0   
NDP   16.1%   +0.2   
BQ   8.5%   -0.2   
Green   4.4%   +0.7   

What happened to the NDP ? They were at 20% not so far ago...

BREAKING - Election cancelled http://www.ridingbyriding.ca/2011/04/01/737

I don't trust any "breaking news" today. :P

EKOS IVR poll

NDP: 17.2 (+3.0)
Cons: 36.9 (+1.6)
Lib: 26.2 (-1.9)
Grn: 8.7 (-1.9)
BQ: 8.5 (-1.2)

The NDP is perfectly capable of simultaneously polling at 16% and 20%. However, they have been polling down on their 2008 numbers pretty much constantly for the past couple of years with only the occasional poll putting them above 18%.

Beware of statistical noise.  Tracking polls have a lot of it.  There's not a ton of difference between 16% and 20% - unless the trend continues for a number of days.

The Greens are basically Liberals that don't like the color red, though.

I hate this sh**thole of a country.

Conservative   41.3%   +1.9   
Liberal   30.3%   -1.4   
NDP   16.0%   -0.1   
BQ   8.5%   NC   -
Green   3.7%   -0.7   

Seriously, how can people be so dumb? We're not Sicily.

If Stephen Harper's Conservative Party wins a majority in Parliament this year, what would be the deadline by which he would have to call the next election?  2015?  2016? 

Presumably 2015, which would mean four years of reactionary incompetent far-right governance. But if the idiots who live here want that, maybe they deserve to be screwed over.

Seriously. The NDP is not in majority territory, after all :P ;)

Wait... I don't live in Toronto, so I've never watched it, but does that mean CP24 is right wing in anyway?  Might explain why Rob Ford was elected.

Speaking of right wing networks, the countdown to Sun TV is approaching. The Sun keeps advertising it with "news" "articles".

New Ekos poss also has Tories flirting with numbers  where a majority might begin.

we shall see, but Nanos and Ekos more or less agree on trend lines, both showing a modest shift to the Conservatives..

Ekos, as a technical note is more or less Rasmussen in that they use AVR technology.  Unlike Rasmussen they DO call cellphones and their dual frame sample actually seems to work pretty good

It is (likely) just a happy moment in time, but Dual Frame IVR seems to generate pretty decent probability samples (at least in Canada) at least for now.

Nanos today (complete with equal opportunity hack labels opposite of what you're used to seeing on this website):

Conservatives	40.7%	-0.6
Liberals	29.4%	-0.9
NDP	16.9%	+0.9
Bloc Quebecois	8.0%	-0.5
Greens	4.0%	+0.3

   

Edited: I've successfully made my point.

---

Boardbashi comment: that's nice. Please don't do it again.

The regional samples are all over the map.

Getting much closer in Ontario, but Conservatives surging just about everywhere else.

The top line numbers on Nanos and the trendlines basically agree with the Ekos polling.

Ekos is using a much larger sample of about 3000 or so and as a result the regional breakouts are less like to be statistical noise.

Of course, the Greens are more "Where Moderate Heroes go to throw their votes away".

So far I'm not really impressed with Harper's campaign. Iggy on the other hand is doing quite well, in my humble opinion. Layton's campaign seems pretty generic

[/ end of useless outsider observations]

I wouldn't trust national polls or polling on the Bloc. Plus, I don't see a reason for them to be suddenly dropping off. Would be interested if Leger or CROP does a poll of just Quebec, though.

Everybody grow up please. No infractions will be dealt out as that isn't how I like doing things, but when I'm next online posts will be moderated and/or deleted unless already altered. Thanks/diolch.

God, I don't hope anybody actually reported this? Megasilly.

No, but I think Al's right in preemptively preventing this thread from revolving into a fest of partisan name-calling.

I've effectively made my point and edited my original post.  It already was a fest of partisan name-calling, largely against one party only - something I was getting sick of seeing.

Canadians split (54-46 in favor) on the idea of a NDP-Liberal coalition government: http://www.globalnews.ca/story.html?id=4545230 (http://www.globalnews.ca/story.html?id=4545230)

I'd like to see the question wording.  A NDP-Liberal coalition government is something that's totally different than a coalition that includes or needs the support of the Bloc Quebecois to govern - and I suspect you'd get different results depending on how the question is asked.

Note also that this was an Ipsos internet poll, with all the usual caveats about internet polling.

Somebody on the door to door run told me he was voting only because he was pissed with Harper's lies on coalitions. One of my profs as well.

The Ipsos Internet poll claims only 38% believe it when Iggy's says he would not form a coalition.  Well, at least to the extent an Internet poll is credible in the first place, I suppose.

I saw that poll the other day in the paper. Needless to say, I was quite surprised. But, I mostly read the Sun (not out of choice, usually), and it tries to avoid anything that would support anybody but the Tories.

Good, the Conservative finally put a candidate list online. Even Green Party has one.

NDP is still waiting, I find that unprofessional.

I refuse to touch either of this city's newspapers. Metro and 24hours tend to of far more worth (as is The Fulcrum).

True. In Montreal, Metro and 24Heures are good newspapers (even if 24Heures belongs to Sun Media)

By the way, Sun Media, owner of Sun News (a canadian version of Fox News, which will be lauuched this month) wasn't conservative in the beginning. It belongs to Quebecor Media.

It was independantist, like the founder (the father of the current boss) was. He was quite respectable and liked by its employees, unlike the current one, which is some neoliberal slime.

(And I should stop dissing Quebecor, they own my Internet provider, too.)

Today's Nanos - Tory domination:

Conservative	42.3%	+1.6
Liberal	28.4%	-1.0
NDP	16.4%	-0.5
BQ	8.0%	NC    -
Green	3.8%	-0.2

   

Slightly off topic I suppose, but is any party talking about electoral reform of any sort, campaigning on it at all? Do Canadians even care about the shortcomings of their FPTP system?

I know the Conservatives are talking about abolishing the public campaign finance system, but I don't think any but the smaller parties (NDP and Greens) would want to move to proportional representation at this point.

Have any polls asked for the second choice of voters?  I'd be interested in seeing how NDP, Green and Bloc Q voters would go.  My guess is NDP and Green would go 80-20 for Liberals over Conservatives, and Bloc Q a little less pro Grits.  I realize this is a totally theoretical issue, but with AV possibly coming into force in the UK, an interesting question nonetheless.

Not just a theoretical issue- second preferences can also relevant for tactical voting.

Yes, most pollsters do this.

Conservatives don't really like the idea of having a 2nd option, but many would vote Liberal. The other parties (Greens, Libs, Bloc) usually second preference the NDP, while NDPers tend to second preferences the  Liberals.

What's even more important than the daily national tracking poll are the numbers in two key provinces that Conservatives must do really well in if they are to claim the majority:

()

and

()

Both from the Globe/CTV/Nanos poll, in the Globe and Mail article (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/regional-poll-numbers-could-turn-over-a-lot-of-seats-for-harper/article1966649/?from=sec368).  

The polls are very contradictory. Nanos shows a big Tory lead, but Harris Decima just came out with a poll showing just a 7 point margin C35L28N17 - which would mean nowhere near a majority!

One poll has the Tories going down and the Liberals going up. Another shows the exact reverse. The remainder are too rare to quantify.

Nanos' daily tracking makes them appear to be the top pollsters above all others, when in fact they haven't been the top pollster since 2006.

Anyways, Nanos' poll for today now sez:
CPC 39.8 (-2.5)
LPC 30.2 (+1.8)
NDP 16.5 (+0.1)
BQ 8.3 (+0.3)
GRN 4 (+0.2)

Its kind of silly to even play the game of "top pollster" - in polling you're only ever as good as your last pre-election poll. Its really luck more than anything else that determines who ends up being closest to the final results.

Today's Nanos shows little change, with Dippers moving most:

Conservative	39.7%	-0.1
Liberal	29.9%	-0.3
NDP	17.4%	+0.9
BQ	8.3%	NC    -
Green	3.8%	-0.2

Angus-Reid (accordinc to "La Presse" website) (internet poll, but they had the best result for Federal 2008 and Quebec 2007) (n=2031)

Conservatives: 38%
Liberals: 27%
NDP: 21%

Quebec sub-sample (n=558)

Bloc: 34%
NDP: 24%
Conservatives: 19%
Liberals: 18%

Honestly, I never saw polls being all over the place like that.
Usually, they all say the same thing.
Not this time, they seem confused.

NDP seems quite too high in the poll, especially in Quebec, but, could be true, consdering they literally flood Quebec TV with their ads (which is a thing they never did before, ever).

And still the phenomenon than polls with a big sample in Quebec seeing much higher NDP results than those with smaller samples. Strange and nor normal at all.

Others parties are having quite normal results.

What seems pretty confirmed is that the Greenies will do quite badly. Nanos has them at 3-4%, but they don't, iirc, poll them like the others. Other pollsters have them in the 6-8% range. Considering they overpoll by 1-2% in those other polls, it seems pretty clear that they'll take under their 2008 levels.

All of this because May has turned the party into a Elect Me Party at the expense of all others.

Amusing: Hec Clouthier (he of the fedora) is running as an independent in his old seat.

