More provincial aggregates added

More provincial polling averages have been added to the site today. You can access the one for New Brunswick here. 

The averages for Quebec, including regional and linguistic breakdowns, can be found here. The latest poll from the province was out just this past week.

The averages for Alberta are here.

And in case you missed them last week, pages for Nova Scotia and Ontario were also added.

For future reference, these averages can be found in the right-hand column of the site further down the page. 

The Pollcast: The Stephen Harper years and beyond

Stephen Harper will speak to party members on Thursday evening at the Conservative Party's policy convention in Vancouver. It could be some of the last words he will speak in public as an elected member of Parliament.

Canada's 22nd prime minister is expected to resign his Calgary Heritage seat before the fall, a seat he has held since returning to federal politics in a by-election in 2002. 

As leader of the Canadian Alliance, Harper led the party into a merger with the Progressive Conservatives in 2003. He then led the merged party to power in 2006, where it remained until it was defeated by Justin Trudeau's Liberals in October.

Harper's 10 years in office have left an impact on the political landscape of the country and shaped the modern Conservative Party. How will Canadians remember his time as prime minister and what will the Conservative Party look like without the only permanent leader it has ever known?

Joining me to look at Stephen Harper's legacy and the future of the Conservative Party is Postmedia's Ottawa political bureau chief, John Ivison.

You can listen to the latest episode of the Pollcast here.

Canadians shrug off Justin Trudeau's elbow, polls suggest

The altercation in the House of Commons last week between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and members of the opposition captured Canadians' attention, but two polls published this week suggest a majority of those Canadians have shrugged it off like a wayward elbow on a crowded subway.

The latest poll, conducted by Ipsos for Global News, shows that 63 per cent of Canadians feel the tussle was "no big deal," a "momentary lapse of judgment" on the part of the prime minister, and that "we should all just move on."

You can read the rest of this article here.

Leadership race rules could exacerbate Conservative Party divisions

The Conservative policy convention being held this week in Vancouver will help determine the future of the party. But how much of the party's divided past is still a factor, more than 12 years after the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives united the right as the Conservative Party of Canada?

Compared to the Liberals and New Democrats, the Conservative support base is split more evenly between its centrist supporters and those on the edges of the political spectrum.

Polling data provided by Abacus Data suggests that 45 per cent of Conservative voters self-identify as being centrist, compared to 45 per cent who say they are either on the centre-right or right.

You can read the rest of this article here.

New Ipsos poll, Battleground Toronto, and this site's name

After Friday's confusion arising from diametrically opposed polls being released on the same day, Ipsos Reid cleared things up a little yesterday evening by splitting the difference in its poll for Global News.

The CBC Poll Tracker has been updated with these latest numbers, and continues to show a tie between the Conservatives and New Democrats. The riding-by-riding projections have also been put up-to-date.

I identified what was potentially the main reason for Mainstreet Research's divergence from the consensus in my Poll Tracker analysis on Friday: namely, that Mainstreet had some abnormally high scores for the Conservatives among 18-to-34 year olds.

After removing the undecideds myself, I calculated that the Conservatives had 43% support among this age group in Mainstreet's poll. That was very high. You can see how high in the chart below. Mainstreet's poll is the second last in this chart, and is in italics. All the other polls are recent findings from other pollsters among this age group. Ipsos's latest is at the bottom of the chart, showing the Conservatives at just 17% among this group.

18-to-34 year olds, Mainstreet in italics

So, you can see that this is a bit of an issue. If this age group represents about 20% of the weighted sample, the discrepancy between Mainstreet's numbers and those of other pollsters would be worth about four points to the Conservatives. That drops them from the 38% of that poll to 34%, just about where Ipsos has them.

Of course, everybody else could be wrong or this could have been a momentary excitement on the part of young Canadians that lasted a couple of days, but the odds of that would seem rather low.

Leafs not the only blue team likely to struggle this fall in Toronto

In light of the Liberal nomination battle in Eglinton-Lawrence that saw Marco Mendicino defeat Eve Adams on the weekend, and yesterday's announcement that Olivia Chow was returning to the federal scene, I took a look at how the parties's chances are shaping up in Toronto for the CBC.

I hadn't fully realized something before writing this piece: Toronto itself, and not just the GTA in general, was very important to the Conservatives in 2011. They won eight seats there, after winning zero seats there in every election prior to that going back a few decades. Eight seats out of 22 in Toronto is quite good (tying the NDP), but it is very important when you consider that the Conservatives made a net gain of 23 seats between the 2008 and 2011 elections. That means Toronto represented just over one-third of the Tories' gains in the last election. The 905 is important for the Conservatives, but the 416 is no slouch either.

ThreeThirtyEight not going to happen, so please stop asking me

The name of this site, ThreeHundredEight.com, is in homage to Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight as well as the number of seats that are currently in the House of Commons and were in the House when the site was launched in 2008. It might as well also represent the number of times I have been asked when I will be changing the name of the site.

Let me clear it up once and for all (not that I've been saying anything different from the last few years). The name of the site is not going to be changed to ThreeThirtyEight or variations of that. And the name of the site is already quite long, so changing it ThreeHundredThirtyEight, as some have suggested, would be a step in the wrong direction too.

A few reasons for why I will not be changing the name of this site to reflect the new number of seats in the House of Commons:

1) It has been this way for almost seven years, which gives this name its own branding strength. It would be confusing to suddenly change the name and I'd likely be correcting people for a year or two. While the site was named after the number of seats in the House of Commons, it was never meant as a running tally of the number of seats in the House of Commons.

2) Four elections occurred with 308 seats up for grabs. You have to go back to 1965 to find a string of at least that many elections with the same number of seats. It is a particularly interesting era to name the site after, with three minority governments and the newly merged Conservative Party. Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe led their respective parties in all four of thsoe elections, and it is hard to name three federal leaders that have more greatly marked their respective parties or Canadian politics in the 21st century. Harper embodies, in many ways, the merged Conservative Party, Duceppe has led his party for almost 20 years, and Layton set the NDP on the path that might bring it to power this fall. The 308-seat House was also the only House I ever really knew, having started getting interested in politics after the 2000 election.

3) This site was launched in 2008 because of how interesting I found FiveThirtyEight. But to change the name of the site to ThreeThirtyEight (or 338 as many would call it) gets the name much too close to FiveThirtyEight (538). That would also lead to confusion, as well as being discourteous to 538.

4) If this site still somehow exists in another 10 years, I'll have to change the name yet again.

5) Last I checked, the URL was taken anyway so the whole thing is moot.

Without Wildrose or a divided right, the Alberta NDP would have still won (updated)

The only reason that the Alberta New Democrats won last month's provincial election is because the vote on the right was split between the Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose. Or, at least, that is what many people have said. Here are a few examples of that. It certainly feels right. But it isn't.

(I've added an update to the end of this post to clairfy some things.)

The New Democrats captured 40.6% of the vote, with the PCs taking 27.8% and Wildrose capturing 24.2%. If you add up the PC and Wildrose vote, seeing as they are both conservative parties, you get 52% and 59 seats. That beats the NDP, even if you give them the votes of the Liberal and Alberta parties.

Of course, the math is not as simple as that. We don't even need to break out a calculator. We can just look at Alberta's history. If the NDP's victory was an artificial one, we should expect to see multiple cases of an opposition party winning at least 40.6% of the vote and losing against a united right.

But only four times in Alberta's 29 provincial elections has a party taken more than 40.6% of the vote and fail to form government: Harry Strom's Social Credit in 1971 (41.1%), Andrew Davison's Independent Citizens Association in 1940 (42.5%), and Edward Michener's Conservatives in 1917 (41.8%) and 1913 (45.1%). That we have to go back 44 years to find the last example, when the political dynamics of the province were completely different, shows how this line of thinking falls flat.

Granted, few governments have won less than 40.6% of the vote, so it does make Rachel Notley's victory somewhat notable. It has happened only three times, with the most recent one being 75 years ago: John Brownlee's United Farmers in 1930 (39.4%), as well as his 1926 victory (39.7%) and that of his predecessor, Henry Wise Wood, in 1921 (28.9%).

Nevertheless, this isn't the smallest government to take power. Ralph Klein won a smaller share of seats in 1993, as did Ernest Manning in 1955, Brownlee in 1930, and Arthur Sifton in 1917.

