Opposition voters move to Liberals in new poll

A new Ipsos-Reid/CTV News poll conducted earlier this week shows that the Liberals have taken a sizable lead in national voting intentions after a previously close three-way race in Ipsos's polling. As a result, the New Democrats have taken a step backwards.

Kickstarter update: Funding for the project is well under way, with 21% of our goal having been reached after just two days. But we still have a long way to go, and the eBook on Canadian political public opinion polling in 2013 will not be funded unless the goal is reached! If the eBook interests you, and/or if you want to chip in to help with the operation of this site, please consider making a pledge. Just $10 will secure you an advanced copy of the eBook, and your name listed in the eBook as a thank you! I'll have an update next week on the eBook itself, including a chapter-by-chapter outline.

The full regional and demographic tables of the Ipsos-Reid/CTV News poll, also picked-up by The Globe and Mail as of writing, are available for everyone to see on the Ipsos-Reid website.

Source: Ipsos-Reid/CTV News

Ipsos-Reid was last in the field at the end of October. There has been some movement since that poll, but only the drop in NDP support would appear to be statistically significant. The Liberals picked up four points to move in front with 35%, while the Conservatives dropped a single point to 29% and the New Democrats were down five points to 26%.

Of note is that the Tories have dropped in three consecutive polls from Ipsos going back to September, when the party was at 32%.

The Bloc Québécois was unchanged at 6%, while the Greens were up one point to 3%. About 15% of the sample was undecided.

The Liberals led among both men and women, by two points over the Tories among men and by 10 points over the New Democrats among women. The New Democrats led among voters under 35, the Conservatives among voters over 55, and the Liberals among the rest.

This puts the Liberals back where they were a month after Justin Trudeau became leader, when Ipsos-Reid had the party at 36% and ahead of the Tories by six points.

Regionally, the Liberals were in front with 37% in Ontario while the Conservatives were down to 30%. They have dropped in three consecutive Ipsos polls, from 37% in September. The NDP was down to 29% support in the province.

In Quebec, the Liberals were up to 33% while the New Democrats and Bloc Québécois were tied for second at 27% apiece. The Conservatives were steady at 12% support.

The Liberals led in British Columbia with 37%, followed by the NDP at 30% and the Conservatives at 28% (down in three consecutive polls from 38% in September). The Greens were at 5% in B.C.

In Alberta, the Conservatives were ahead with 60% to 17% for the NDP and 13% for the Liberals. This was the only part of the country where the Liberals did not place first or second, and marks two consecutive polls of decreasing support. The party was at 26% in Alberta in mid-October. At 6%, the Greens had their best regional result here.

The numbers hardly budged in Atlantic Canada, with the Liberals at 56%, the Conservatives at 27%, and the NDP at 17%. The Tories have picked up support in two consecutive polls in the region, after being at 16% in mid-October.

And in the Prairies, scene of the dramatic by-election gains for the Liberals on Monday, the party was up to 39%, putting them just behind the Conservatives at 42%. The NDP dropped to 17% support.

At these kinds of support levels, the Liberals would likely eke out a plurality of seats with around 126. The Conservatives would likely take around 121, leaving the NDP with 60 seats. The Bloc Québécois would come up the middle and take 30 seats in Quebec, with the Greens retaining their one.

That a six-point national lead is not enough to give them a plurality of even six seats shows that the Liberal vote is not as high as it needs to be in certain parts of the country. Though they put up good numbers in the Prairies and British Columbia, the Conservatives still win 63% of the seats in the four western provinces. Alberta is a virtual sweep, as at only 13% the Liberals are unlikely to make a breakthrough in Calgary or Edmonton. They are not far enough ahead in Ontario to win the 70 seats or so the Tories were able to manage in 2011, and the race is too close in Quebec for the party to pull off the kind of landslide the New Democrats did in the last election. The good news for the Liberals, though, is that it wouldn't take a lot of movement to put them in a much stronger positions seat-wise, particularly in Ontario and Quebec.