Next Nanos - not much change.

Conservative	39.6%	-0.1
Liberal	30.4%	+0.5
NDP	17.2%	-0.2
BQ	8.3%	NC    -
Green	3.2%	-0.6

(3 days ending April 6)

Friday Nanos - Dippers Dip:

Conservative	40.6%	+1.0
Liberal	31.1%	+0.7
NDP	14.9%	-2.3
BQ	8.7%	+0.4
Green	3.4%	+0.2

(3 days ending April 7)

     That's the worst result the tracking poll has shown for the NDP so far by about a full percent. Probably a bad sample, though I'm interested to see what it looks like three days from now.

The most recent poll from each company; if already reported here it's in italics.

EKOS: Con 36, Lib 28, NDP 17, Greenies 9, BQ 9
Nanos: Con 41, Lib 31, NDP 15, BQ 9, Greenies 3
Forum Research: Con 38, Lib 26, NDP 20, Greenies 9, BQ 8
Environics: Con 38, Lib 25, NDP 20, BQ 8, Greenies 8
Angus Reid: Con 38, Lib 27, NDP 21, BQ 8, Greenies 6
Harris-Decima: Con 35, Lib 28, NDP 17, BQ 10, Greenies 8
Leger: Con 37, Lib 26, NDP 18, BQ 10, Greenies 8

Figures rounded, because I can.

Interesting. Well, if the sign war is any indication in my riding, Paul Dewar will win. He's got maybe 80% of the signs on residential property in my neighbourhood. Albeit, I live in an NDP-friendly part of the riding. 10% of the signs are Liberal, and there's a few Greens and Tory signs.

Meanwhile in Ottawa South, I've only seen Liberal signs there on residential property, but I know we have signs up, because I'm working on the campaign (from a distance). Our signs have Arabic on them :)

()

...and now you can add one more to your list as Ipsos just released a poll: Con 41%, Lib 26%, NDP 19%, BQ 8%, Green 4%

All these polls seem to confirm the Conservatives have an 8 to 10 point lead over the Liberals.

Is this an indication the Conservatives could possibly be in a good position to win a majority?

Thoughts?

Two ridings in Montreal do have polls done of them:

Lac-Saint-Louis: Lib 46%, Con 26%, NDP 12%, Green 8%, BQ 7%
Outremont: NDP 47%, Lib 27%, BQ 14%, Con 7%, Green 5%

Obviously the record of constituency poll is bad just about everywhere, etc, etc, etc.

The margins are large enough to be significant.

National polls are meaningless in Canada, it all depends on where that support is coming from, and by that, I mean Ontario.

Excellent

I'm not sure what makes you say that. We don't tend to see all that many riding polls in Canada - but when they are done - they tend to quite accurate.

Not really. There were a number a few years back showing the NDP leading in random Quebec ridings. They are only good so long as you add 10 points for fuzz.

Have a look at the slew of riding polls (mostly in QC) in 2008.

What sort of Arabs are there in Ottawa South?

Voter preferences in Quebec may be more fluid than in the rest of Canada.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=6322728

The US should follow suit and ensure that the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates don't interfere with the MLB playoffs

You say that as if baseball was still our national sport.  It's been gridiron football for a long time now.  MLB is on par with the NBA these days, with the ratings for the finals between the two depending on what the matchup is.

Didn't the Australian debate between Gillard and Abbott get moved last year because it interfered with Masterchef...?

Yes.  Also, Obama's 2010 State of the Union was scheduled to avoid a conflict with the season premiere of Lost.

Lebanese, mostly. And, they've been here for a while. Think Paul Anka :)

Does anyone know if the election will be on any channel in the US?

News channels will probably mention the winner after results are declared; I suppose there might be more coverage in news markets that border Canada.

If you really want to watch election news live, though, I'd suggest you stream a Canadian news channel from their website.

I watched it live on CSPAN 3 last go round... been planning to do the same this time. Let's hope.

C-SPAN has also shown the debates in the past, or at least the English one - though perhaps tape-delayed.  The English language debate is this Tuesday.  The French language debate has been moved up to Wednesday to avoid a conflict with a Montreal Canadiens playoff game on Thursday.  If C-SPAN does not show the debate, it will likely be streamed on cpac.ca, Canada's C-SPAN equivalent.

IIRC, CPAC has streamed its election night coverage in the past.  But I can't remember when it began, since it's illegal to release results from eastern Canada in provinces where polling is still ongoing.

Today's Nanos:

Conservative	39.5%	-1.0
Liberal	31.6%	-0.1
NDP	14.7%	+1.5
BQ	8.1%	-1.1
Green	4.8%	+0.8

(3 days ending April 9)

Trends are from yesterday, which I forgot to post - though I guess you can easily figure it out from the trend.  The race has tightened in Ontario - which may be all that really matters on election day.

CPAC will have free Internet coverage, CBC, and likely CTV will too.

As the above poster said, it is illegal to broadcast results until after the final polls close.

Elections Canada, the official election agency (the ones who count the ballots) will also have live streaming results but no TV or Radio style coverage

What matters are swing districts, and while Ontario has an above-average number of them, it by no means has all of them.

It's legal for, say, ATV in the Atlantic Provinces to broadcast results to the Maritimes after the polls close there.  It would be illegal for them to broadcast results to B.C. or Ontario, where the polls would still be open.  I always wonder whether this means the cable and satellite companies have to black out the time-shift TV stations out West for the night.

Today's Nanos - a wild swing to Tories and Dippers:

Conservative	41.2%	+1.7
Liberal	30.4%	-1.2
NDP	15.2%	+0.5
BQ	7.8%	-0.3
Green	4.6%	-0.2

(3 days ending April 10)

     Even after the wild swing to the NDP, they are still doing worse than in other polls. I'm guessing that they're really at ~18% right now.

Combination of a pro-Tory sample coming on and a pro-Grit sample dropping off?

Actually, been a bit of a rollarcoaster ride for the Tories these past couple of days, down 1, then up 1.7... Something seems a bit off, a rogue poll in the mix, perhaps? I note the NDP up two points across the past two days. Were they perhaps under-estimated in earlier polls or is there something of a resurgence for them?

I suspect they just picked up a duff sample. Happens.

These are some of the lowest BQ numbers I've ever seen!

low BQ numbers means it'll be easier for the Tories to get a majority. They're already in majority territory.

It wouldn't be the Liberals getting the boost in seats first (how quickly do the Tories begin to win seats on a swing away from BQ)? Or is that irrelevant as both parties would gain seats to some degree by a swing away from BQ...and with the Tories closer to the post...bam.

No one knows what the hell is going on in Quebec this election. I mean more than normal. Fun!

I've edited your quote to be more true to us anglos.

Don't know... but my thought would be that it probably benefits the Liberals/NDP in Montreal, and the Tories in rural Quebec, and possibly Quebec City? I know the whole hockey arena thing there, but last election the Bloc picked up that seat of the Tories (I forget the seat, but I think it had Herbert in the name? It was Luc Harvey's seat, the northeastern corner of the city) - but that wasn't because the Bloc picked up votes, it was because the federalist vote split and the Tories lost enough votes to the Liberals to end up in second place behind the Bloc. If the Bloc loses enough votes, it could be a potential Tory gain, even if those votes flow predominantly to the Liberals. No doubt there are a plethora of seats that defy my generalisation, but that's how I see it. I'm sure MaxQue and others will be able to point out the probably numerous holes in my logic.

Could be some BQ voters are turning to the NDP. Or they're just not going to vote.


Louis-Hebert (avec un accent) is what you're thinking of. A.K.A, Quebec West.

Paul Okalik, the first premier of Nunavut from 1999-2008, is running as a Liberal: http://www.liberal.ca/candidates/paul-okalik/ - he would seem to be a very strong candidate for Nunavut's personal voting situation, but with the usual caveat about this being a hard riding to predict from the outside.

Other than that, I haven't seen too many genuinely interesting candidates (as opposed to the usual handful of vaguely better-known-than-average politicians touted by party hacks as "star candidates")

Former NWT Premier Joe Handley is also running as a Liberal in Western Arctic, which could make it a three-way NDP/Purgs/Grit battle.

The Debates are occurring right now.

How does Harper stay so cool? Iggy looks desperate. Duceppe is his crazy self. Layton is very good, but no one cares. Why is Layton hearkening back to "the old Stephen Harper"? Why does Iggy sound so pissed off?

He stays cool because he's a robot.

I've not seen any knock out punches / debate home runs

A few things from Jack Layton, but of course that doesn't count.

That's the one! I didn't want to have a guess at it because the name is similar to Saint Hubert, and I get them confused.

Last election saw many of the largest swings in Quebec going to the NDP. I have a map of that, too large for the gallery (as you know...) I might try to shrink it and post a smaller one.

EDIT: Resized it, so now the Ottawa area really does desperately require an inset, but regardless, here it is, simply to back up my comments about the swings to the NDP in much of Southern Quebec, including Montreal. Bigger version in the Gallery.