By historical standards, then, the NDP's victory is somewhat exceptional. But generally speaking, if you get 41% of the vote in Alberta you'll win the election.

More compelling is the data from the 2015 vote. The idea that the PCs and Wildrose share the same voter pool is simply wrong. The right wasn't divided. Rather, the anti-PC vote was divided between the New Democrats and Wildrose.

In Ipsos Reid's final poll of the Alberta campaign, one of the questions asked voters what their second choice would be if they were forced to make such a choice.

For the most part, the results were intuitive. The top second choice option for PC voters was Wildrose, while it was the Liberal Party for New Democrats (it wasn't all so simple, though, as a large proportion of PCs chose the NDP as their second choice, and a large proportion of New Democrats chose Wildrose). 

But the results for Wildrose showed that they were not all, or even mostly, lapsed Tories. The New Democrats were the second choice of 33% of Wildrose voters, compared to just 21% for the PCs. More Wildrosers would vote for the Alberta Party (15%) and the Liberals (9%) than the Tories if forced to make a choice. 

Another 16% were undecided and 5% would not vote, while 2% would support another party.

Immediately, we see that Wildrose was not an obstacle to the Tories. In fact, Wildrose potentially drew away more anti-PC voters from the NDP than they did conservative voters from the PCs.

If we distribute Wildrose's vote according to this second choice poll (doing away with the undecideds entirely, and portioning out Wildrosers' Liberal and Alberta Party second choice votes where they did not run a candidate), we get a surprising result. The NDP's majority is not reduced. It is increased.

The New Democrats would capture 53% of the vote and 68 seats, with the Progressive Conservatives taking just 36% of the vote and 17 seats. The Liberals, with 6%, and the Alberta Party, with 4.5%, would each retain the one seat they actually did win on May 5.

The New Democrats would dominate Edmonton and the surrounding region, with 64% to the PC's 27%, and all 27 seats.

The NDP would also win Calgary with 45% to 39% for the Tories, and 20 seats to the PCs' five.

In the rest of the province, the NDP would take 49% and 21 seats to 41% and 12 seats for the Tories.

We could run the numbers different ways, but we always come to the same result: an NDP majority.

If we got rid of the PCs and instead gave those votes to Wildrose (as more PC voters did opt for Wildrose as a second choice), the overall tally would be closer (roughly 48% for the NDP to 36% for Wildrose), but it would still deliver a solid majority government.

If we distribute Wildrose votes in ridings where they finished behind the PCs and PC votes in ridings where they finished behind Wildrose, we still end up with an NDP majority government (55 seats to 30 for the combined PC/Wildrose option).

Mainstreet Technologies also had a second choice question in its final poll, but it only asked voters whose commitment to their party was weak. It found that 46% of uncommitted Wildrosers would opt for the PCs as their second choice, while only 23% would go for the NDP. The rest were either undecided or would vote for the Liberals.

But since this question was limited to only uncommitted voters, it doesn't get to the root of the issue as the Ipsos poll did. Committed Wildrosers might have been more anti-PC than they were pro-conservative. Ipsos's numbers would certainly seem to suggest that.

Nevertheless, if we distribute Wildrose's vote according to Mainstreet's breakdown, we still get an NDP majority. A narrow one (48% of the vote to 42% for the Tories, and 44 NDP seats to 41 for the PCs), but a majority nevertheless. The NDP did not win because the vote was divided. The PCs simply lost, and no re-jigging of the numbers gives them victory.

Of course, if Wildrose never existed perhaps the dynamics of the campaign would have been completely different. That's the kind of hypothetical that numbers cannot inform us about.

The divided right undoubtedly did help the NDP in certain ridings, and perhaps if Mainstreet's second choice poll was more reflective of reality it made a big difference in the magnitude of the NDP's win. But based on the data at hand, the narrative that the NDP's victory was due to a split on the right does not stand up to serious scrutiny.

JUNE 5 UPDATE ------

I wanted to further clarify something as some readers have misinterpreted this post. They've interpreted it as a sort of hypothetical, what-if scenario that imagines that Wildrose did not exist. I've written about those kinds of things before, so this interpretation is perhaps not a surprise. And my chart showing what would happen if we distributed Wildrose's vote elsewhere might give the impression that this re-distribution is the focus. It was meant, instead, to illustrate why the 'divided-right' argument does not hold-up because the votes to the right of the NDP were not uniform, and in fact a large proportion of those voters preferred the NDP to the re-election of the Progressive Conservatives.

This post is instead about debunking the notion that "Alberta was able to elect a majority NDP government because the conservative vote was split", to quote one of the links in the first paragraph. Or how "if you take [the PC] vote, plus the Wildrose vote, you'd have had a much different result in almost every constituency" and "Wildrose and PCs split the vote in a number of ridings that caused [Rachel Notley] to get a much bigger win than she otherwise would have", to quote two others, is based on a faulty premise. Those votes do not combine so easily.

The NDP's win was no accident caused by the split on the right. As I lay out in the first part of my post, the 41% the NDP won has historically been enough to form a government. If it wasn't, and the split on the right was behind the NDP's win, we'd expect to see many cases of parties taking that much of the vote but failing to form government.

Moreover, as I lay out in the second part of my post, the conservative vote to the right of the NDP was not something that was split between two parties that, instead, should have been the domain of one. That is because it was not a uniform vote. Many Wildrosers preferred an NDP government to a PC re-election, and many others would rather have voted for more centrist options like the Liberals or the Alberta Party than the PCs, which the people quoted above seem to believe would be their natural home. That simply was not the case. There were enough Wildrosers who preferred the NDP to the PCs to actually boost the NDP's majority, as my second chart spells out. Voters made a choice to defeat the PCs. They were not bamboozled by having their conservative loyalties split in two.

This post is written wholly within the context of 2015 and the anger voters had with the PC government. It says nothing about a hypothetical alternate universe where voters are not angry at the PCs or where the climate for the emergence of Wildrose never existed. It says nothing about whether Alberta is a conservative province or not. It says nothing about whether Albertans were truly enamoured with the NDP rather than just angry with the PCs. It says nothing about what will happen in 2019.

It is entirely about the 2015 campaign and the choice Albertans made. And that choice was not an artificial one because their 'true' conservative nature was split between two options. Wildrose did not split the PCs' vote and doom them to defeat. The PCs simply lost the election because too many Albertans did not want to vote for them, and the NDP won because enough Albertans wanted to vote for them. The split of the actual conservative vote did mean the PCs came out of it worse than they would have otherwise, but they had alienated so many voters that they no longer had a base large enough to re-elect them. The NDP did not win by default.

That some people misinterpreted my argument is, as the writer of this post, in part my fault. The headline might have been more appropriately along the lines of "the split of the right was not behind the NDP's victory," as the current headline sets people up for this misinterpretation. I hope this update clears things up.

How this NDP surge is different from the last one

The projection has been updated, including the two most recent polls from EKOS Research (for iPolitics) and Ipsos Reid (for Global News). Both polls show a remarkable three-way race, with EKOS gauging the numbers as 30% for the Conservatives, 29% for the NDP, and 27% for the Liberals, and Ipsos as 31% for the Conservatives, 31% for the Liberals, and 30% for the NDP.

The Ipsos poll serves as a much-needed confirmation of the EKOS numbers, which had been virtually alone since the Alberta election of May 5.

The projection still lags the polls a little, in part because May has been a quiet month (10 polls had been done in April, while we're up to seven for May). Polls that show a three-way race currently take up 61% of the projection. But the NDP has averaged 29.5% in those polls, whereas they have averaged just around 23% in the remaining polls taking up 39% of the weight.

Nevertheless, the NDP's growth has been remarkable. This is especially so when we consider that the model, at this stage, is designed to react slowly to what could be blips in voting intentions. Since the week ending on May 4, the New Democrats have jumped from 22.9% to 27.1%. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals have dropped 1.3 points over that time.

The Conservatives were leading in the seat projection then with between 125 to 164 seats against 93-129 for the Liberals and 65-91 for the NDP. That count currently stands at 118-153 for the Conservatives, 77-120 for the Liberals, and 87-118 for the NDP.

