Tory and NDP slippage gives Liberals a polling boost in key provinces

Entering the New Year, the Conservatives continue to hold a solid lead over their rivals on the opposition benches. But 2011’s two big winners have taken a step backwards as 2012 begins, permitting the Liberals to move forward with gains in Canada’s two largest provinces. 

An aggregation of every public opinion poll released since the May 2 election, heavily weighted toward the most recent data, indicates the Conservatives have the support of 36 per cent of Canadians, down 3.6 points since the election and 2.2 points since Nov. 2, 2011.

You can read the rest of the article, detailing my latest federal vote and seat projections, at The Globe and Mail website here.

Before getting to this week's update of the NDP endorsement rankings, let's take a deeper look at the projection featured in this article.

Using the widest margin required to have given the proper seat ranges to the parties in the last Ontario election, which featured ridings of similar size to that at the federal level, I calculated what the seat ranges are for this projection as well.

Though the most likely outcome is the 140-99-63-5-1 seat distribution described in the projection, the Conservatives could win as few as 109 seats and as many as 187, based on the degree of error that the projection model has had in the past (and this includes the degree of error the polls have had as well).

Of course, winning as few as 109 seats or as many as 187 is very unlikely. The most likely outcome is 140 seats or close to it.

The New Democrats could win as few as 56 seats or as many as 128, meaning that they could potentially win more seats than the Conservatives.

The Liberals could win as few as 29 seats and as many as 88. At their current levels of support it does not appear that the Liberals could do much worse than their 34-seat performance in May 2011. They could, theoretically at least, surpass the NDP.

The Bloc Québécois seat range stands at between one and 27 seats, while the Greens could win one or two.

In addition to calculating the range, I also recorded what kind of races current levels of support would yield.

Of the 140 seats projected to be won by the Conservatives, 31 are considered close enough races that the projection could make the wrong calls. Interestingly, however, they are spread relatively evenly between the New Democrats (17) and the Liberals (14). But of the 47 ridings in which the Conservatives are trailing by a close margin, 28 of them are Liberal, 16 are NDP, and three are projected to be won by the Bloc Québécois.

This means that in a defensive campaign, the Conservatives would need to fight off both the New Democrats and the Liberals in order to save what they could. But in an offensive campaign, the Conservatives would mostly be targeting Liberal ridings or ridings in which the Liberals stand to win seats back from the Tories.

It is a very different situation for the New Democrats. In the 43 seats in which they lead by close margins, in 19 of them they are being chased by the Bloc. In another 15 they are trailed by the Conservatives and in nine the Liberals are not far behind. This means that a defensive campaign would mostly be fought in Quebec, primarily against the Bloc, but that the NDP would also need to fend off the Tories and the Liberals.

Of the 29 seats in which the NDP is trailing, however, 17 of them are projected to be won by the Conservatives. Another nine are Liberal while three are projected to vote Bloc. That means that if the NDP is moving to gain seats they need to win them mostly from the Conservatives.

For the Liberals, they are being chased in 27 ridings by the Conservatives and in only six by the NDP. In one riding the Bloc is on their tail. The Liberals trail the Conservatives in 15 ridings, the NDP in nine, and the Bloc in one. This indicates that though the Liberals need to prevent their vote from slipping to the NDP, most of their riding-by-riding battles are against the Conservatives.

And for the Bloc Québécois, they trail the NDP in 21 ridings and the Liberals in one, while leading the NDP in two ridings and trailing the Liberals and Conservatives in one apiece. Unsurprisingly, their major foes are the New Democrats.

A rough estimate based on these ranges, then, suggests that there is a 76% chance that the Conservatives would win the most seats based on these numbers, with a 24% chance that the New Democrats could win the most seats. No scenario puts the Liberals on top, and no scenario puts the Bloc back in third.

Now to the updates to the NDP endorsement rankings. This past week being a holiday week, there isn't much to report. But there have been a few minor changes.

Paul Dewar is the only candidate with a new endorsement that can be recorded in the rankings: Mable Elmore, an MLA from British Columbia. That gives Dewar an extra point, bumping him up to 26.9, or 5.7% of the total available points (a gain of 0.2 percentage points). Dewar has said he will have more endorsements to announce in the new year, so we should expect him to get another boost soon.

The endorsement of Thomas Mulcair by Herb Dickieson, former leader of the PEI New Democrats, was not added to the rankings last week but should have been. Dickieson gives Mulcair an extra 0.5 points, meaning he now stands at 119.8 points, or 25.5% (unchanged). The margin between Mulcair and Brian Topp now stands at 67.2 points.