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SECOND EDIT: Beware of Nova Scotia in particular... the exceptionally strong swing to the Greens is an overstatement, given that the Liberals didn't run so that they wouldn't take votes from Elizabeth May - and therefore the swing to the Greens was mostly from the Liberals. Likewise, the swing to the independent was because he ran (and won) as a Conservative candidate in the previous election, therefore all of his vote is considered a swing to him... it would in some ways be more accruate to show the swing to him as a comparison with the previous Conservative vote, but then I'd be making an arbitrary decision, so I'd prefer to add this caveat instead.

Or you could use the sh**tty outline map developed specially for this very forum:

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Or you can use mine:

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Or you could go to Hell for table breaking :P

My Toronto/Montreal maps rock anyway. The others are kind of sh!tty, but then I was working quickly.

Edit: I wonder whether it might be possible to edit that swing map into a useable outline map? Actually it would. Just a matter of finding the time.

Started on it, as one of a million other "little" jobs I'm working on. It'll probably take a little while, although I think it will bump up my priority list as the election draws closer. The original map is 3792 by 2918 pixels, so I shrunk it to the maximum size with a width of 2500 pixels. I'll add in an Ottawa inset and go over the boundaries.

My maps are better because they have the name of all ridings:

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The are free for any use. Edit them, colour them, turn them upside down, print them out and stick them up your bum - I could care less.

Also sorry for double posting, and, for tablebreaking.

This entire page is sizebroken so I'm trying to run out the page so that we can get back to normal sizage.

running out the page.

Explain your map. Your predictions?

I know the feeling...


Excellent! :)

If time gets tight, I'm more than happy to act as a second hand.

My map predictions are explained on my website.

I posted them mostly for the base maps.

Edit them as you wish.

An Official Decree From The Boardbashi

Everyone keep posting things related - even inane comments will do so long as vaguely on-topic - until we hit a new page. Diolch.

Edit: Hah! No need. It seems that I'm magick.

Any post-debate polls or whatever?

Speeding things up by keeping all the insets the original sizes... I can fit them around the place, that means it's mostly the rural ridings and coastlines that need updating, only.

EDIT: Finished Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario. 

The debate has produced one loser: Elizabeth May. The Debate was “interesting” and relevant, issues were discussed. Unlike the snorefests of past years, this debate had meaning. May loses by not being there.

Does the Bloc actually win any votes from Anglophones?

Nanos: - April 13th, 2011

Tories 39.9% (+.2%)
Grits 30.4% (-.8%)
Dippers 16.3% (-.5%)
Bloq 9.1% (+1.3%)

A couple notes:

Nanos calls during the day as well, so this sample has "about" half of 1/3rd of the sample being post/during the debate, but as of now.. it's steady as she goes.

A good Tories sample drops for tomorrow, so expect bit of a Grit bump in the April 14th result.

The big Bloq jump, at least part of it is just that a very good for the Liberals/Bad for Bloq sample dropped off the rolling three day total in Quebec.

The French debate is tonight - if, as expected, The BQ leader mops the floor with the other three, we may see both a bump to the Bloq and, likely, a bit of a migration to one of the Federalist parties. - Expect Layton to be hammered by the Bloq re Bill 101 as that is where the Bloq sees soft federalist votes as beng up for grabs.

A fair number actually.

The Bloc is a smart tactical vote for a Quebec citizen. -

Quebec is subsidized by the rest of Canada by roughly 11 billion dollars per year, or about $5500 per family of 4 per year.

Quebec uses this transfer to maintain some of the most generous social programs in Canada (cheaper post secondary education, state funded child care, etc...)

If you view elections as a game where you want to "win" (ie derive the greatest benefits from the system relative to your tax inputs) - Then the Bloc is a smart vote.

There are a handful of Anglophone nationalists, maybe 5-10% of the overall voting block perhaps, who vote BQ/PQ. The PQ I know has traditionally had a few Anglo MNAs, like former Green leader Scott McKay these days. There was also Westmount's Equality Party MNA who crossed the floor to the PQ ;)

There are always a few oddballs, but the general pattern is what it is:

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You have to be careful with people's names here, since with intermarriage there are people who are connected to both linguistic communities. Scott McKay had an Anglo father and a Franco mother, was raised in Montreal-Est, and both his degrees are from UQAM. He's basically a Francophone. Plus there are people of immigrant background who are sort of assimilated to both communities.

Among Anglophones who aren't also in a sense Francophone, there is essentially no vote for nationalist parties. Certainly a lower % than Black Republicans - maybe around the % Jewish vote for Hadash.

(This idea that the BQ vote is just a kind of cynical monetary blackmail is oddly popular among right-wingers in other provinces, but it has little basis in reality. It doesn't even make any sense anyway, since interprovincial equalization payments are just based on provincial GDP and Quebec actually receives less per capita than Manitoba or any of the Maritime provinces, notwithstanding their lack of separatist parties.)

Here's the Liberal collapse in Alberta: 2004-2008.

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Vorlon! ;D *hughughug*

The Bloc is big on this whole Quebecois as an ethnicity stuff. They get a ton of support from that group, but little from others. Frankly, I think the Bloc would do as well outside Quebec as they do with Anglos in Quebec.

More Polling.

Tories destined for a majority: Pollster
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/CanadaVotes/News/2011/04/12/17974001.html

Compas:

The COMPAS poll surveyed 2,300 voters by telephone April 6-11, and is considered accurate within 2.1 percentage points.

Conservative 45
Liberals 24
NDP 16
Bloc 8
Green 7

FWIW (not much) This translates seat wise to:

Tories 178
Bloc 52
Grits 52
Dippers 26

Full poll release:

http://www.compas.ca/data/110413-NationalElectionPoll_Prt1-VoteIntentions-EPCB.pdf

Leger Poll

Leger polled 1,037 people selected from its online panel of 350,000 Canadians. The pollster only quizzed those who said they watched the debate. The margin of error is comparable to 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The PM = 37%
Iggy = 21%

Who won the debate?: Angus Reid Says:

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/decision-canada/Four+debate+viewers+think+Harper+poll/4605023/story.html

Harper 42%
Layton 25%
Iggy 23%
Bloc 2%

Full Release:

http://www.globalnews.ca/decisioncanada/POLL+Debate+fails+change+voters+minds/4604903/story.html

Bottom Line.....

Layton did very well
Harper did himself a modest bit of good
Iggy did himself a modest bit of harm...

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted exclusively for Global Television prior to and immediately following the English-language leaders’ debate on April 12, 2011.

The pre-debate survey was conducted among 2,615 English-speaking Canadian adults. The post-debate survey was conducted among 2,365 English-speaking Canadian adults who watched the debate.

Respondents were selected via the Ipsos I-Say Online Panel, Ipsos Reid's national online panel.

The sample was drawn from a pre-recruited panel of over 6,589 voters. Weighting then was employed to balance demographics and ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the population of English-speaking Canadian adults according to the latest Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe.

EKOS Poll

http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/full_report_april_13_2011.pdf

 National federal vote intention:
¤ 33.8% CPC
¤ 28.8% LPC
¤ 19.1% NDP
¤ 9.0% Green
¤ 7.8% BQ
¤ 1.5% other

I'm surprised anyone thought Iggy won the debate.  Whoever did must be a hard partisan.  I thought he came across as snarling, hyper and entitled.  Harper remained pretty calm throughout, and in that sense, he won for not losing his cool and looking like the Prime Minister.  He also stayed on message throughout - it's the economy stupid.  Layton probably scored more rhetorical points than the other 3 - though Duceppe had his moments too.  It's just that the overwhelming majority of people who watched the English-language debate can't even vote for Duceppe's party, rendering him an afterthought.

I say this in response (that potentially could make me look very foolish) to looking at Vorlon's estimated seat totals a couple posts above showing the Grits and Dippers both with 52 seats.

Is it at all possible to see a situation where the NDP, akin to UK Labour, completely over takes the Liberals as the natural alternative to the Tories...rendering Libs sort of a rump in future parliaments?  Is that how people see this eventually playing out, or are things (as I'm guessing someone or some people will say) so fundamentally different that such a thing cannot, in all likelihood, happen.

Look again. It's the Grits and the Bloc both with 52 seats.

That's also an extremely poor outcome for the Liberals that isn't being reflected in any other poll.

Ah....better catch than I was able to make. The question still stands...any chance the NDP supplants the libs as the anti-tory party?  Not necessarily now...but in the foreseeable future.

That projection with the Bloc and Grits both at 52 seats was based SOLELY on the one COMPAS poll, and based upon a uniform swing model applied region by region. (it is NOT my projection in any way)

I think this poll is an outlier on the high side for the Tories, I think the Ekos poll is a outlier on the low side for the tories.

There is a scenario wher the Implosion of the Grits/Rise of the Dippers takes place.

IF the country comes to the conclusion that a Tory majority will happen... and....
IF the more socialist wing of the party loses all faith in Iggy.. and ...
IF the red wing of the Liberals really likes the NDP leader..
then there is mass Grit defection to the Dippers and the NDP is the new #2 behind the Tories....

The reality on the ground is very hard to achieve however.  The NDP's vote distribution is very inefficient.