The New Democrats have picked up 5.5 points over that time in British Columbia, 2.5 points in Alberta, 4.5 points in the Prairies, four points in Ontario, 5.8 points in Quebec, and 0.8 points in Atlantic Canada. Interestingly, though, neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals have been the sole relinquisher of votes. The Liberals have suffered the bulk of the losses in Alberta, the Prairies, Ontario, and Atlantic Canada, but the Conservatives have slid most in British Columbia and Quebec.

A recent piece by the Canadian Press suggested that this latest surge was the first to happen for the NDP since the late 1980s, making it difficult to make comparisons. Of course, as readers of this site know, the NDP has surged much more recently than that. The party was averaging about 35% in May and June 2012, putting it in first place nationwide. So, we do have something to compare the current uptick to. Let's do that.

What I've done below is taken the two most recent polls from EKOS and Ipsos and compared them to the polls from these two firms in late June 2012. At the time, Ipsos had the NDP ahead with 38% to 35% for the Conservatives and 18% for the Liberals. EKOS put the NDP at 32% to 29% for the Conservatives and 19% for the Liberals.

For both Ipsos and EKOS, the NDP was doing better in 2012 than they are now. We should expect their numbers to be better at the regional level as well. But that is not so. The NDP's electorate has shifted since the last time the party was popular.

First, the good news for the NDP. It has made some major gains in Alberta. Both Ipsos and EKOS put the NDP at 13% in the province at a time when the party was doing better nationwide. Now, they have the NDP at 25% to 31%, meaning the New Democrats are roughly doubling their support from 2012. That extra support means a boost of around two points nationwide. Without it, the race would not be as close.

The NDP is doing slightly better in Quebec now than it was in 2012 meaning that, proportionately speaking, its Quebec support is far more significant to the party than it was three years ago.

Two areas have mixed news. According to Ipsos, the NDP is doing about as well in British Columbia as it was doing in 2012, while EKOS has the NDP doing worse. The opposite is the case in the Prairies. These two regions, then, are inconclusive.

But the party is doing significantly worse now in Atlantic Canada than it was doing in 2012. And more importantly, the New Democrats have not made the same inroads into Ontario that they had during Thomas Mulcair's honeymoon period.

This is important, because the gains the New Democrats have made in Alberta will not translate into a lot of new seats. They were much better positioned, with their strong numbers in Ontario, in 2012. The New Democrats have put together a bit of a West + Quebec coalition that aligns with their 2011 breakthrough in Quebec and their traditional strength in B.C. and the Prairies. In 2012, however, they had added Atlantic Canada and Ontario to that coalition.

This is why we're looking at a three-way race instead of a two-headed contest. The Liberals are doing much better in Atlantic Canada and Ontario than they were in 2012, putting them in contention. The Conservatives have their western bases as well as a good chunk of Ontario, giving them the edge in seats. The NDP can now threaten to win a plurality thanks to inroads in B.C., as well as a handful of new seats in the Prairies, in addition to their retention of Quebec.

It makes for an interesting regionalized race between three parties. The contest is between the Conservatives and the Liberals in Manitoba, Ontario, and parts of British Columbia (Vancouver suburbs) and Atlantic Canada (the Maritimes). It is between the Conservatives and the New Democrats in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and parts of British Columbia (the Interior) and Ontario (the southwest and north). And it is between the Liberals and the NDP in Quebec and parts of British Columbia (Vancouver), Ontario (Toronto), and Atlantic Canada (Halifax and Newfoundland). There are plenty of smaller local battles that include other match-ups on Vancouver Island, in Calgary, in Winnipeg, in Quebec City, and in central Quebec.

A swirling mess of a campaign that could produce virtually any result. Will the summer clarify things?

An NDP majority in Alberta?

Yesterday was poll day in Alberta. First Return on Insight and Léger reported in the morning, then ThinkHQ surprised everyone with some new numbers. EKOS put their poll out in the early afternoon, and finally Ipsos Reid weighed in. Add this morning's Mainstreet poll, and we've seen six surveys in the last 24 hours.

While that would normally be unusual enough, as each poll landed the skepticism people had that the New Democrats were leading in Alberta was chipped away. Of those six polls, not a single one gave the NDP less than 37% support, and only one put the gap between the New Democrats and the second place party in single digits. The others showed a lead for the NDP of between 11 and 19 points. In Alberta.

The projection has now lurched from a largely minority situation between either the NDP or Wildrose to a likely majority victory for the New Democrats. The party leads with a projected 42% of the vote, enough to win them between 43 and 58 seats. Their minimum seat haul is projected to be 25 seats - which would count as a historic best.

Wildrose is narrowly in second with 26% and between 16 and 28 seats, while the Progressive Conservatives stand at 25% and between five and 23 seats.

The Liberals, with two to three seats and 5% of the vote, bring up the rear.

Yes, these are shocking numbers. But a few things should be kept in mind.

First, a lot of the seats the NDP needs to win to get to majority status are marginal. Seven of the 52 seats projected to go to the NDP are projected with less than 60% confidence - a toss-up. We cannot discount the importance of incumbency, and the potential for a snap-back as Albertans consider the prospects of an NDP majority (they could, of course, also like the idea).

Second, the NDP is projected to take slightly more than the average of the most recent six polls because of the projected over-estimation of the Liberal vote (as well as for the Alberta Party). This is due to the number of candidates these parties are fielding. The polls are averaging 7.6% support for the Liberals, which the projection reduces to 4.7%. They are averaging 4.7% for the other parties, including the Alberta Party, which the projection reduces to 2.7%.

As the New Democrats are topping the polls, and those extra votes are distributed proportionally, they get the lion's share. But the polls back this up. The second choice preference for Liberals and supporters of the Alberta Party is the NDP by a wide margin.

We'll see what the weekend and Monday has in store for final polls. It will be very interesting to see if these trends continue, or if they shift. If they do not shift, the NDP could still have problems overcoming their incumbency disadvantage and a lack of a ground game outside Edmonton and a handful of other ridings. However, the NDP didn't have any trouble with that in Quebec in 2011. Is this a wave election?

The tide is definitely shifting in the four polls released since yesterday morning.

Only Mainstreet was a returnee to the field, and showed a remarkable swing to the New Democrats. From 31% in the immediate aftermath of the debate, the NDP jumped to 44%. Wildrose fell six points to 26%, while the Tories were down five points to 21%.

Overall, the polls were very consistent. The NDP was between 37% and 42% in the three polls done over several days between April 25 and April 29. Three of the four polls had Wildrose at either 26% to 27%, while the PCs were in a tight range of between 20% and 24%.

That is a great deal of agreement for such an oddball election. We also have different methodologies at play here, with EKOS and Mainstreet using IVR and ThinkHQ and Ipsos Reid using both live-callers and the internet. Return on Insight used just live-callers, while Léger used their online panel.

And when we take into account the margins of error (assuming a probabilistic sample for argument's sake), we see there is even more agreement.

With the exception of the Mainstreet poll, which is the newest, a range of between 38% and 41% fits within the margin of error of all of the polls. They all top out at 41% or higher.

There is less agreement for Wildrose and the PCs, but the numbers are nevertheless consistent: mid-20s for Wildrose, low-to-mid-20s for the Tories.

The polls also saw eye-to-eye at the regional level, capturing some startling results.

The New Democrats, of course, led in every poll in Edmonton, with the PCs running second and Wildrose third. Looking at all six, the NDP ranged between 53% and 73%, the Tories between 16% and 22%, and Wildrose between 7% and 17%.

Most surprising is Calgary, though. I have read a great deal of skepticism surrounding the NDP's chances in the city, but the polls really can't back that up. The NDP finished in first place in the city in four of the six polls, and in second in the remaining two. They ranged between 25% and 35% (only one poll had them lower than 29%), compared to 23% to 33% for the Tories and 24% to 28% for Wildrose.

The New Democrats also led in four of the six polls in the rest of Alberta, with the PCs finishing third in five of the six. The NDP ranged between 32% and 39%, Wildrose between 28% and 33%, and the PCs between 22% and 35% (and only one poll had the PCs higher than 23%, which is disastrous for the party).

ThinkHQ, which had a more detailed breakdown for the area outside of Calgary and Edmonton, put the NDP ahead in northern Alberta, Wildrose ahead in central Alberta, and the two parties neck-and-neck in southern Alberta. The PCs weren't competitive anywhere.

