Ontario 2011 (6th October)

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Latest poll says PC - 38%, Libs 31%, NDP 24%

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Another poll.... http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/01/liberals-narrow-pc-lead-in-ontario-poll/

Tories - 35%
Liberals - 30%
NDP - 26%

Interesting how the Toronto Star poll said it was a 3 way race with the NDP further behind, while the National Post had the NDP doing better, but completely ignores them in the headline and says it's not a 3 way race yet. (although, those numbers are suggest otherwise)

Especially given that according to this poll the Liberals are closer to coming in third than they are to coming in first!

[DL]

A couple more poll shockers out of Ontario today:
 
Ipsos says Libs 38%, PCs 37%, NDP 24%
Nanos says Libs 38%, PCs 35%, NDP 24%
 
…looks like Hudak is flopping big-time and this could be the 1985 Lib/NDP accord all over again!

Its also worth noting that the conventional wisdom was that the only way the Liberals could win was by suppressing the NDP vote - yet they seem to be moving ahead on their own despite NDP support being at a 18 year high!

[DL]

NDP vote is down slightly, but very interesting.

How is the NDP vote "down slightly" the previous Ipsos poll had the NDP at 23% and this latest one says 24% and the last Nanos poll had the NDP at 22.8% and this one says 24.3%. So that is UP slightly in both polls.

[DL]

The full tables with sample sizes are there as a link on the Ipsos page and they have the sample sizes. 905 does NOT include Hamilton it is just the 905 suburbs of the GTA. Hamilton/Niagara is considered "central"

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A new poll of 1,000 voters in the City of Toronto by Forum says Liberals 39%, NDP 30% and PCs at a catastrophic 24%. I don't know what the popular vote was in Toronto in the '07 ON election but I suspect that this is a pretty major NDP increase.

[DL]

Those are the GTA wide popular vote numbers you got from the CBC site. The numbers for Toronto itself in '07 were L 45%, PCs 24% and NDP 22% and Greens 8%. so the forum poll suggests the NDP is up 8 points, Libs down 6 and PCs flat as a pancake

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I did a slightly crude estimate of the popular vote in Toronto in the federal election and it came out to Liberals 35%, Tories 32% and NDP 29% - so the NDP vote is if anything slightly higher in the provincial polls while the Tory vote is a lot lower and the Liberals somewhat higher. Almost all the seats the federal Tories won in Toronto were won by very narrow margins - so my prediction is that if these Toronto polls are right - The NDP gains two seats for sure and probably a third somewhere for a total of seven in Toronto while the get the other 15 unless the Tories manage to grab one or two max.

[DL]

New Angus Reid online poll of 1,000 in today's Toronto Star shows NDP surge is real. Numbers in brackets show change from their previous poll over a week ago:

PC 36% (down 2)
Libs 32% (up 1)
NDP 26% (up 2)
green 6% (down 1)

The poll also has the NDP actually LEADING in Toronto with 35% to LIB 34% and Tories a distant third. Seems unbelievable but then no one believed the polls showing the NDP surge in Quebec. Seems to me that the ONDP is seriously cutting into the "anti-Liberal" vote that Hudak thought was all going to go for him.

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Yet another Ontario poll shocker - this time from Leger:

PC - 36% (up 4 from last election)
Liberals - 33% (down 9)
NDP - 29% (up 12 !!)
that leaves 2% for Greens and other which would be down 7% from 2007.

I'm an NDP supporter but I'm actually starting to get scared that if this trend continues we might actually win this thing and while the ONDP has some good people - they are NOT ready to be the government just yet. This is starting to bring back memories of 1990!

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Imagine if the NDP leapfrogs over the Liberals in both Ontario AND Newfoundland!

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Keep in mind that the incumbent Premier is technically still the Premier until he or she either resigns of loses a confidence vote. If we hypothetically had 43 Tories, 41 Liberals and 23 New Dems - McGuinty would probably present a Throne Speech and dare the NDP to vote it down and install Hudak.