For example, if the Bloq bets 30% in Quebec and the three federalist parties spit the remaining 70% equally.. the  Liberals get 17 seats, the Tories 13, and the Dippers just 4....

In Ontario if there was a three way tie in the popular vote, the Grits would get 40 seats, the Torries would get 42, and the Dippers just 24...

The math on the ground is really hard to put together for the NDP to beat the Grits in seats....

Yeah, my mistake...but what about the substantive question...can the more social-democratic party push the more centrist liberal party into a permanent rump position and be the natural opposition to the Tories...ala the UK?  Why or why not?  Likely or unlikely?

Grits, dippers... Where do all those silly nicknames come from ?

Grits dates from George Brown's Clear Grit reformers in Upper Canada. Quoting Wikipedia: "Clear Grit" was a complimentary term meaning tenacious or dedicated. The name derives from a quote by party member David Christie who describes the movement as "all sand and no dirt; clear grit all the way through", a reference to the type of sand preferred in the preparation of masonry.

Dipper seems to come from the acronym NDP.

Oooh, a poll that puts Bloc second place in seats? Official opposition for them again?

Granted, I know the poll was an outlier, etc., but I can't be the only one that finds humor in having the Bloc as Her Majesty's "Loyal" Opposition. ;D

For some reason the news coverage of the Leger poll neglected to mention that 29% thought Jack Layton did the best in the debate. But leave it to the media to always try to invent a two-way race in a four party system.

Fairly unlikely, although it would be nice. I think a Green-NDP-BQ merger is more likely in the distant future.

So like a when pigs fly type deal?

I wouldn't go that far.  I mean, the NDP formed the government of Ontario from 1990 to 1995. I mean, who saw that coming? The federal party could do the same, or maybe even opposition, but things would fall back into order after a few cycles, depending on a number of external factors.

One musn't forget that the CCF/NDP has led the federal polls twice in its history. Once in 1987 and once in 1943 I believe.

I just mean, it seems like a NDP-BQ-Green merger is one of the signs of the apocalypse type deals.  So the liberals being the 3rd party rump must be virtually impossible...it would appear.

It's happened in some provinces (SK and Manitoba), but it's unlikely to happen nationwide. Just wait until Justin Trudeau is leader. Then the Liberals will get a boost in the polls and the NDP will be in the low teens for a while. Well, maybe not. The NDP will likely choose Thomas Mulcair as their next leader, and that would be very interesting.

A shame, from what little I've seen...I actually like Layton the most of the four.

With his ailing health et al, I don't see him continuing on. Plus, the party is likely to lose some seats.

A PM with a line mustache? Yes please!

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Two big roadblocks in front of that dream; the first is the fact that issues of nationality (could we even use a term like 'competing nationalisms'?) have tended to trump issues of class in federal politics; not a good thing for a social democratic party of any size. The second is that the 'natural' base for social democracy in Canada is a great deal smaller than in Britain or the other (former) white settler colonies. Which means that even if things were to go perfectly for the NDP they would have to consistently punch above their weight in order to become a major player.

Of course there are additional issues with the last point; in some parts of Canada (provincially, but historically federally as well) the CCF/NDP have been remarkably successful at doing just that, while elsewhere (especially federally - though not so much under Layton) they've tended to have a sketchy track record even in 'obvious' potential (and provincial and municipal) social democratic strongholds.

If somehow the dream becomes a reality, then Canada would only have to adopt cricket as a major sport and they might fit in with the rest of the club :P


Sadly not the Ontario NDP :(

Before Labour came on the scene in Britain, as there a large social democratic base? Didn't it build over the years? That would have to happen in Canada too.

Ah, now that's a controversial issue for various reasons. Ignoring that for now, in political terms your point is absolutely correct (of course), but I was looking at things from a slight different point of view; the 'traditional' working class in Canada is (and has always been) a lot smaller than in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and also far more divided along non-class lines. So CCF/NDP were severely handicapped from the start (and their original rural base was never going to survive the twentieth century). Into that you have to add the remarkable success of the Liberal Party in appealing to successive groups of immigrants, which is a huge problem in cities where the working class (however defined) is largely made up of relatively recent immigrants and their children. That's before Quebec is considered, obviously.

I'm not trying to sound crushingly deterministic/pessimistic/etc; there have been positive signs recently, especially in non-metropolitan Ontario.

I think you will see the NDP's base in the future being less "working class" and more liberal progressives of all stripes, but mostly in the middle class.

They've been even worse at attracting support from that general direction though (with certain notable exceptions). Of course if we're dealing in ideal situations, then it isn't an either/or question.

You know a lot more about politics here than I give you credit for.

I mean this literally, by the way. Not as in 'the original rural CCF vote was always going to work out that the CCF/NDP were socialist bastards eventually' but that the class on which that support was based no longer exists in a meaningful sense; they've either moved up or out.

As you said yourself, class difference is not something that is really of importance here in Canada. Similar to the US. Beyond that, Quebec's voting patterns have never made sense compared to English countries. There is no difference it seems between urban and rural - at least the difference is very minor compared to the huge difference in English Canada.

The Liberals here are very different to the Liberals elsewhere because ours are very hungry. In the 20's they gobbled up the top half of the Progressives. Organizers, Staffers, even some MP's. Progressives who were "in" became Liberals. The remainder split between the CCF (mostly) and a few went on to help make the Conservatives officially Progressive.

The Liberals have also been able to gobble up those voters who in 1988 would have voted NDP. The moderate middle class, perhaps even "working class". The NDP is still fighting to get them back.

Now what's starting to happen is the Liberals are beginning to gobble up the Green Party.

Our Liberals are the most successful Liberal party in the world because they are highly adaptive.

So, French debate is finished.

To my opinion, Duceppe and Layton were very good, Ignatieff was average and Harper was totally useless. Said unrelated things all time and had a very weak voice. Seemed asleep more than anything else.

French debate with English voice over: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/13/cv-election-french-language-debate.html

Oh God.

Internet is making an huge hype around "Muguette Paillé", one of the persons who asked a question in the debate.

lol @ CBC for having the Harper voiceover guy sound as queer as possible.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/04/13/cv-election-green-party-saldanha.html (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/04/13/cv-election-green-party-saldanha.html)

One Green candidate is dropping out, because of strange comments about rape.

"strange"?

Oh, great Boardbashi, please accept my humble offerings:

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Full size version in the Gallery.

Greater Montreal is the name I stole from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Montreal), as the map seems to fit pretty closely to the the Montreal Metropolitan Community.

I'm not sure who won out of the 3 (probably Duceppe, though Ignatieff impressed me) but Harpy definitely lost. His fraudulent 'sweet honey' robotic 'i love kittens' voice pissed me off, and he was either off the mark on most issues or downright lying.

Today's Nanos - Toryslide as a good polling day for the CPC falls off.  The Bloc is also hit hard downward.  Dippers gain most:

Canada Trendline

Conservative	38.9%	-1.0
Liberal	31.1%	+0.7
NDP	18.3%	+2.0
BQ	7.5%	-1.6
Green	3.1%	-0.7

(3 days ending April 13)

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Tories steady, Grits drop, dippers on a roll.....

The Dippers' "Not So Great Canadian Moments" ads (http://www.youtube.com/user/NDPCanada#p/u) are very good - true comparison ads that start negative, but end positive.  The Conservative's ad campaign (http://www.youtube.com/user/cpcpcc) is also good, but more negative.  The Liberals' ads (http://www.youtube.com/user/liberalvideo) stink - disjointed with no coherent message.

I wish party advertising was allowed in the UK...

Not a fan of Party Political Broadcasts?

3 over the course of a month long campaign isn't as... interesting.

What's with the focus on human smuggling in the Conservative ads? Is that really an important issue in Canada?

It fits into the Conservative strategy--pleasing the immigrants while appeasing the base. Rural Canadians are much like Americans in their perception of foreigners, but the same foreigners are the potential voters Harper needs to gain urban ridings. Harper therefore pins the tail on illegal migrants instead! It's not as if they have a voice in detention.

A less biased look at the issue would be that it's a continuation of the debate over Canada's open-door policy. Right-wing politicians will say that such a policy leads to more human smuggling and that a more restricted criterion be used. Left-wing politicians will keep the status quo as a means to continue population growth, and to oppose demonizing minority populations.

This issue really heated up after a boat of Tamil migrants landed in BC last year. Google that for the specifics.

There have been at least two refugee ships that landed in B.C. over the past few years.  Once the smuggled individuals land in Canada, they usually make a refugee claim and can stay in the country pending a hearing.  Most often, they are released from custody almost immediately.  And it costs something like $150,000 to process each claim.  So there's little deterrence to trying to get into Canada via the back door, and it's costly to process them.

I think Conservatives are raising this issue in part to argue that they are supposedly tough on crime while the other parties who blocked their proposed reform bill aren't.  I suppose the issue is also partially geared toward galvanizing those who have jumped through the hoops to legally emigrate to Canada.  People who abuse the system get in immediately, why they have a difficult time getting their own family in legally.  Of course, that strategy could easily backfire.

This is probably a bigger issue in B.C. than elsewhere - except perhaps, Quebec, where immigration from non-French speaking areas isn't very well liked.  Quebec wants full control over immigration there - but that's a whole different issue.