Despite all of this, Ipsos found that 50% of Albertans still think the Tories will win, with just 21% thinking the NDP will win. Mainstreet, slightly newer, found it more of a split: 32% thinking the PCs will win and 29% giving the nod to the NDP. It would be interesting to see how that might change in the coming days.

And what effect might it have? It could be exaggerated. ThinkHQ found more Albertans concerned about a PC victory than either a Wildrose or NDP win.

By the election, there will have been five full days of campaigning between the most recent poll and the vote. That makes for a lot of time for opinion to shift. It shifted in that amount of time in 2012, so hopefully we won't be left in the dark again. Because something is happening in Alberta - and missing a whole week of it could be a big mistake for the pollsters.

Close race also seen by Ipsos Reid

The polls have spoken. The Ipsos Reid survey published Wednesday afternoon by Global News put the gap between the Liberals and Conservatives at just one point, exactly the same margin as recorded by Abacus Data and EKOS Research. Even the support levels are very uniform: 32% to 35% for the Tories and 32% to 34% for the Liberals. For all intents and purposes, the national landscape is now a tie.

Ipsos was last in the field between Jan. 6 and 11. Since that poll, the Liberals picked up three points to move into the lead with 34%, while the Conservatives were down two points to 32%.

The New Democrats slipped one point to 23%, the Bloc Québécois was steady at 6%, and support for other parties (including the Greens, which Ipsos does not prompt for) was down one point to 3%.

Total undecideds numbered 13%, down four points.

None of these shifts were outside the margin of error of similarly sized probabilistic samples.

Ipsos's last poll was hinting at a Conservative surge. No other survey at the time was suggesting quite the same thing, so it appears that it was just the product of normal sampling error and this new poll is a reversion to the mean. Apart from the sharp decline in Liberal fortunes since the fall, there is no discernible trend in Ipsos's numbers over the last few months.

Indeed, the 'surge' may have been the product of an unusual result among women. That January poll put the Conservatives ahead among this demographic, something that no other poll was showing at the time or has shown since. But this new poll shows a reset of those numbers, with the Conservatives and Liberals swapping six points. The Liberals now lead again among women and the Conservatives among men, putting Ipsos back in agreement with every other poll.

Oddly, Ipsos showed a big uptick in support among the youngest Canadians for the Conservatives, putting them up seven points to 29%, just five points behind the Liberals and one point ahead of the NDP (which was down eight points). This might seem like a counter-intuitive result, but in fact the recent Abacus and EKOS polls have also shown improving numbers for the Tories among young voters. Why this might be, however, is beyond me, as is whether this is a real trend or an anomalous blip.

The regional results are fairly typical, with some small variations.

The Conservatives led in British Columbia with 39%, putting them ahead of the Liberals, who were at 34%. The six most recent polls had put the Liberals ahead, so this is a bit of a reversal. But that other polls were in such agreement in B.C. was, itself, unusual. Ipsos has recorded a drop in NDP support in the province, to 21%, as others have.

The Conservatives led in Alberta and the Prairies with 54% and 45%, respectively, but Ipsos puts the NDP in much better form in the Prairies than other polls at 27%, one point up on the Liberals.

The Liberals and Conservatives were in a tie in Ontario at 37%, which is almost identical to the current polling aggregate. The NDP at 23%, however, is a much better result than the party has seen in most polls in some time.

And Atlantic Canada is the usual, with the Liberals way ahead of the NDP and Tories with 47% to 26% and 24%, respectively.

But what about Quebec? It has been the wildcard in federal polling lately, and this survey is no exception.

As most other polls have it, the Liberals were ahead with 31% to 27% for the NDP. This represented a sizable, but just inside the margin of error, increase for the Liberals. The Bloc Québécois was in third with 26%, while the Conservatives were well behind at 15%.

We've discussed the standing of the Conservatives in Quebec quite a bit, and this Ipsos poll would seem to argue in favour of their gains having been wildly over-stated. I think there is something to that. But if we look at the trends from each of the pollsters that have been active so far in 2015, there is a pattern that emerges. Virtually all of them have had the Conservatives gaining in January and early February, compared to where they were in December. But now the polls seem to be showing those gains tailing back or plateauing. Ipsos is well in line with that, with a three point drop.

The debate, then, is more about the size of the gain and the amount of support the Conservatives really have. The trends seem clear enough, however.

Another notable result here is the 26% for the Bloc Québécois. Coupled with the EKOS poll that put the party in second place with 23% last week, some were saying that the new Quebec narrative should be about the Bloc's rebound. I think that is premature.

This Bloc result is the best the party has had in any poll in a year. But that it comes from Ipsos is significant. The Bloc is only up one point from Ipsos's early January poll, so the number is far from unusual.

In fact, Ipsos has tended to have better results for the Bloc than other pollsters lately. Polls conducted within a week of this most recent survey have averaged 18% for the Bloc, compared to the 26% here. In January, polls taken within a week of Ipsos's 25% result averaged 17%, while polls taken within a week of Ipsos's November poll, which put the Bloc at 21%, averaged 15%. The Bloc had 20% in the Ipsos poll from September, while other polls at the time were averaging 14%.

So, it would appear in this case that we should not get ahead of ourselves in predicting a comeback for the Bloc. As far as Ipsos is concerned, the party is in a better position now than it was in the summer and fall, but is otherwise holding steady. This is the consensus among most other polls as well. Quebec is a confusing place for federal polls, so let's focus on points of agreement when they exist.

Breakthrough or outlier?

A new poll suggests that the Conservatives have moved into the lead in national voting intentions, opening up a four-point edge over the Liberals. Is this poll a sign that the Conservatives are in the midst of a breakthrough as this election year begins, or is it an outlier poll that will soon be corrected by a regression towards the mean? And does the poll really put the Conservatives on the 'cusp of a majority'?

The poll in question was conducted by Ipsos Reid for Global News between January 6 and 11, interviewing 1,915 Canadians. The poll had an over-sample in Alberta (which would been corrected by weighting, of course), making the other regional samples more like a national poll of some 1,200 decided voters.

The Conservatives led in the poll with 35%, a gain of two points over Ipsos's previous survey of November 10-December 1. That moved them ahead of the Liberals, who dropped three points to 31%.

Only the decrease for the Liberals would be outside the margin of error of similarly sized probabilistic samples. But the Liberals have dropped in two consecutive Ipsos polls, from a high of 38% in September. The Conservatives have been trending upwards, up four points since then.

The New Democrats have been very stable, unchanged at 24% (they have been at either 23% or 24% in Ipsos's last six surveys).

The Bloc Québécois was up one point to 6%, while 4% supported other parties (including the Greens). The number of undecideds in the entire sample was 17%.

Is this a potential outlier poll? The Conservatives have not registered 35% support in any poll since February 2013, two months before Justin Trudeau became Liberal leader. That was also the last time the party had a four-point lead (over the NDP in this case).

The poll also had some surprising results on the gender split. It found the Conservatives ahead among men, at 37% to 33%, which is to be expected. But it also found the Conservatives five points ahead among women, with 34% to 29%. That is unusual. As my piece for the CBC explored this week, the Liberals have averaged a nine-point lead among women in polls done over the last month (and that was with an average lead of three points overall). Even if we do swing those averages by seven points to reflect Ipsos's overall lead, we still get nowhere close to a five-point advantage among women.

And the Conservatives have traditionally not had such uniform support between the sexes. By my estimate, there was a 10-point discrepancy between Conservative support among men and women in the 2011 election. For the Liberals to score worse among women than among men is also contrary to virtually every poll done in recent memory.

Ipsos did show a statistically significant drop in support among women, as the Liberals plummeted five points (and the Conservatives gained four) since their last survey.

The score for the Bloc Québécois in Quebec is also noteworthy, as the party was placed in second with 25% support. That is their best performance in any poll since March of last year, some 50 polls ago. But there has been nothing whatsoever happening in Quebec that could explain such a boost. The only statistically significant regional shift occurred in Quebec, with the Liberals dropping eight points to 24% - explaining much of their national decrease.

However, whenever a poll comes out that raises some eyebrows, the reaction should be caution and patience rather than skepticism. We'll have to wait and see if Ipsos is the first to capture something we need to keep an eye on. Certainly, the last few weeks have been tumultuous. What first looks like an outlier can be the first to capture a trend, like that CROP poll in the 2011 federal election that was the first to show the NDP in front in Quebec.

