Confusion in Ontario

If a provincial election were held in Ontario today, there’s no telling who would win. Dalton McGuinty, Tim Hudak, and Andrea Horwath would all have a shot, and not because they are locked in a close three-way race. The polls are just all over the place.

Ontario is the most confusing province in Canada when it comes to voting intentions, as the two firms most active on the provincial scene are in complete disagreement on what is happening and have been for months.

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

Ontario has been a very difficult province to cover. Forum Research and Nanos Research are both active in the province and they both consistently show completely different results. They both had decent showings in the 2011 provincial election, and there really isn't any other firm active in the province to provide a better idea of who has it right. They are so different that a "somewhere in between" reading of the polls is not very useful.

A poll that was released earlier this week, conducted by Forum for the Broadview Strategy Group, further muddied the waters as it gave the NDP a one-point lead over the Tories (36% to 35%), with the Liberals at only 22%. I generally dislike giving much prominence or credence to polls that are not done for the media or released directly by the polling firm (and Forum has yet to post the details to their website).

And somehow, Forum's seat projection model gives the Tories 48 seats with these results, the Liberals 30, and the New Democrats only 29. Perhaps the regional distribution is that great for the Liberals and that horrible for the NDP, but with a province-wide swing my model would divvy-up the seats as follows: 59 seats for the Progressive Conservatives, 42 for the New Democrats, and six for the Liberals.

Even here you can see that the New Democrats do not have very good vote efficiency, but it is very difficult to imagine how the Liberals could win 30 seats and form the Official Opposition with only 22%.

All in all, it makes Ontario - or more precisely, the polls being released for Ontario - very frustrating. The legislature being in a minority situation, and thus an election being always just around the corner, I hope the polls will start to align so that we can have a clue as to what is going on.

Liberals move ahead in Nova Scotia

Earlier this month, the Halifax-based Corporate Research Associates released their quarterly polling for the four Atlantic provinces. With Nova Scotia on track for an election as early as next year, the results in this province are particularly important - especially since they show the incumbent New Democrats in trouble.

The Corporate Research Associates were last in the field between May 7 and June 4, and since then the Nova Scotia Liberals picked up eight points to lead with 41% support, well ahead of the New Democrats. They were down four points to 31%.

The Progressive Conservatives, at 22%, slipped six points and the Greens were up one point to 5%.

That is a big change in Nova Scotia, as Darrell Dexter's New Democrats have been leading since early 2011. Now is certainly not the time for the NDP to fall behind with an election around the corner.

The New Democrats' drop is within the margin of error, however. The increases and decreases of the Liberals and Tories are not, suggesting that Stephen McNeil is picking the pockets of Jamie Baillie in particular.

McNeil is, by far, the leader seen by Nova Scotians as the best person to be premier. He has 35% support on that score, a gain of eight points. Dexter is unchanged at 23% while Baillie is down four points to 17%. If we just look at the Best Premier numbers as a share of the total (removing the undecideds and "none of the aboves"), we see McNeil at 45%, Dexter at 29%, and Baillie at 22%. In other words, McNeil is a net positive for his party while Dexter is not.

Satisfaction with the New Democratic government is down four points to 37%, with the number of people saying they are "mostly satisfied" decreasing. Dissatisfaction is up two points to 54%, but more importantly it is the number of people who are "completely dissatisfied" that increased, rather than those who are just mostly dissatisfied.

In terms of seats - and using the old electoral map, as a new one is going to be released in the coming weeks - the Liberals would win half of them in the legislature with 26, while the New Democrats would win 21 and the Progressive Conservatives five. If Stephen McNeil could convince an NDP or PC MLA to become Speaker, he would have a workable majority government.

The Liberals win seats in every part of the province, taking 10 in the Halifax Regional Municipality, eight in the Annapolis Valley and on the South Shore, five in Cape Breton, and three around the Bay of Fundy and in central Nova Scotia. The New Democrats win eight in Halifax, seven in Fundy/Central, four in the Valley and the South Shore, and two in Cape Breton.

The Tories are shut out of the HRM, but win two in Cape Breton, two in the Valley and the South Shore, and one in the Fundy/Central region.

This is a close enough result that the Liberals could easily win an outright majority, especially with Stephen McNeil's personal numbers besting Dexter's by such a considerable amount. But it is still a very close race, at least in terms of seats. The current map appears to give the New Democrats more resilience than they might deserve considering they trail the Liberals by ten points. It will be interesting to see how the new map changes things, if it all.