Quebec is having different ads than the rest of Canada.
Even political parties have different slogans.

See, Conservative Party.
"Here for Canada" in English
"Notre région au pouvoir" (Our region to power) in French.

NDP does the same thing.

What does "Our region to power" mean? Or does it just not translate well?

I believe the Tory human smuggling ad was also made in French.  Whether it or any of these ads have been shown on TV is something I can't answer.  

Nor can I critique the Bloc's ads, since I don't speak French.  From what I understand, their slogan translates into something like "let's talk about Quebec", which seems pretty lame.  Why just talk about Quebec?  Do something.


It means vote Conservative to put Quebec in power by electing reps in the top vote-getting party that will form the government.  By implication, voting Bloc is a waste since they will never form the government.

It is hard to do things when you are in perpertual opposition and hated in the other provinces.

Refudiate: "Our region into power"? In short, it means "elect someone which is in the party in power, so your region participates in the exercise of the power."

Which is lies, since the only regions which was power are Calgary, Tar Sands Land and Bible Belt.

Basically it means "elect an MP who will be on the side of power and will get you advantages for your home turf". It's not a bad slogan, but in reality it's "elect a useless tool who will vote party-line and do nothing all day" - I'd know, because I have the great opportunity of having a Tory MP.

Eh, the Bloc's slogan opens them up to the accusation that all they do is talk, not get results.  I know the Liberals are using it against them - as they should.  It's not a great slogan.

I was not defending Bloc, I was rather bashing it for being in perpertual opposition. It can't the Prime Minister seat and refuse to be part of a government.

Conservative slogan is bad. Bloc slogan is bad. Liberals don't really have a slogan. For NDP, I'll not comment.

Layton is in PEI today for some reason.

Seems perfect for the Liberals, then.

PEI, the worst place for the NDP. Only once it is history has it even elected an NDP MLA. Speaking of that MLA, I believe his wife is running.

Scratch that, it's the wife of a former leader, but it was a different guy who was the MLA (Herb Dickieson).

      Tories   Grits   Dippers   Bloq
14-Apr-11   Nanos   38.7   28.8   18.6   9
13-Apr-11   Forum   36   25   22   7
14-Apr-11   EKOS   35.3   27.8   18   9.6
13-Apr-11   COMPAS   45   24   16   8
13-Apr-11   Innovative Research   39   28   17   9
10-Apr-11   Harris Decima   40   28   15   8
   
               

http://www.nanosresearch.com/election2011/20110414-BallotE.pdf

http://www.hilltimes.com/dailyupdate/view/way_open_of_harper_majority_forum_research_nationwide_poll_04-15-2011

http://ipolitics.ca/2011/04/15/debates-hold-little-sway-on-voters-ekos-research/

http://www.compas.ca/data/110413-NationalElectionPoll_Prt1-VoteIntentions-EPCB.pdf

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/12/harper-still-far-from-majority-poll/

http://www.harrisdecima.ca/news/releases/201104/1117-conservatives-regain-double-digit-lead

Liberals are polling pretty consistently, but both the Conseratives and the NDP are all over the place between those different pollsters.

Where did EKOS have the NDP last time?

Fortunately Canada's bat-and-ball sport of choice is the superior one.

To fairly minor extent, both of that.

In other words, default Canadian election season.

Ha. At this point, I wouldn't be so sure... Baseball is getting less and less popular, while cricket is becoming more and more popular. Unfortunately, they didn't show any World Cup games on any main channel, unless you got a special cable package.
Interesting note, in the 1800s, cricket was the most popular sport in Canada, but it was overtaken by ice hockey and baseball. While I enjoy the odd baseball game, I would love to see cricket on TV.

Today's Nanos - More of the Same:

Conservative	38.8%	+0.1
Liberal	28.8%	NC    -
NDP	19.2%	+0.6
BQ	8.5%	-0.5
Green	3.4%	-0.3

(3 days ending April 15)

Nothing has surprised me yet, but it seems like support for the Greens has totally collapsed. Are the polls just underestimating the Green vote or does anyone else think that the Greens may in bad electoral shape?

Bad shape overall. Debate exclusion got them some media, but the actual fact of them being out surely didn't help. Other than that, May has turned the Greenies into a 'Elect Me, Myself and I' party. She's basically campaigning 24/7 in Saanich and running jokes everywhere else. It also seems as if there's a significant bloc of voters this year who'll vote strategically against Harper whereas in 2008 there wasn't that big of such a bloc.

And their membership was hurt when she changed the rules to kill a leadership challenge and to silence people opposing her in the party.

She turned the Greens in a personalist party.

What's the Green situation in Guelph? It sounds like U of Guelph students are organizing a big GOTV effort.

Worked for Lucas, didn't it?

Patrick Harvie is doing the same thing up here.

May could well win, of course, but at the expense of seeing the Green vote nationally decline quite a bit.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm loving those Nanos numbers. Maybe there'll be some NDP gains :D

My mother received a robot call from Jack Layton, lol.

Abitibi--Baie--James--Nunavik--Eeyou seems a very important swing seat, since Jack Layton will be in Val-d'Or on Monday, Harper on Tuesday and Duceppe is supposed to come this week, too.

I have difficulties to believe NDP Quebec numbers, too. 24% with EKOS, 20% with Nanos.

The good news is than polls finally seem to agree in Canada.
While quite similar results to 2008. Well, normal, since before doesn't trust more Harper than before and Ignatieff is a right-wing clone of Dion.

It will need a NDP collapse to stop minority government. (A BQ collaspe probably wouldn't, since the 2nd choice of most BQ voters is NDP).

Not if the Harper can (finally) do something similar to Harris...

Harris didn't have the BQ to contend with.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see the BQ evaporate and to have all those BQ voters vote NDP?  Suddenly the NDP would be looking at over 80 seats, and official opposition status :D

I think Harper is too smart for that. I hate him, but I must admit than he way ahead of the other leaders in political strategy.
But, the base can get tired of him not winning a majority...

It began, I would say.
BQ is a party which need a theme to run on.
1993, Meech.
1997 and 2000, it declined.
2004 and 2006, Adscam
2008, culture cuts
2011, it seems to decline.

And I suppose Duceppe will step down someday, which will hurt BQ much, I suppose. No other MP than him is known.

But, Earl, don't get too optimistic, NDP won't catch all BQ votes.

I know, but it's a nice thought! :D

Some Nanos weekend weirdness, this time predominantly boosting the Bloc at the expense of the Liberals and Dippers:

Conservative	39.0%	+0.2
Liberal	28.3%	-0.5
NDP	18.4%	-0.8
BQ	9.6%	+1.1
Green	3.6%	+0.2

(3 days ending April 16)

Based on a uniform swing, the Tories would need about 41% to get a majority.

I've added some insets. Here is the 2008 map:

()

As always, bigger version in the gallery, including a blank map.

EDIT: Changed Bloc from Purple to Aqua, using Al's colour scheme. Changed palest two Conservative shades to Al's colour scheme.

been a while since I've seen the BQ in purple.

I don't suppose Canadian cities have some sort of equivalent to precinct maps?

I did that so it was easier to differentiate between them and a marginal Conservative seat.

Bgwah, I believe this (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=98141.0) is the thread you're looking for, re: precinct maps.

Awesome. Thanks. :)

Those maps certainly show the strategic voting.

I noticed The Citizen had a "precinct" map of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell in today's paper. Good to see that :)

For sure. I especially noticed it in Vancouver (look at how people were free to choose who they wanted in Vancouver Centre)

()

Thank you for distracting me from my homework! :P

Leger/QMI says:

Tories 38
Grits 26
Dippers 22

http://www.torontosun.com/news/decision2011/2011/04/17/18028066.html

The poll was conducted April 15 to 17, after last week's leaders debates. Leger surveyed 3,534 respondents selected randomly from its online panel of more than 350,000 Canadians. The pollster says results would be accurate to within 1.7 percentage points 19 times out of 20 for a similar-sized group selected randomly from among all Canadians.

La Presse (in French, sorry) website also have precincts map for all Canada up.

Talking of La Presse, the last Angus Reid/La Presse poll (online poll, too, I suppose. Angus Reid is usually online polls, if I remember well. And they were the only one to have the good results in Quebec 2007 provincial elections.):

Tories: 36
Grits: 25
Dippers: 25

Still, I don't believe it. Ignatieff may be weak, but he can't go lower than Dion!

And Quebec sub-polls for Leger and Angus Reid (because federal polls are useless to follow Quebec)
Bloc: 34/36
NDP: 24/26
Grits: 20/19
Tories: 20/17

25% :O

Hoping it's true... :)

Also, great maps ! :D

Meanwhile, Nanos has us down at 17%. So, I don't know what to believe.

Probably an outlier like that COMPAS junk earlier, albeit it one which will make for some good headlines to give the stupid media some money.

That's all really, really nice work :)

I will say this one more time...

The regional breakouts on these polls are JUNK.

Lets look at NANOS...

The topline horserace number has been amazingly stable.. The Tories have a 10% lead give or take a bit of statistical noise..