And this is not the only poll to show the Conservatives in such a good position. Angus Reid's mid-December poll put the Liberals and Conservatives in a tie at 34% apiece. Abacus Data's pre-Christmas poll put the Conservatives ahead by one point, with 34% to 33% support. In the context of those two surveys, a 35% to 31% split does not look unusual.

The claim that it would put the Conservatives on the cusp of a majority government, as Ipsos Reid has made, is more unusual. Adding 30 seats to the electoral map does not change the math so drastically that the traditionally required 38% to 40% support for a majority government has suddenly been cut to just 35%. I recently looked at the thresholds required for a majority government, and the Conservative number still came in at 38%.

By my reckoning, the Conservatives would instead win about 145 seats, falling 25 short of a majority government. It is difficult to see how the Conservatives could pull a majority out of these numbers when, for instance, they trail in British Columbia and are still down so much in Atlantic Canada. A swing of about 12 points in favour of the Liberals in Ontario, compared to the 2011 vote, cannot be compensated for by 15 seats (in regions the Liberals would expect to make most of their gains).

The Liberals would win about 101 seats with these numbers, with the New Democrats taking 78 and the Bloc Québécois returning to official party status with 13 seats. They benefit greatly from vote splits, more than tripling their seat haul from 2011 despite a mere two-point gain in the popular vote.

I don't think people should get carried away with the idea of an impending Conservative majority just yet, but the Ipsos poll does suggest the Conservatives could be en route to improving their re-election chances by leaps and bounds. The next polls will be revealing.

With Godin retiring, is Acadie-Bathurst at play?

The New Democrats received some bad news last week when Yvon Godin announced he would not be seeking re-election this year. Godin has represented the riding of Acadie-Bathurst, in northeastern New Brunswick, since 1997.

Godin won the riding in 2011 with 69.7% of the vote. On the face of it, the New Democrats should have no concerns about retaining such a solidly NDP riding. But the question, which will only be answered when the next election is held, is just how much of a Godin riding Acadie-Bathurst has been.

The riding was not always so safe for Godin. When he first won it in 1997, on the heels of anger of changes to employment insurance by the Liberal government, Godin took the riding with 41% of the vote to 35% for the incumbent Liberals. In 2000, the margin increased to seven points.

But since 2004, the riding has been a very safe one. Only in 2006, when he took 49.9% of the vote, did Godin fail to secure a majority of ballots. In 2011, the Liberals - the traditional rival to the NDP in Acadie-Bathurst - dropped to just 14% support. The Conservatives finished second with 16%.

However, Godin really was a game-changer in 1997. In the 1984, 1988, and 1993 federal elections (and recall that in the 1980s the NDP was at a historic high under Ed Broadbent), the NDP captured just 5% to 6% of the vote in Acadie-Bathurst. Falling that far may not be in the cards for the party now that Godin is gone, but the NDP is suffering in New Brunswick.

There have been three large-sample (by New Brunswick standards) polls since November, which give us a good look at the political situation in the province. And the three polls (by CRA, Angus Reid, and Ipsos Reid) are all in close agreement.

The Liberals were leading in New Brunswick in these polls with between 44% and 49% of the vote, representing a significant increase from the 22.6% the party captured in the 2011 election.

The Conservatives were in second with between 29% and 32%, a big drop from the 43.9% the party had in 2011.

The New Democrats have also dropped a great deal, from 29.8% in 2011 to between 16% and 19%. That sets them up for their worst performance in New Brunswick since the 2000 election. Between 2004 and 2008, the party had consistently captured 21% to 22% of the vote.

If we average these three polls out, we end up with the Liberals at around 46%, the Conservatives at 30%, and the New Democrats at 17%. Under these circumstances, how good are the NDP's chances in Acadie-Bathurst?

I've finished the projection model for the 2015 election, and I am just working on some final touches before launching in about two weeks. In the meantime, though, we can use it to take a closer look at what the polls are saying about what could happen in Acadie-Bathurst.

If we just go by the regional trends, which is what the model is designed to do, the riding should stay in NDP hands. The model gives the New Democrats between 44% and 50% of the vote without Godin on the ballot. The Liberals come in second with between 30% and 35%, while the Conservatives come in third with between 14% and 16%.

With Godin, the NDP would have been projected to win more easily, with between 48% and 55% of the vote against 28% to 32% for the Liberals.

But these New Brunswick polls suggest the race could be much closer, before we even take into consideration the drawing power of Godin.

If we swing the model according to the three New Brunswick polls only, the NDP drops to between 42% and 48% and the Liberals to between 33% and 38%. While that still points to an NDP victory, that is a much closer margin. The 'minimum/maximum' projection would make Acadie-Bathurst, under these circumstances, a potential Liberal pick-up.

Quantifying Godin's value is a much more difficult thing to do. If we look at the 1997 election when Godin first came along, the province-wide swing from 1993 to 1997 would have given the New Democrats about 22.4% of the vote in Acadie-Bathurst, rather than the 40.5% Godin actually captured. At the time, he was apparently worth about 20 points.

If we use that as our guide, and penalize the departure of Godin by a factor of 0.55 rather than the normal 0.9 penalty assigned to departing incumbents, the model would give the NDP between 33% and 37% of the vote, with the Liberals between 37% and 43%. In other words, the riding becomes a toss-up that heavily leans towards the Liberals.

Of course, that penalty is based on an election that occurred almost 18 years ago. But it does give an idea of the potential effect Godin's retirement will have on the results in Acadie-Bathurst. News reports did quote New Democrats recognizing that the formerly-secure riding is now one that will need to be fought over, so these calculations make some intuitive sense.

The party's chances in Acadie-Bathurst would be improved if it can find a similarly popular candidate to take Godin's place. But the NDP would also benefit from a boost in the Atlantic region as a whole. At about 17%, where the polls have them now, the party is on track for their worst result since the 2000 election.

Gap closes between Liberals and Tories in new Ipsos Reid poll

We have been starved for new polling data of late, so what better way to feed the beast than with a massive poll with a sample of over 8,000 people and breakdowns for every province (and even the GTA)?

Last night, Global News reported on the newest survey from Ipsos Reid conducted over three weeks between November 10 and December 1. The numbers continue the trend of softening Liberal support and a Conservative Party that, either by default or due to a small uptick, has moved into a near-tie with Justin Trudeau's party.

The Liberals were nevertheless ahead in the poll with 34% support, a drop of four points since Ipsos Reid's previous survey of September 9-12. The Conservatives increased by two points to move to 33%. The New Democrats were up one point to 24%.

Support for the Bloc Québécois was unchanged at 5%, while support for other parties was up one point to 4%. Note that, as is usually the case with Ipsos's polling, that includes the Greens.

Only the drop in support for the Liberals would be outside the margin of error of similarly sized probabilistic samples, and it is really the only trend we can definitively identify. Other pollsters have also recorded a drop in Liberal support from the highs of the summer. The numbers appear to be returning to where things were in the spring - in fact, Ipsos's poll of April 17-22 had the spread at 33% for both the Liberals and the Conservatives and the NDP at 24%.

But are the Conservatives in the midst of an upward swing? The evidence is accumulating that their numbers are improving, but the size of the uptick is exaggerated by the steeper decrease in Liberal support. The party has gone from 38% in Ipsos's previous two surveys to 34% here, whereas the Conservatives have gone from 31% in the previous two surveys to 33%. It looks more like a reset or wobble than momentum, but we will have to see where things go from here.

That the Ipsos poll was taken over three weeks does give us an indication that the Conservatives may be building up steam. Between November 10 and 24 (the bulk of the sample with 5,034 decided voters) the Conservatives were around 32% to 33%, while the Liberals were around 34% to 35%. The last week of polling (the smallest of the three samples, though still 1,468 decided voters) had the Tories at 35% and the Liberals at 33%. A statistical fluke or a sign of things to come?

The Conservatives had a small edge in this poll among men with 36% to 35% for the Liberals (and 21% for the NDP), while the Liberals were ahead more comfortably among women (34% to 30%, with the NDP at 27%).