These Ipsos-Reid/CTV News polls are often released in stages, so we should have some interesting leadership numbers to chew on in the coming days. In particular, I'll be looking to see where Thomas Mulcair's numbers go. He has been getting praise in the polls as well as in the press gallery for his performance in Question Period. Though few Canadians watch it, they probably do see the clips on the news. It had seemed that he and his party were getting a boost, but now it would appear that the Liberals are benefiting from the discomfiture of the Prime Minister. Thankless work for the opposition leader.

ThreeHundredEight: The eBook! Kickstarter Project

I am excited to announce that I have launched a new Kickstarter Project for the funding of an eBook.

This eBook, tentatively and boringly titled "Political public opinion polling in Canada: 2013", will give a detailed and in-depth retrospective of the past political year in Canada through the lens of - what else - polls.

Divided into 14 chapters, the eBook will tell the story of the past year in federal and provincial politics within the context of polling, with the federal narrative divided into four chapters of three months apiece. In between those quarterly appraisals, 10 chapters focusing on each province in Canada will summarize a year in provincial political polling. But the eBook will not just be a recitation of numbers, it will be a tale of the year in politics and how polls can inform our understanding of what is going on. And yes, how they can also distort our understanding and mislead us.

The eBook will also contain charts of this site's aggregations for the year, as well as detailed tables of polls that have been released throughout 2013. This will make the eBook an invaluable resource for students of politics, those who work in and around the political world, as well as us hopeless political junkies. If the project is successfully funded, the plan is to make this an annual drive and publication. It will be a unique record of polling in Canada going forward.

The goal that I have set to have the eBook funded is $5,000, which must be reached within 30 days. It is an ambitious goal, but one that I think is realizable (if everyone who visits the site today pledged $1, the project would be funded in a matter of hours). It is also, I believe, a fair valuation of the work that I will need to put into the project to get it done by the end of February 2014.

Don't know what Kickstarter is all about? You can find out more here. TL;DR? It has been a very successful tool for funding creative projects. Pledges are made and only charged to the contributor if the goal is reached. If we fall short of the funding goal in 30 days, no money changes hands and the project does not go ahead. If we reach our goal before the 30 days are up, then we can brainstorm for some other projects to fund before the deadline! Say, a retrospective of 2012 as well or a blow-by-blow account of the 2011 election? Why not both!

You can make your pledge and track progress by visiting the project's Kickstarter page, which you can also reach by clicking on the banner at the top of this page.

So what do you get if you decide to pledge, in addition to helping to get the eBook published? Pledges of $10 or more will get you a copy of the eBook when it is completed, at least one month before the eBook is made available for sale to the general public. Pledges of $5 or more will get your name listed in one of the following supporter categories: Member of Parliament ($5), Official Party Status ($10), Third Party Status ($20), Official Opposition ($30), Minority Government ($50), Majority Government ($75), and the Natural Governing Party ($100).

A note to business owners: a pledge of $250 will get you listed in the "Governor General" supporter category as well as give you the rights to a banner ad on this site for two weeks (please get in touch with me first to ensure the ad meets this site's guidelines). A pledge of $500 will get you listed in the "The Crown" supporter category, the rights to a banner ad for four weeks, and the eternal gratitude of an adoring public.

Of course, individuals who want to pledge that much are free to do so as well, and I'd be happy to put a banner ad on this site for a charity of your choice (with their permission).

For those who don't have an eReader of any sort, the book will also be available to pledgers in PDF format.

I hope that potential pledgers might also consider the funding goal as an opportunity to contribute to the continued operation of this site, which is funded only through a minimal amount of advertising revenue.

Any and all pledges will be most appreciated, and in return you'll get what I believe will be both an enjoyable and interesting book to read, as well as a useful resource. If you do decide to pledge: thank you so much! If you can't afford to right now, please consider spreading the word! Let's get this project funded!