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Check out the tables on the right side in this just released Ipsos online poll of 8,000 people in Ontario. They don't actually ask how people will vote, but they do ask people what their most important issue is and then which party will do the best job of dealing with whatever issue they feel is most important. They get Libs and PCs dead even at 36% each and the NDP at 25% - so that would mean back to the 1985 scenario! (I think we can assume that almost everyone will vote for the party that they think will do the best job on their most important issue).

http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5340

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Apparently the Toronto Star is releasing a poll of 39,000 (yes 39,000) that will show the Liberals and PCs dead even at 35% with the NDP at 23% and the Greens and others at 7%.

This is like 1985 all over again! when that exact vote split led to 51 PCs 49 Libs and 25 NDP.

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I think you mean that McGuinty is copying the Ignatieff strategy of saying the NDP is too rightwing - with his absurd accusation that because both the NDP and PCs voted against the last Liberal budget (for opposite reasons) they are somehow identical! Of course the Libs then turn around and claim the NDP is too leftwing...I guess they can't make up their minds.

BTW: One more thing to mention about the Forum poll. Even though they surveyed something like 400 people in each riding. In each riding they only asked people how they would vote on the generic party vote. They did not read the names of the local candidates in each riding - and in many cases that can make a big difference.

[DL]

Yes, but we have no idea if the results were demographically weighted in each individual riding (as opposed to at the province wide level) and we know that no local candidate names were used - just generic party vote.

[DL]

The post debate poll by Ipsos says 33% thought McGuinty won, 29% picked Horwath and 25% picked Hudak. Horwath vastly exceeded expectations since only 14% expected her to win going in.

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It gets even better! The post debate poll says 67% of viewers had an improved impression of Andrea Horwath after the debate and just 10% were negative - that is off the chart! and even higher then what Layton got on that question after he aced the leaders debate in April!

http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5350

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What riding are you in?

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Interesting poll by the Forum done for the OFL - they seem to have polled about 700 people in each of 9 ridings and found the NDP with solid leads in Parkdale-High Park, York South-Weston, Beaches East York and Trinity-Spadina and also Timmins-James Bay - all ridings that ought to be in the bag for the NDP but where there were some weird results in the big Forum poll for the Star. They say that Sudbury and Thunder Bay-Superior North and Bramalea-Gore-Malton are very close.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2011/09/29/18759706.html

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I think that the earlier poll was simply wrong in those particular ridings. That mega poll by Forum had the Tories and Liberals at 35% each and the NDP at 23% - that represents a 7 point drop for the Liberals since 2007 and a 6 point gain for the NDP - it is simply not believable that the NDP could be losing or be anywhere near close to losing seats they won comfortably in 2007 when they the same poll shows a 13 point Liberal to NDP swing!

One thing I do wonder about with this latest Forum poll by the OFL - the earlier poll just gave people party names. Period. This poll of 9 ridings may very well have read people the names of the local candidates - which may make some difference and is probably more accurate given that the local candidates names are what the voter will see on the ballot on e-day!

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So seat count then? based on say 27-33% for the NDP... 20-22 seats?

I can assure you that if the NDP actually got high 20s or low 30s in the popular vote - they would get a lot more than 20-22 seats - it would be more like 30 seats.

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The law about not being allowed to display cigarettes in stores is actually federal. Can't blame "Premier Dad" for that.

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What's with the disparity with the Greens?

Nanos doesn't prompt ANY party names at all - he asks an open ended question "Which party will you  vote for?" without reading any list of party names. Ekos reads all party names since people have to punch a number on their keypad. Needless to say when you have a party like the Greens who have no campaign, no leader, no money, no ads...but a brand time that has a lot of "social desirability" - if you read it as a choice - you will get a big overestimate for them.

In the federal election the Greens got less than 4% in Ontario and believe me Elizabeth May was getting saturation publicity compared to the no-name Ontario Green leader whose name escapes me. They will get about 2.5% of the vote when the dust settles.

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There is not much point doing an exit poll in a provincial election in Canada. In Ontario for example all the polls close at 9pm, the province is all one time zone and within half an hour of the polls closing you have a pretty good idea of what the outcome is.