Other tidbits from this large-sample survey: the Liberals led among voters between the ages of 18 and 54, while the Conservatives were ahead among voters over the age of 55. A turnout advantage may be hiding there.

The more educated a person was, the more likely they were to support the Liberals, while the less educated a person was the more likely they were to support the Conservatives. Greater wealth meant a greater likelihood of support for either the Conservatives or Liberals, while as income dropped support for the NDP and Bloc increased.

And of particular note, considering the Conservative family-friendly policies unveiled over the last few weeks, is that the Liberals are actually doing better among households with children. They were up in these with 35% to 32% for the Conservatives. The two parties were tied at 34% in households with no children. Perhaps it is not the game-changing policy the Conservatives are hoping it will be. In fact, compared to the September poll the Conservatives made more of their gains among households without children.

At the regional level, the Conservatives and Liberals were tied in Ontario with 37% apiece, while the NDP was in third with 22%.

In Quebec, the Liberals were at 32%, followed by the NDP at 29% and the Bloc Québécois at 21%. With the exception of a single EKOS poll that put the party at 22% in October, that is the best result the Bloc has managed since Mario Beaulieu took over the party in June. The Conservatives had 15%.

The Conservatives were ahead in British Columbia with 33%, followed by the NDP at 30% and the Liberals at 28%.

In Alberta, the Conservatives were at 58% to 24% for the Liberals and 14% for the NDP.

In the Prairies, the Conservatives led with 41% to 33% for the Liberals and 23% for the NDP, with support for other parties jumping three points to 4%. The Greens have been putting up some oddly good numbers in the Prairies in recent polls, which coincides with this Ipsos uptick that is outside the margin of error. Something to watch?

And in Atlantic Canada, the Liberals led with 53% to 26% for the Conservatives and 19% for the NDP.

But because of the large sample in this poll, Ipsos kindly broke down the numbers even further. Let's take a look.

With the exception of PEI and, to a lesser extent, Newfoundland and Labrador, all of these are respectable samples.

Some of the numbers fall well in line with the sporadic results we've seen from other pollsters. The Liberal lead in Toronto is much like what we've seen elsewhere (and at the provincial level), while the closer race with stronger Conservative numbers in the 905 area code are not unusual. They do suggest that the Tories are not dead in the water in the GTA.

The numbers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick are well within the margins of what we usually see from the Corporate Research Associates when they put out federal results - big Liberal leads throughout. The numbers in PEI look a lot like the 2011 results, though CRA tends to give the Liberals a bigger lead here as well.

Saskatchewan and Manitoba are quite different from what we usually see from EKOS, the only pollster regularly putting out numbers for the two provinces. EKOS usually has the NDP in second in Saskatchewan and the Liberals either neck-and-neck with the Conservatives or first in Manitoba. If the Liberals are really that strong in Saskatchewan, we could see another MP from the province to join Ralph Goodale.

With these numbers, including the provincial-level results for the Prairies and Atlantic Canada, the likely seat outcome would be as follows.

Despite the one-point deficit, the Conservatives would come out on top with 132 seats, followed by the Liberals at 118 and the NDP at 83. The Bloc would win four seats again, and the Greens would take one.

The Liberals are unable to win the plurality of seats despite having the plurality of votes as they are penalized primarily in British Columbia, where they are only two points back from the NDP, and Quebec, where they are three points up on that party.

Though relations between the Liberals and New Democrats appear to be at an all-time low at the moment, it is worth noting that the two parties could easily combine for a majority government. Otherwise, the Conservatives would have some difficulty governing in this scenario.

House effects?

I wanted to take a moment to discuss the topic of house effects in relation to this poll. I often see comments along the lines of this or that pollster being biased towards one party or the other. The search for house effects is certainly a legitimate exercise as Nate Silver has shown again and again, but often the reputation a pollster has does not align completely with the data. And there is also an insidious insinuation that the bias is deliberately partisan, rather than methodological. Unless that can be explicitly proven, I chalk it up to silly tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories.

But anyway, let's look at Ipsos Reid and whether they have any house effects. It is worthwhile to compare Ipsos Reid to other pollsters, rather than snapshot election results more than three years ago.

In the six polls Ipsos Reid has conducted in 2014, the Liberals have averaged 35.5%, the Conservatives 31%, the NDP 24.3%, and other parties 3.8% (we'll put aside the Bloc in this case).

In polls conducted by other companies with field dates within two weeks of the start and end of these six Ipsos Reid polls, the Liberals have averaged 35.7%, the Conservatives 29.4%, the NDP 22.3%, and Greens and others 7.6%.

Ipsos is sometimes charged with putting out higher numbers for the Conservatives, and here we see that indeed they have been 1.6 points higher for the Tories than other pollsters in 2014. But that is a rather small discrepancy when we consider the Ipsos sample is only six polls, in addition to the margin of error of all of these polls. And to focus on this number would be to miss the point - Ipsos is right in line with other pollsters for the Liberals, and is instead more bullish for the New Democrats than they are for the Conservatives. Yet Ipsos is rarely charged with being an NDP-friendly polling firm.

The biggest difference with Ipsos is that support for the Greens and others is roughly half of what other pollsters peg it to be. This is significant because what differentiates Ipsos most from other pollsters is that they do not give the Greens as an option in their questionnaire. Undoubtedly, this drags down what would be Green support, with consequences for the support of the major parties. This alone may explain more of the discrepancy between Ipsos and other pollsters than anything else (and we should note that Ipsos is, by far, not the pollster that most often finds itself out of the peloton).

Some might think the exclusion of the Greens from Ipsos's surveys is a problem, but consider that in the 2011 election the Greens and other parties totaled 4.8% support. Other pollsters would have us believe that this support has increased by more than half. That is certainly possible, but polls consistently over-estimate the support of the Green Party in virtually every jurisdiction. One of the pollsters that consistently does this the least is, as it turns out, Ipsos Reid.

Tory, polls, big winners in Toronto's election

Though at one point in the count it looked like the result would be far closer than anyone expected, in the end John Tory prevailed over Doug Ford and Olivia Chow comfortably. The polls performed remarkably well and, on average, estimated each candidate's support to within two percentage points.

Tory took 40.3% of the vote last night, beating out Ford at 33.7% and Chow at 23.2%. The dozens of other candidates combined for 2.8% of the vote.

ThreeHundredEight.com's weighted average was only slightly different, at 42.8% for Tory, 32.2% for Ford, and 22.2% for Chow. Support for other candidates was exactly right at 2.8%, for a total error of five points. That equates to an error of 1.7 points per candidate, or 1.3 points if we include the estimate for 'other' support.

But the average performed well not because it found the middle-road among a group of disparate polling results, but rather because each of the pollsters in the field in the final days came very close to the mark.

The closest was Mainstreet Technologies, which polled four days before the vote and had a massive sample of about 3,320 decided voters. In the first public test of its polling, its overall error was 3.4 points, or 0.9 points per candidate (including others). It was the only poll to nail one of the candidates' support levels exactly, estimating Ford to have the support of 34% of voters. It was also the closest for estimating Chow's support. Tory was over-estimated slightly and Chow was under-estimated a little, but all reported results were within the poll's small margin of error.

Ipsos Reid, which polled the furthest out from Election Day of the three (October 21-23) was the next closest, with a total error of 6.3 points (or 1.6 points per candidate, including others). Ipsos was the closest for Tory, at 41.7%. It under-estimated Ford and over-estimated Chow, but all results were again within the margin of error of a random sample of similar size.

The most active pollster on the municipal scene, Forum Research, was the furthest with a total error of 7.8 points (or two per candidate, including others). Its estimate for Tory was just outside of the margin of error, over-estimating his support by almost four points. Ford and Chow were both under-estimated slightly, but overall it was still a decent result.

It is interesting to note that without Forum's final poll, the averages would have been 41.7% for Tory, 32.4% for Ford, and 23.1% for Chow. That would have given a total error of 2.8 points, better than either the Mainstreet or Ipsos surveys.

But overall, the polls told the story of the campaign in Toronto accurately, and those surveys that had Ford at a relatively high level of support were by no means implausible. In fact, Ford ended up with more of the vote than the polling averages (with the exception of one update on October 6) ever gave him. We can reasonably conclude then that the polls served the electorate well, with little misleading information being published.