That is partly because Topp has dropped one point as I have removed the endorsement of Joy MacPhail, former BC MLA. As a former MLA and interim leader, she was not supposed to be included in the rankings to begin with. This means Topp is now down to 187 points, or 39.9% (-0.2).

Because of the gains by Mulcair and Dewar, Peggy Nash's share of all endorsement points has dropped by 0.1% to 20.3%.

(Click here to learn more about the endorsement system and here for how the points are awarded. And, as always, you can right-click the list of endorsers and open in a new tab or window to magnify it.)

So, a relatively quiet week. But whatever momentum there is appears to be in the corners of Mulcair and Dewar. Since December 14, Mulcair has made a 2.1-point gain in the points share while Dewar has gained two points. But, as he was starting from a lower share, that is a much more significant increase for Dewar.

The press has also been much more positive for Mulcair, Dewar, and Nash than it has been for Topp. Virtually every report says he is no longer the front-runner, though that seems to be based primarily on anecdotal evidence, gut-feeling, and reports from people within the party (always to be taken with a grain of salt, since a leadership race splits a party into various camps, no matter how amicable they may be).

The next round of debates should shake things up and provide a clearer picture of the race. It might not have the drama of last night's Iowa Republican caucus, but the NDP leadership campaign should still have some surprises in store.

The new year

With a new political year on the horizon, each of the parties in the House of Commons could stand to make a few New Year’s resolutions. In addition to encouraging their members to visit the Parliamentary gym more often, here are some of the resolutions each of the parties might want to consider for 2012.

You can read the rest of the article on The Huffington Post Canada website here.

To some extent, I think we're all still getting used to the new reality that is a majority government here in Ottawa. This year will be Canada's first full year of a sitting majority government since 2003. That isn't to say it will be a quiet year. This spring the federal budget will be tabled and the NDP leadership race will come to an end. In the last few months of 2012 the Liberal Party's leadership race will start rolling, and all of this while provincial elections in Alberta and perhaps Quebec take place, not to mention the election south of the border.

Speaking of which, the Republican primary vote in Iowa looks like it will be an incredibly close one between Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. At various times in the last few months, that list was supposed to include Rick Perry, then Herman Cain, then Newt Gingrich, in place of either Paul or Santorum, or both. Meanwhile, in our NDP leadership campaign, it's all a big mystery.

But 2012 will be an important year for almost every party in this country. This is Daniel Paillé's first full year as leader of the Bloc Québécois. The Liberals will be preparing for next year's leadership race. The New Democrats will be choosing the leader who will take them into the 2015 election. The Conservative budget will set the agenda for most of their next few years in government. Could it be the most determinant year on the Hill until 2015?

It will be a big year for ThreeHundredEight, as the projection model goes through more changes and improvements, taking into account more regional data and making what I hope will be better estimations of how the votes will break on election night. Alberta and Quebec (if the latter does indeed go to the polls) should provide their fair share of challenges, what with the Wildrose Party likely to be a major factor throughout the province for the first time in Alberta and the Coalition Avenir Québec being a completely new entity there.

While on the topic of Alberta, which will become the focus of this site as we approach the election period, let's briefly take a look at the story the polls have been telling since January 2010.

It has been a bit of a ride for the Progressive Conservatives, who began 2010 more than 10 points behind Wildrose.

That changed in April 2010 when the Tories moved back in the lead, and that is where they have stayed since. Their numbers were relatively flat until the summer of 2011, when the leadership race galvanized the party. Their levels of support have improved under Alison Redford.

Wildrose, meanwhile, has been on the decline since November 2010. They are still comfortably ensconced in second place, however, holding a double-digit lead over their opposition rivals. But they are far removed from the salad days of late 2009-early 2010.

The Alberta Liberals are also on the decline, and their recent leadership race has not helped them at all. They haven't gotten too close to Wildrose in some time, but until May 2011 they were safely in third place. Since the federal election, however, the Liberals have moved into a tie for third place with the New Democrats, who have seen their levels of support increase slightly. But the likelihood that the NDP could finish third in the 2012 election ahead of the Liberals has more to do with Liberal weakness than it does with NDP strength.

The monthly provincial polling averages chart has been updated to include an Ontario poll by Innovative Research, taken at the end of October and beginning of November. I missed it at the time. The voting intentions results are unchanged from the election, but the poll does have some interesting things to say about why Ontarians voted the way they did. It is also a somewhat confusing slideshow - it looks like a few stray slides from other presentations somehow made their way into it. But it might be worth a look. It seems unlikely that Dalton McGuinty's minority government will fall this year, but at least Ontario gives us the kind of uncertainty that our federal politics used to provide.