Yet the regional samples have shown the Tories anywhere from up 18 to down 10 in Atlantic Canada..

In Ontario the Grits have led by 7 and trailed by 18...

The list of huge and irrational swings goes on and on..

What seems more likely to you... That we actually do have all these huge regional swings that all magically exactly cancel each other out at the National level, so that the national numbers remain stable, or that these regional "swings" are simple the outcome of pushing a too small (and unbalanced) regional sample to places it statisically has no place going?

Bad Journalism combined with stupid readers (if you ask me)

And today, Nanos taketh away from the Bloc, while the Dippers dip, too:

Conservative	39.8%	+0.8
Liberal	29.8%	+1.5
NDP	17.4%	-1.0
BQ	8.6%	-1.0
Green	3.4%	-0.2

(3 days ending April 17)

I agree with you, with a few exceptions.  Some of the Quebec-only polling by the likes of Leger is usually reliable, as are the Ontario subsamples if they are large and balanced enough.  All the rest, especially subsamples of Atlantic Canada and Alberta and/or the Prairies, often have very high MoEs, sometimes double-digits.

I agree that the Quebec only polling is ok, because the design their entire sample design to sample, well, Quebec....

The problems with the regional subsamples goes beyond mere margin of error...

For a poll to even have a chance to be right (other than by pure luck) it needs to be demographically balanced so the makeup by age, gender, education, income, race, etc matches the target population...

The nightly subsample in the Atlantic provinces is what... 30-35 people... you just simply cannot balance all the above factors in a 35 person sample.. it's just impossible...

In Ontartio where your subsamble is 300 ish over 3 nights you have a bit of a chance, but unless you specifically stratify within the subsample (which NANOS does not) your regionals are gibberish..

Again.. even taking MOE into account, can the Tories going from 12 up to 8 down to 8 up in a period of 2 weeks be explained?

There is more than MOE here at work.

CTV must love this poll.. it gives believable top line numbers and a regional story (real or imagined) ever night....

the NDP is 2nd place in Quebec in every recent poll.

EKOS now has the NDP at 20%, and it hasn't been a "pro-NDP" pollster. Abacus also had us at 20%, Forum Research and Leger both have us over 20%, and while it's not on Wikipedia, according to threehundredeight, Environics has us at 20% too, but maybe they got it confused with EKOS.

Quick question: why didn't the NDP surge much further in 2008 when there was a lot of anger towards Harper from the left and with the Liberals having such of a weak/unappealing leader and campaign message? Is it possible that many possible Liberal to NDP vote switchers voted for the Greens instead or were NDP ads and messaging just not as good as they are now?

It's just that in retrospect, 2008 strikes me as the perfect opportunity for the NDP to become or come close to becoming the chief opposition party and it seems weird to me that the NDP would be doing better now with a stronger Liberal leader in Ignatieff.

Environics have the poll on their website: Con 39, Lib 24, NDP 22, BQ 9, Green 6

Separate figures are given for Ontario and Quebec, but not elsewhere. Ontario: Con 39, Lib 33, NDP 23, Greens 6. Quebec: BQ 37, NDP 26, Con 18, Lib 14.

It would be really weird if the NDP got a better result in Quebec than Ontario.

Environics Poll

http://www.environics.ca/news-and-insights?news_id=61

thx

Abacus - Internet Poll

Tories by 8

http://abacusdata.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Ballot-April-18-2011.pdf

Thanks, Al! Glad you appreciate it!


I think the NDP would have done substantially better in Quebec last election, had the Liberal leader not been from there. It's merely an outsider's perspective, but it really seemed to me that Dion was more uninspiring outside of Quebec, and that he probably partially led to some of the NDP gains in Northern Ontario, etc, but may have helped prevent some of the Liberal decline in Quebec/Montreal. Perhaps with Ignatieff, the NDP may be able to make further gains in Quebec (while hopefully consolidating their gains in the rest of Canada).

()

Test run, using the 2008 results.

Edit: now with added inset.

Well, the NDP making 2nd place in Quebec made the abbreviated 5 minute "the National" broadcast on CBC between playoff hockey games. Good news! :D

Who is Abacus?
A new pollster?
A pollster who changed his name?

Looking good!

Longueuil and Terrebonne is a bit hard to see, I note. I'm presently preparing I've just finished another inset.

They've been around for a while, with the same name, polling both the US and Canada. Historically though they've mostly done policy/issue polling for interested groups rather than election polls.

Actually, they are brand new. I sort of know their CEO, David Colletto. He's in his late 20s. I met him at a party once for an NDP candidate he was friends with, and he bragged that he was working for Nanos research and helped them get such a good result for the 2006 election. I was surprised to see that he had started his own company. His numbers have appeared in the Sun a lot. He claims to have a huge online research panel of like 100,000 people, but I have no idea how it got that big, considering I hadn't heard of them until recently, and the EKOS panel isn't even that big and we've been recruiting for years.

It amuses me how much of an impact people think the gun registry issue will have in northern Ontario. It'll probably be a bigger issue in the rural areas of Ontario that already are held by Conservatives, so whatever.

Also. I've been seeing more ads on TV. I like the NDP ads, although they have creepy animation. And is it just the ones I've seen, or are the Conservative ads the only ones without Harper talking to the camera? They just show the same clip of him talking to a group of people.

He wasn't as unappealing as his immediate successor and predecessor... to those inclined to support Dippers, that is. Though it was hard to imagine him as Prime Minister.

Today's Nanos - pretty much flat, except for a small swing from Greens to Grits:

Conservative	39.8%	NC    -
Liberal	30.2%	+0.4
NDP	17.3%	-0.1
BQ	8.6%	NC    -
Green	3.1%	-0.3

(3 days ending April 18)

Fwiw, Election Prediction Project is currently guessing 114 Tory seats, 63 Liberal seats, 37 BQ seats and 27 NDP seats with 67 seats too close to call. Some of the Liberal calls seem a little questionable given current polling, but who knows.

EPP is terribly inaccurate when an election results in late or big swings. I (Teddy Boragina) try to steer them in the right direction, but its hopeless at times.

Two more Quebec riding polls... Leger again, apparently.

Abitibi-Témiscamingue: BQ 45, NDP 21, Lib 16, Con 15, Green 3
Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou: BQ 30, Con 24, NDP 22, Liberal 20, Green 3

Not sure why they bothered with the latter as there are obvious reasons why it might be a little tricky to poll accurately.

Abitibi--Baie-James--Nunavik--Eeyou is one of the four NDP top targets, Al. It is also a Conservative target and a Liberal target, from what I heard.
Layton came on Monday, Harper on Tuesday, Duceppe is supposed to come this weekend, and there is persistant rumors about Ignatieff coming next week.
Sure than there is obvious reasons that makes the polling there very dubious, at best. But it back my prediction of a 4-way race.

And it is my home riding, so, I'm happy to see it in the spotlight.

Yes I know it's a high profile race, but I'd assumed that the obvious issues with polling such a place would prevent any attempt to do so.

Given the record of riding polls, that wouldn't be the first failure nor the last one.

Nanos today, big swing to the NDP from all others

Conservative	39.1%	-0.7
Liberal	28.4%	-1.8
NDP	19.8%	+2.5
BQ	7.7%	-0.9
Green	3.9%	+0.8

Quebec

Conservative	16.6%	+1.2
Liberal	20.9%	-0.1
NDP	25.4%	+2.4
BQ	32.5%	-3.7
Green	1.3%	+0.3

Potential for some very bizarre results if that played out in Quebec.

I believe than there will be a late swing from NDP to Bloc, because of the calls than Duceppe is doing for strategical votes.

Better than attacking NDP.

Some people I know will vote NDP (to my surprise) and other people are undecided, they are irritated by the very aggressive Bloc campaign.

There seem to be a Layton-surge in Quebec in the last month. Will that stay hold until election? That is the question which will decide some results.

Natives are pretty hard to poll. I hate when we get projects to call aboriginals, as they culturally not programmed to do surveys. (I hope that didn't sound racist :S )

Riding polls:
()

There's also a Sherbrooke and a Newfoundland poll out there somewhere.

A friend of my wife is running in either Shefford or Sherbrooke, so if you can dig it up, I'd be interested...

Some of the swing is due to a good weekend polling day for the Bloc rolling off.

The NDP gain in Quebec will give the NDP decent national numbers, but will perhaps mean a net loss in seats if it's not made up in the rest of the country. The NDP polling in the 20s in Quebec may only mean 2 or 3 seats, or maybe just one seat if this Boivin scandal I heard about affects her (which I doubt) in Gatineau.  Take a look at the numbers, most seats in Quebec had the NDP at 10-15% in 2008, so the support is pretty spread out... which sucks.

...then again if the NDP were to get around 30% of the vote in Quebec (lol), it would win a sh*t load of seats. And that's only a 5-10% swing from current polling.

CROP poll of Quebec

NDP: 36%
BQ: 31%
Cons: 17%
Libs: 13%

Ermm...

Beat me to it! I was just watching this: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada_Votes_2011/1857462143/ID=1891645946


I am BEAMING!!!!

CROP poll... or CRAP poll?

I could totally write headlines professionally. 