Other cities

As far as I am aware, Forum was the only pollster active outside of Toronto with the exception of Mainstreet in Brampton (if I am wrong here, please correct me).

The polling in Mississauga was done closest to the vote out of these non-Toronto polls, and the result was not exactly stellar. The final Forum poll of October 24 surveyed 308 people in Mississauga, estimating Bonnie Crombie's support to be 52% against 34% for Steven Mahoney. The result was actually 64% for Crombie and 29% for Mahoney. An earlier poll by Forum done on October 15 with a larger sample of 769 respondents was closer, with 56% for Crombie to 31% for Mahoney. The winner was right here, but the margin was not.

In Hamilton, Forum did better. The last poll of October 17 (751 surveyed) put Fred Eisenberger ahead with 37% to 25% for Brad Clark and 22% for Brian McHattie. The result was 40% for Eisenberger to 32% for Clark and 20% for McHattie. Not a bad performance, but Clark was well outside the margin of error.

Mainstreet was last in the field in Brampton, reporting a poll of October 20 with 1,602 respondents that showed 41% for Linda Jeffrey, 34% for John Sanderson, and 13% for Susan Fennell. Forum was in the field earlier on October 16 (surveying 1,020), putting Jeffrey ahead with 42% to 27% for Sanderson and 14% for Fennell. The result: 49% for Jeffrey, 22% for Sanderson, and 13% for Fennell. An over-estimation of Sanderson's support to the detriment of Jeffrey by both Mainstreet and Forum.

In London, Forum was out of the field almost three weeks before the vote (Oct 8-10, surveying 782) so it is hard to blame it for the size of its error. But it did have the winner right, giving Matt Brown 35% to 27% for Paul Cheng. In the end, Brown won with 58% of the vote to Cheng's 34%.

The one real upset, if we can call it that, was in St. Catharines, but again that is based on an old poll of October 7 (729 surveyed). The poll gave Jeff Burch the edge among decided voters with 32% to Walter Sendzik's 24% and Peter Secord's 22%. The result was instead a Sendzik victory with 40% to 35% for Burch and 20% for Secord.

Finally, there was the poll in Ottawa. This was done well before the election on September 18, surveying 1,096 people. But the campaign here was very dry and low key, which explains why Ontario's second-largest city went virtually unpolled. The Forum survey gave Jim Watson the support of 63% of decided voters, followed by Mike Maguire at 24%. In the end, Watson won in an even bigger landslide with 76% to Maguire's 19%.

So the polling outside of Toronto (featuring lower profile campaigns with fewer voters, so there is more potential for error) was hit or miss. Of the polls done within two weeks of the vote, the one in Hamilton was a success with those in Mississauga and Brampton being of mixed quality. The older surveys in London, St. Catharines, and Ottawa were only somewhat indicative of what the result would end up being. The winners were identified in London and Ottawa, and that it could be a close race was hinted at in St. Catharines. On that score, the polls outside of Toronto would get only a passing grade, compared to the straight-As the polls receive in Toronto.

This is likely to be the last major election to be held for quite some time. Newfoundland and Labrador will probably not head to the polls until next year, and it remains to be seen what will happen in Alberta. But if Jim Prentice decides to take his strong by-election results as a mini-mandate, there may be no high-profile election held before the federal vote next fall. That leaves Toronto as the 'what have you done for me lately' election for the polls, one in which they were vindicated. I naively hope that will quiet the critics for now.

Polls agree Tory will win Toronto race. Will voters?

The race for the Toronto mayoralty is finally coming to an end today and the polls are unanimous: John Tory should defeat Doug Ford and Olivia Chow by a comfortable margin. The polls are in remarkably close agreement, showing little variation that cannot be explained by normal sampling error in polls done over the last two weeks. But will voters do what they have said they would?

First, the averages. The weighted averages give Tory 42.8% of the vote, putting him a little more than 10 points ahead of Ford. He has averaged 32.2%, followed by Chow at 22.2%. Support for other candidates has averaged 2.8%.

These numbers have been steady for some time. Since the beginning of September, Tory has averaged no lower than 40.4% and no higher than 46.4%. He has led since the end of July.

Support for Ford has been steady since the end of September, not wavering from a range of between 30% and 34.3%. That does suggest he ends this campaign with slightly more support than Rob Ford had when he bowed out.

For Chow, she has been stuck since the beginning of August with between 22% and 26.7%. She lost the lead in July and fell to third at the end of the next month. She never recovered.

All of this stability might be showing the effects of a long race. After months and months (and months) of campaigning and debates, people have made up their minds.

And so have the pollsters. There has been extremely little disagreement between them. If we go back over the last two weeks of the race, we see that Tory's support has registered between 39% and 44% in every single poll - between 42% and 44% if we look at just the last five. That is incredibly consistent.

There has been a little more variation for Ford (29% to 34%) and Chow (21% to 25%) but those are marginal differences. Rarely do we see numbers clustered together so closely.

If we look at just the final three polls, we'd see a range for Tory of between 42% and 44%, Ford between 31% and 34%, and Chow between 21% and 25%. That would suggest a clear 1-2-3 finish for the three candidates. But let's extend that further, taking into account the margin of error for the highest and lowest results for each of the candidates.

When we do that, the ranges for Tory extend to between 39% and 47%, with Ford between 28% and 36% and Chow between 18% and 28%.

There are a few different scenarios in those ranges: a huge Tory victory by a margin of almost 20 points, or a close result with a margin of just three. Chow could finish in third place by a large degree, or potentially could narrowly edge out Ford for second.

If anything is going to skew these numbers, it could be turnout. It is always woefully low in municipal races, and I suspect that it might not be too high today either. If it was a closer race or if Rob Ford was still on the ballot, there could potentially be more interest. But as it stands, Doug Ford is not in range to win and Tory is not the kind of 'exciting' candidate that people will turn out in droves to vote for. On the other hand, the mayoral campaign has been so present in the lives of Torontonians for the last year that perhaps they will turn out in large numbers anyway. We'll see.

If turnout is determinant in the outcome, it seems that Tory should still have an advantage. Ipsos Reid gave Tory 51% support among likely voters, a gain of nine points over his standing among all eligible voters. Mainstreet Technologies gave him a boost of two points to 44%. Both pollsters agreed that Ford would take the biggest hit, dropping him by five to six points. For Chow, it was a bit of a wash. All signs point to a Tory victory today.

Though only a few firms were active during the race, polling in the campaign seemed omnipresent. In the end, they all agreed on the final outcome and were more or less in line throughout the last year. Will they be vindicated or could a surprise be in store tonight? Only a few hours remain before we'll find out and Toronto's long ordeal will be over.

Two new polls give Liberals wide lead

Both Ipsos Reid and Abacus Data reported new national polling numbers yesterday, and both showed the Liberals leading the Conservatives by six or seven points. The results corroborate some of the other recent numbers we have seen. These suggest that the Liberals have rebounded, at the expense of the Conservatives, from what looked like a slump-in-the-making at the end of the spring.

The Ipsos Reid poll, conducted for Global News, was the first we have heard from the company at the federal level since April 17-22. Since then, the Liberals were up five points to 38% support, a jump that is outside the margin of error of a probabilistic sample of similar size.

The Conservatives were down two points to 31%, while the New Democrats were unchanged at 24%.

The Greens and Bloc Québécois had 3% apiece.

Abacus Data's last poll was conducted June 25-July 3. They have not recorded any major shifts since then, but the Liberals were up one point to 35%, followed by the Conservatives at 29% (down two points) and the NDP at 22% (up one point).

The Greens stood at 7% support, while the Bloc was at 5%.

Both pollsters recorded similar gender breakdowns. The Liberals were up by two points among men in the Abacus poll. The margin was four points according to Ipsos. Among women, both firms put the gap at 10 points between the Liberals and Conservatives.

I've highlighted above the three largest regions, but only in Quebec do the numbers look very close. There, both polls have the Liberals ahead of the NDP (echoing the results of the latest big-sample CROP poll) with the Bloc Québécois well behind.

The dissimilarities in British Columbia and Ontario are, on the face of it, important. In B.C., it is either a close Conservative-Liberal contest, or a Liberal lead with the NDP in second. In Ontario, it is either a wide Liberal lead or a virtual tie.

But if we take into account the margins of error (practically speaking, if not theoretically speaking since these are not probabilistic samples) we see that the disparities are really not so significant.

The chart below shows, simply calculated, where the two polls overlap for each of the parties. It gives a good indication of where things stand in each region.

Nationally, the Liberals are somewhere between 35% and 38%, while the Conservatives are clearly in second with between 28% and 32%. The NDP is in third with between 21% and 25%.

The Liberals are probably leading in British Columbia, where they are mostly ahead when taking into account the overlap. The NDP is probably in third, but overall the race is close.

The Liberals also probably lead in Ontario with between 35% to 41% against the Conservatives' 30% to 37%, and are most likely ahead in Quebec, with 31% to 41% against the 22% to 32% of the NDP. In Atlantic Canada, the Liberals are indisputably in front.

The Conservatives are comfortably in the lead in Alberta, but are well off their historical pace. They are also probably in the lead in the Prairies, but it is interesting that at the low end of the Tories' range and the high end of the range for the Liberals and NDP, the three parties are tied.

The Ipsos and Abacus polls would result in very different national scenarios in terms of seats. The Ipsos poll would give the Liberals 150 seats to 121 for the Conservatives and 67 for the NDP - enough to give the Liberals a comfortable minority government.

The Abacus poll is far closer, however, with 135 seats for the Liberals, 122 for the Conservatives, and 70 for the NDP.

If we combine the two results, taking the best and worst numbers in each of the regions, the Conservatives could conceivably come out ahead in the seat count with 140 to 133 for the Liberals. That would be on the margins of what is likely, just as a far larger Liberal victory of 152 seats to 103 for the Tories would be. But with these kinds of numbers, there is a great deal of scope for variation in the seat count. The Liberals need to be over the 40% mark to be in a good position to win a majority government.

The numbers above do give an indication of where the battlegrounds will be. For the Conservatives, much depends on their results in British Columbia and Ontario. For the NDP, it is Quebec and B.C. that are most important, while Ontario will probably make or break the election for the Liberals (I'd throw Quebec into that as well, but the Ipsos and Abacus polls were consistent there for the party).

Also of note is Alberta. With the Conservatives dropping significantly in the province to around 50%, it opens up the potential for a number of seats in Edmonton and Calgary to go to either the Liberals or NDP. It likely won't determine the fate of the government, but the eight-seat range for the Tories above could turn out to be very important. Admittedly, however, if the Conservatives are reduced to 21 seats in Alberta they are likely not doing very well in the rest of the country.

The only pollster that has been very active in 2014 that we have yet to hear from this summer is Angus Reid Global. As Angus Reid has had the race far closer than anyone else has, it will be interesting to see if they will change their tune or continue to set themselves apart from the pack.

Decisive final week begins

A number of polls have been released in the last few days, and they only emphasize just how important the next few days might be in deciding who will form the next government. The numbers are very close between the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives among all voters, but it is among those who will actually vote that the election will be won.

The projection has ticked back towards the Liberals since yesterday, with the party at 39.2% support, or between 38% and 43%, a gain of 1.9 points. The Tories are down 0.5 points to 36.8% (or between 35% and 40%), while the NDP is down two points to 17.6%, or between 16% and 19% support. The Greens are at 5.3%, or between 4% and 7%.

The Liberals are back up to the bare minimum for a majority government, with a four-seat gain since yesterday to 54, or between 46 and 64. The PCs are down two seats to 38, or between 30 and 50 seats. So there is a bit of overlap between the two parties. The NDP is down two seats to 15, or between 8 and 16 seats.

Support for the New Democrats is, perhaps, the wildcard of this election. It is less consequential for the NDP than it is for the other parties, however. If the NDP ends up below 20%, the Liberals will likely prevail even with a vote deficit against the Tories. But if the NDP is over 25%, the Liberals stand little chance. But where will the party end up?

The chart below shows the latest tally among all eligible voters for Ipsos Reid and EKOS Research. I've included Forum's numbers, but the company uses a turnout model to adjust their numbers.

When you look at these three polls, the latest from these three firms, there is little real divergence on the two main parties. The margins are very close - a tie according to Ipsos and EKOS, a two-point lead for the Liberals according to Forum. Support for the Liberals stands at between 35% and 39%, the PCs between 35% and 37%. Those are pretty clear numbers.

But support for the NDP is another thing entirely. The IVR pollsters (EKOS and Forum) give the party just 17% or 18% support, while Ipsos (online) gives them 26%. That is a huge difference, and one that is extremely important for the seat outcome. The Liberals have a much better chance of winning with the numbers laid out by Forum and EKOS than they do with those of Ipsos.

It should be noted that throughout this campaign Ipsos has been on the high side for the NDP and EKOS/Forum on the low side, so we may be seeing some methodological bias at play here.

Can the results of the past few elections provide any guide for us? Every pollster over-estimated the New Democrats in both the 2007 and 2011 elections, by between 0.2 and 3.3 points. In 2011, two of the final polls were done online (Angus Reid and Abacus), two were done via the telephone with live-callers (Ipsos and Nanos), and two were down via IVR (Forum and EKOS).

The online polls over-estimated the NDP the most, by an average of 2.3 points. The telephone polls over-estimated the New Democrats by 1.4 points, while the IVR polls over-estimated the party by just 0.5 points. If something similar happens again in 2014 (and past performance is by no means something that remains constant going forward) we could expect Forum and EKOS to have the NDP's support closer to the mark. But is that realistic at 17% or 18%?

In terms of trends, all of the change between these new polls and the last time these firms were in the field at around the same period shows general stability.

The estimates by EKOS and Ipsos of likely voters is even more confusing, since they portray two starkly different outcomes. Again, I've included Forum for comparison.

Ipsos gives the Tories a significant lead among likely voters with 40% to 32% support, with the NDP still holding its own at 24%. EKOS, however, gives the Liberals the edge with 42% to 35%, with the NDP at only 14% support. That is extremely low, and would be the worst performance by the party since 1999.

Oddly, Forum's turnout-adjusted numbers seem to split the difference (Abacus Data's numbers have generally done the same, we'll hear from them later today). If this pattern holds through to election day, either Forum and Abacus will land close to the mark while both EKOS and Ipsos miss, or one of the last two will nail it and put everyone else to shame (the middle-of-the-road pollsters to a lesser extent).

But we should hear from every pollster again before Election Day, so perhaps we will see some convergence. Or, someone will be in for a rough night on Thursday.

Riding polls

The Star published the numbers from a series of 18 riding polls conducted by Forum in some swing ridings (a few did not make it on the last that would have been interesting). I've broken them down by region below to see if we can discern any patterns - but we should note that all of these riding polls were conducted before the debate.

In the Toronto/905 region, we can see that the Liberals are looking rather strong. They looked good against the PCs in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Mississauga-Erindale, Pickering-Scarborough East, and St. Catharines, while they were narrowly edging out the Tories in Brampton-Springdale and Burlington. This generally backs-up the decent polling numbers the Liberals have been putting up in the GTA.

In the downtown core where the Liberals are facing off against the NDP, the races were close but they nevertheless held the advantage: six points in Davenport and one point in Trinity-Spadina. The NDP, however, looked to be in a good position to retain Niagara Falls.

The polling numbers in the four southwest ridings seem to give some credence to the better-than-expected support levels of the Liberals in the southwest. They were ahead in Cambridge, narrowly led the NDP in Kitchener-Waterloo, and were competitive in London West and Windsor West. The PCs were not doing as well as they could have, suggesting that the Tories' support in the southwest may be concentrated outside of the urban centres more than the party needs it to be.

In the north, the NDP was leading in Sudbury while the Liberals were ahead in Thunder Bay-Atikokan. In eastern Ontario, the races were very, very close between the PCs and Liberals, with the NDP a non-factor.

Did the debate shift any of these? It is hard to tell since the polls have been inconclusive on the effects of the debate, apart from a possible uptick for the PCs. This means the party may have moved ahead in ridings like Ottawa South, London West, Brampton-Springdale, and Burlington. But local candidates can mean a lot as well, particularly in ridings like Ottawa South and London West that held by-elections recently. There could be many very close races on election night.

Programming note: the next update on Tuesday will be a little later than usual. On Wednesday, I will probably save my update until the very end of the day, after all of the last polls of the campaign are published.