EKOS agrees with CROP on the massive NDP gains:

NDP: 31%
BQ: 24%
Libs: 21%
Cons: 17%

It is official. Hell has frozen over.

That is plain ridiculous. Let's hopen than Layton isn't the new Dumont.

Well, with those numbers, I suppose than Mulcair is ultra-safe.

This could still very easily go the way of the LibDems in 2010 though.

Also Canadian polls are released at odd hours.

Yeah, I'd feel a lot better about these numbers if the election was this Monday instead of the next - still lots of time for things to shift around.

Pretty cool though.

Let's hope he's not the new Bob Rae. Let's say the NDP wins a majority of seats in Quebec. Most of his caucus will be very inexperienced. I suppose they wont form Government, so it's still ok. However, if everything falls in place, the NDP could become the official opposition, or very close to it, which will bode well for the future :D.

They are releashed in newspapers (the sponsors) of the morning. Their internet versions are all (for most, at least) published at midnight.

When TV stations buy them, they are released during 10 PM news.

A very inexperienced caucus can do a good job. See René Lévesque in 1976. He had only 6 MNAs before the election.

Well, Duceppe will need a new strategy.

Since three days, he is saying of voting for Bloc to not split the progressive vote.
Well, that argument seems against him, for now.

Yesterday, he attacked Layton's smile, too. I doubt it will convince anyone (well, it may convince people of NOT voting Bloc).

I'm speachless.

31% in Quebec would get the NDP 36 seats.

Download my ElectoMatic and test this out yourself.

Well, imagine the head of Duceppe went he will hear that poll.

He will be speechless, I think. Well, it is his fault, he was too negative, I think.

NDP as official opposition plus a Tory majority would give the nation plenty of time (like, four years) to get used to the NDP as an alternative government.

Nanos. Again a big swing from the Liberals to the NDP, for the second day in row

Conservative	39.0%	-0.1
Liberal	26.7%	-1.7
NDP	22.1%	+2.3
BQ	7.5%	-0.2
Green	3.4%	-0.5

For the record, they have the NDP at 23% in Quebec, down from 2 from yesterday.

If the NDP allows for some reason a Tory majority I'll be pissed. And if the NDP allows my retard MP to be reelected they can all go DIAF.

I am voting tomorrow at noon.

I'm actually debating voting NDP.

It is not the NDP fault if Liberals are selecting inept leaders...

Oh come on. If through any circumstance there ends up being a Conservative majority there is only one party to blame and it's the Liberals for being weak, directionless, inept, and utterly uninspiring.

Oh please. Orleans is a safe Tory seat these days.

Also I finally got around to watching the english debate. I found it fairly interesting. Harper seems calm to an almost sociopath level, and Ignatieff seemed pretty good but only in a few moments, and incredibly arrogant in others. I don't understand why he thinks the sense of entitlement he assumes the Liberals have on government would make anyone more likely to vote for the Liberal Party. Layton seemed pretty good, but I'm biased of course.

Duceppe just sounded like a lunatic to me half the time, but that may just be because I'm not used to hearing separatists.

We actually have a good candidate who actually cares about winning the seat, especially against a useless old yes-man geezer. Most people admit that if there's one race in Ottawa which is actually worth watching, it remains Orleans.

If the Conservatives make gains in the Toronto suburbs and are mostly unaffected by the NDP surge in Quebec... that would suck.

Can the NDP gain seats in Nova Scotia? They had a great year there in 2009.

Bizarre, yet rather pleasing.

Regarding comparisons with the LibDem surge over here last year, one important difference is that the sudden spike in LibDem poll ratings happened (more or less) over a single weekend after the first televised debate, and not incrementally. It's fairly clear in retrospect that it was mostly the consequence of the collective incompetence of the polling industry; they were (and still are) basing their work off essentially useless statistics (including - ah, a pet hate - a model of occupation groups from the 1970s that wasn't even much use during the 1970s and which has no relationship to the reality of work in Britain in 2010) and dangerously crude assumptions about electoral motivation, turnout and so on.

Of course that doesn't make this 'real'. It's just that the chances of it being unreal are lower than the obvious cautionary tale.

Exactly. If the NDP's vote increases everywhere, even where they're weak they'll only serve to split the non-Purgatory vote and allow them to be reelected or gain seats. And, that, my friends, wouldn't be good. If the NDP can gain seats off the Purgs, then all the power to them but if they use to split the vote and elect more Purgs they can go DIAF.

Well, I don't see NDP saying to its voters "Vote Liberal to not split the anti-Tory vote". Neither I see the Liberals doing that, either.

Our electoral system is bad, don't blame NDP for it (they were never in power), blame Liberals and Conservatives.

It's not a terrible electoral system, it's the mindset of Canadians that it's either Liberals or Conservatives, and that's it. If the NDP makes big gains in this election at the cost of a Conservative majority, but they start to become a more viable option, then that's a net plus imo. I mean, Harper already does what he wants already anyway, even in the minority.

Saying that, weren't ADQ leading for parts of that election in Quebec?

No.
The ADQ outperformed the polls by a good margin.
The polls had the ADQ sitting on 25 seats, and that was the "huge story"
They ended up with 41.

But FPTP leads to that mindset? I remember seeing a poll before last year's UK election showing a majority of the population would vote Lib Dem but they felt it was a waste of time.

This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo) neatly shows how FPTP encourages two party systems.

Ah, perhaps I'm confusing 'my fears' with 'the polls'. But examples of past poll surges in Canada, anyone?

That was a laughably loaded question though. Not the first time they tried it either.

Meh, I can't remember it now, but it didn't seem that unbelievable at the height of Cleggmania. Point stands though, FPTP's spoiler effect helps discourage people from voting who they'd prefer.

1988. Federal.
Pre Debate, the PC party had like 45% and the Liberals like 25%
Post Debate the Liberals had 45%
It was what knocked the NDP out of contention (I have an interesting what if on this btw)

2006. Federal.
The Tories went from about 10% to 20% in Quebec polls, and from 0 to 10 seats in the province on election day.

That's all I can think of off hand.

Let's have French majority system in Canada and 40% would be just that. And you could be pleased with a coalition Liberals-NDP.
Let's extradite Marleix to Ottawa ;D.

Also a note.

In 2006 the CPC (Tories) jumped threefold (In Quebec). They took about three times as many votes in 2006 as they did in 2004. My mathematical projection method successfully projected that this meant they would win 10 seats. Other projection websites are nervous because the NDP now has seen a threefold jump in Quebec...

My projection program is free for download ;)
http://www.ridingbyriding.ca/
On the right hand side. ElectoMatic.

Why is that not an ad for the YES-AV campaign in Britain? 

Because the Brits are rather bigger fans of their two parties than their third party right now (unfortunately).

existing past their due date.

Which was the day the ti gars bowed out. :P

Forum Research Poll also shows the NDP surging, ahead of the Liberals nationally:

Conservative: 36%
NDP: 25%
Liberal: 23%
BQ: 6%
Greens: 6%

And ahead of the Bloc in Quebec (though presumably the MoE is high):

NDP: 34%
BQ: 25%
Liberals: 18%
Conservatives: 16%
Greens: 4%

http://www.thehilltimes.ca/dailyupdate/view/jack_finds_his_groove_ndp_in_reach_of_official_opposition_says_new_forum_research_poll_04-21-2011

Riding polls. MoE on these is between 4-5% according to the local news sources that conducted them.

Sherbrooke
BQ: 59%
NDP: 15%
Cons: 9%
Libs: 9%
Greens: 7%

Gatineau
NDP: 33%
BQ: 29%
Libs: 24%
Cons: 11%
Greens: 3%

Avalon
Libs: 48%
Cons: 44%
NDP: 8%

St. John's East
NDP: 69%
Cons: 25%
Libs: 4%

St. John's South - Mount Pearl
Libs: 39%
NDP: 35%
Cons: 26%

Duceppe's always struck me as a decent fellow, but he doesn't really have a reason to care about the English debate.

Does the Bloc differ much from its British counterparts, Plaid and the SNP?

Well the SNP and Plaid are very different, so what do you think? :P

The Bloc is very different though; remember that separatist politics in Quebec started at provincial level through the PQ and that the BQ and PQ remain separate parties (though with extremely close informal ties, of course). While both the SNP and Plaid now view elections to devolved bodies as being more important, it doesn't change the fact that they were shaped by their parliamentary representatives and by political activism outside electoral politics. So you have that massive difference in terms of political culture.

Language is the elephant in the room...

Well, yeah. I still find it so alien seeing footage of the Canadian HoC and they just use French and English interchangeably.

Absolutely, yeah. Even when compared to Plaid.

The Welsh language in Wales isn't really the same as French in Quebec, obviously.

MPs have earplugs, hearing all in the language they choose.
Same thing, on the Commons website, when listening in direct, you have 3 sound tracks (French, English and Floor).

How about 5live? :P

Is that it? That's rather discouraging. We should be at 50% in Gatineau if the provincial polls are to be believed.

Presumably even the Outaouais is far more different from Anglo Canada than any part of Scotland or Wales is from England.

Speaking of which, I'm going to try and bike into Hull this weekend to see what things are like there. I suspect based on the Gatineau poll, that the Liberals have a lead there.

There was that Boivin scandal, or the NDP lead is media hype over polls which are potentially Zogby-likes or the NDP will be screwed by having high support spread out too wide.

Ipsos Reid... Con 43, NDP 24, Lib 21, BQ 6

What's more significant? Dippers in second or the fact that the poll doth scream 'Tory Majority'?

I'd say Dippers. A majority for Harper's always been a possibility, NDP finishing second, not really.

What would the popular vote have to look like for the NDP to finish second in terms of seats? What is the reason for this surge btw?

The NDP's ads are very well done and Iggy has been a real disappointment for the Liberals.  In particular, Iggy may have had a Howard Dean moment, repeatedly telling a crowd to "rise up, rise up, rise up!"  He's not coming across as Prime Ministerial.

Plus, Layton supposedly did well in the French-language debate, boosting the NDP's numbers in Quebec.  I didn't watch the French debate, but Iggy stunk in the English-language debate, in my opinion - he came across as entitled, impatient and surly.

Well, the Sherbrooke poll way overstates the Bloc (has them on 59% when they barely passed 50% last time, and Liberals and Conservatives also way down without much gain for the NDP). The riding polls may systematically overestimate the Bloc (possible if they have trouble polling Anglophones, although there aren't many in Sherbrooke), or they may just suck, which is more likely.

Wouldn't take it seriously.

Ipsos-Reid is always the most Tory of the major pollsters, so probably the former.

That Liberal ad is such a work of absurdity. Ignatieff's voice cracks a little bit when he tries to shout, and he's trying his damndest to rile up a group in which he's the youngest person. Then the audience golf-claps.
That's supposed to be inspiring?

But I watched the French debate, and not only does Ignatieff have an awkward accent, but he embodied the Bloc's "federalist Trudeau-loving Liberal" stereotype. Harper was a broken record and Duceppe was as usual. I would guess that the viewership was surprised by Layton's decent French and policy jabs, which is enough for left-wing voters hanging off the Bloc to jump ship. The Bloc piling on the NDP must keep the publicity going.

I'm seeing a media consensus that, as Liberal and NDP policies start blending together, the conception of the leader becomes all important. Layton has all the momentum in that aspect, which means he keeps siphoning Liberal voters who are far from the party's Toronto base.

I don't see a tipping point for the NDP until they can reach 27%+, though. What is encouraging is that their results have only improved in the past decade.

Prime Minister Jack Layton, Deputy PM Bob Rae, Liberal Backbencher Michael Ignatieff, Opposition Leader Jim Prentice, Senator Stephen Harper?

Iggy had a few good lines: "you shut down everything you cannot control"; "this isn't bickering, this is democracy"; "you treat the Parliament like a little debating society that gets in your way", etc. But overall, he sounded exasperated and, you said it, impatient. I don't think he said anything meaningful about the Liberal policies all night.

Jack Layton, on the other hand, seems to have stealthily crafted his image over these past couple election cycles: building momentum in '06 and '08, not getting too worked up over the prorogation and "coalition with the seperatists" nonsense, looking more and more "ministerial" all the time. He's always struck me as a very shrewd guy, if somewhat bland.

If there was a turning point in the Liberal campaign, it's probably their decision to run this over-the-top ad (http://www.youtube.com/user/liberalvideo#p/u/4/CP1qHX7qOeg).  The subtext of the ad basically states vote Liberal or Harper will kill you... flatline... which simply isn't believable - especially when the Liberals themselves were the last to cut federal health funding.   Not only that, but the original version of the ad claimed Harper said something that he never did - which has added more attention to it.  

It's no wonder that the polls are the way there are.  The Liberal campaign, which never seemed to have much of a coherent message to begin with, is collapsing.

Not to mention extraordinarily arrogant and entitled. I half expected him at one point to turn to Layton and say "take your little party and piss off."

Frankly, he may as well have.

So if the NDP manages to get more votes than the Libs... wtf happens?  I mean, that's gotta hurt.  Does Iggy get the second spot in the Kim Campbell Hall of Party Destruction?

No.

Iggy did not lose, nor did Harper, Layton won. (at least so it seems atm)

Is Ignatieff really focusing his NDP attack on the guns issue? I thought the Liberal "soldiers with guns" ad back in 2006 taught them a lesson.


To be fair, Campbell only failed because she could not reverse her party's decline. And Turner's collapse is more numerically spectacular than the recent Liberal debacle.
The worst outcome is that the Liberals will be slowly squeezed out of government, both federal and provincial. It seems evident Ignatieff will not make sufficient gains federally, and it's likely the Ontario Liberal government will be kicked out of office. At that point, the only Liberal party in government will be the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island, a province of 100000 people.
The Liberal brand has only survived because it is supposed to be a catch-all. A powerless Liberal administration, as feudal as it was in power, isn't worth much.

NDP up big again in Nanos, this time more from the Conservatives, though. NDP is at 26% in Quebec, behind the Bloc at 31% (18% Lib, 16% Con).

Conservative	37.8%	-1.2
Liberal	26.1%	-0.6
NDP	23.7%	+1.6
BQ	7.4%	-0.1
Green	3.5%	+0.1

Interestingly, despite all of this, the NDP has not once polled at its 2008 level in Ontario in April (in Nanos). Currently at 16.5%, down from 18.2% in 2008.

The NDP's Quebec numbers are ahead of their Federal numbers (IE Quebec is brining the NDP up) while their Ontario numbers are below their Federal numbers (IE Ontario is bringing the NDP down)

This is quite an unusual state of affairs.

To be fair, the NDP really maxed out in the 2008 election in Ontario. What seats could they gain without a momentous gain in their direction? Kenora? I doubt is, we were in third. Oshawa? Yeah right... Davenport? Maybe... we're winning the sign war there. Beaches? Not without Marilyn Churley. Parkdale? Kennedy is invincible. York South-Weston? We need better numbers...

So if the Liberals end up losing seats, would Iggy be out as leader? And if so who would take his place?

Given that things aren't that different outside Quebec from the pre-election polls, I wouldn't look to English ads or the English debate as the main cause of the issue.

Does Harper really think his pledge to not govern from second place will gain him any seats? (link - CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/04/21/cv-election-harper-interview.html))  I can't seriously see a Liberal/NDP coalition (or an NDP/Liberal coalition if the NDP get a miraculous second place) as neither party would be amenable to that.

What's the point of forcing an election, then?

Apparently the Tories are scared of the NDP now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PYTd52pT28&feature=youtu.be

Obviously Iggy thought things would go differently once the campaign started.  Also, 2012 in general will likely be a better election environment for incumbents than right now is.

Canada's census was taken this year.  By 2012, there will be a reapportionment, which will undoubtedly add seats in the west.  That also needed to be taken into account.

Is it just me, or do most Canadian political ads seem more like parodies of ads rather than actual ads?

Those attacks on Jack layton seem a bit like what the UK parties tried to do to Nick Clegg during the Cleggmania of the debates. Once the momentum's started, it doesn't work.

Will be. Not was.

It usually takes them 3 years to re-adjust the boundaries from the date of the start of the Census.

2004, 1994, 1984, 1974, 1964 IIRC are the most recent dates.

Will Canada's weird laws on election coverage affect us at all?

It worked during Palinmania (which had McCain leading Michigan at its height).

Like most things you post, I don't think the two things are even remotely comparable. And besides, Palin was sort of deflating on her own more and more. The more people heard from her, the less they liked her. Layton is kind of the opposite, in a way.

Do the Tories have anything to say about the other parties besides the "they're seperatist enablers" nonsense? And does this actually play well out West or in Ontario?

Well, they call the Liberals bumbling idiots. But so does everyone else, and it's true.

Voted today in an advanced poll, and was surprised to see an actual lineup.

Then I took a walk around town, in this riding where the CPC candidate defeated the Liberal by just 17 votes in the 2008 election.

I can say there are definitely more Liberal signs, followed by NDP signs. The CPC was barely more visible than the Green Party. If signs are any indication, the Conservative Party is in for a nasty surprise.

If signs were any indication, then Barney Frank would've lost reelection in an epic landslide.

Signs are a much bigger part of local campaigns in Canada than in the US - one of the first things that a campaign will always ask a voter who indicates support for them either over the phone or at a door-to-door canvas is to take a free lawn sign. It surprised me a lot when I first came down here how few houses had signs even during major elections.

I suppose the basic reason is that the small size of the ridings combined with the campaign spending laws mean that there's no TV advertising for individual candidates, so signs are the only way to get name recognition for your local candidate.

Not that this changes the fact that prediction of elections by sign counting is on the dubious side.

Yeah. Though if you know what sort of patterns to look for, it can still be useful; last year I worked out that the Labour vote in North Wales was holding up a lot better than universally assumed from signs and window posters, so the happily low swings in my part of the world didn't cause a surprise.

In Britain it used to be the case that party labels were never printed on ballots (that changed in the 1960s) which meant that candidate signs and posters had an important practical purpose (it's also why there aren't nearly as many as there used to be). Was that the case in Canada as well?