Ball set to take over leading NL Liberals

Liberals in Newfoundland and Labrador will be choosing their new leader this weekend. The man or woman they select will take over a party that is leading by a wide margin in the polls less than two years before the next provincial election.

A new survey conducted by MQO Research for NTV between Oct. 22-26 and surveying 400 Newfoundlanders and Labradorians by telephone found the Liberals well in front with 52.1% support among decided voters (margin of error of the entire sample is 4.9%, among the decided sample it is 6%). The governing Progressive Conservatives placed second with 28.7%, while the New Democrats dropped to 17.9% support. Other parties garnered 1.3%, while 32.3% of the entire sample was undecided, said they would not vote or would not respond to this particular question.

The numbers for the PCs seem in line with recent polls, part of a worrying trend for Kathy Dunderdale's government. The Liberals have been trending upwards for some time, but the NDP's score is the worst they have registered in any public poll since before the 2011 election. This is certainly a problem for them, but whether they have suffered a lasting blow remains to be seen. This poll was conducted in the midst of a leadership crisis in the party, when its MHAs demanded a test of Lorraine Michael's leadership. The crisis seems to have passed for the time being.

With these levels of support, the Liberals would easily form a majority government with 30 seats, compared to 13 for the Progressive Conservatives and just five for the New Democrats. The Liberals would win almost all of their seats west of St. John's, while the PCs and NDP would take most of their seats in and around the provincial capital.

The poll showed that Dwight Ball was the favourite candidate of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians among those in the race for the Liberal Party leadership:

Dwight Ball: 27.8%
Cathy Bennett: 21.8%
Paul Antle: 18.7%
Danny Dumaresque: 6.2%
Jim Bennett: 3.2%

The leftover proportion was undecided. The poll also suggested that Ball, Antle, and Cathy Bennett were all capable of defeating the Dunderdale government, as they bettered her on who would make the best premier. Jim Bennett and Dumaresque placed third, behind Dunderdale and Michael when they were inserted into the question.

Antle did better than either Ball or Bennett with 33% support against 32% for Ball and 30% for Bennett when stacked up against the other two party leaders.

But what does ThreeHundredEight's leadership endorsement rankings say? This system worked quite well in the federal leadership race for the Liberal Party. If we apply the same system, but swap the value of provincial and federal politicians, we see that Dwight Ball is the overwhelming favourite to win.

Ball leads in the endorsement rankings with 61.7% of all points awarded (at least according to the best of my scouring of the Wikipedia page for this race and the websites of each of the leadership candidates). Antle finishes second with 24.4% of the endorsement points, followed by Cathy Bennett at 7%, Danny Dumaresque at 4.5% and Jim Bennett at 2.5%.

Endorsements

Update (16/11/13): An intrepid reader alerted me that John Efford was a former MP as well as MHA, so his value (and the points for Dumaresque) have been increased from yesterday's post.

Based on Cathy Bennett's support in the MQO poll and the opinion of one of the journalists in Newfoundland and Labrador I quizzed on the race, she is likely to perform better than 7.1% of the leadership vote this weekend. But it seems very likely that Ball will come out on top, with Antle in second place.

(If I have missed any endorsements, please let me know and I will update this post.)

Update (17/11/13): In the first round of voting, the order of the candidates matched the leadership rankings, but as expected Cathy Bennett performed much better than 7%. The results were: Ball 44.4%, Antle 27.5%, C. Bennett 22.7%, Dumaresque 2.7%, J. Bennett 2.7%. The second ballot results were: Ball 47%, Antle 29.1%, C. Bennett 23.9%. The final ballot results were Ball 59%, Antle 41%. 

If Dwight Ball does win the leadership race, it seems unlikely that the party's support will change in the short term as a result. The Liberals started their uptick in the spring, and at that point the Corporate Research Associates were showing Ball polling ahead of Dunderdale on the leadership question. Surveys by Angus-Reid have shown strong approval ratings for Ball as well, with the latest poll putting him at 57% approval to just 23% disapproval. Compared to Michael's result of 63% approval to 22% disapproval and Dunderdale's woeful 20% approval and 73% disapproval in the early September poll, Ball seems well positioned to take over the Liberals.

Three-way race in Newfoundland and Labrador?

A poll emerged from Newfoundland and Labrador last week, showing that the Progressive Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador were in a very close race with the provincial New Democrats. The Liberals were not far behind. This is in some contrast to the polling that has been quarterly released by the Corporate Research Associates. What is going on?

Newfoundland and Labrador is a bit of an enigma - for a province as small as it is, a lot of polling is actually done. In addition to the CRA quarterly reports, we have this poll from MQO Research (which apparently polls on a monthly basis) and one from Environics last summer. By contrast, polls out of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia are far less frequent, despite their larger populations.

The results from these polls are not exactly consistent. CRA has been showing that the PCs have led without interruption since time immemorial (well, perhaps not) and by decisive margins. The closest race they have recently had gave the Tories a 12-point edge over the NDP in August and September 2012. But Environics made some waves in June 2012 by giving the NDP a three-point edge, and now MQO puts the two parties within one point of each other on a small sample of 336 people.

The poll gives the Tories 36% support, compared to 35% for the NDP and 28% for the Liberals. Drawing from such a small sample, conceivably any party could be in front. But for MQO, this is actually an improvement of the situation for the PCs, as they had the NDP leading the governing Tories for much of 2012. They just didn't release those numbers - these were presented to the Board of Trade in Newfoundland and Labrador and picked up by the media in the province.

So what is going on? CRA and MQO have apparently been in the field at the same time but have had different results. It could be methodological. It isn't clear how MQO is doing their monthly polling: their Atlantic Matters monthly report is done with an online panel while their monthly omnibus survey has an "open format". I'm not sure what that means, but since their website stipulates that the Atlantic Matters survey is done online while the omnibus is not described that way, it is probably safe to assume that the omnibus is not done online.

I haven't been able to find out whether this poll was done online or not, but since the Atlantic Matters report is sold as having federal and provincial voting intentions data, it is possible that this poll was done online. This would seem to jibe with Environics's survey of last year, which was also done online and had a similar result to what MQO was showing in their trend line slide at their presentation.

UPDATE: I misremembered that Environics poll from June. Turns out it was done by telephone, which makes the differences in results all the more puzzling.

It could simply be that MQO's online panel in Newfoundland and Labrador is, for one reason or another, skewed towards the NDP. Or that telephone surveys are skewed towards the PCs, but CRA had better results in the elections in Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island in 2011 than MQO did.

The MQO poll shows a regional breakdown that gave the New Democrats a strong edge in the St. John's Region, with 48% support to 35% for the PCs and 16% for the Liberals. In the rest of the province, however, the race was very tight: 37% for the PCs, 34% for the Liberals, and 28% for the NDP. This suggests that the New Democrats are in a good position to win a lot of seats in the capital and hold their seats in the rest of the province, while the Liberals are competitive outside of St. John's. That puts the Tories in a bind.

Note that this poll also includes 1% support for the non-existent provincial Green Party.

With these numbers, the seat result would be very close. The model gives the NDP 18 seats to 17 for the Progressive Conservatives and 13 for the Liberals, but the results are close enough that the PCs could win between nine and 23 seats, the NDP between 13 and 21 seats, and the Liberals between 11 and 19 seats. So, there is the potential for better distribution of votes to give any of the three parties the most seats (though the Tories and NDP are in a better position).

The New Democrats win most of the seats in and around St. John's, and take a handful in the rest of the province. The Tories win seats throughout Newfoundland, while the Liberals take most of their seats west of the Avalon and Burin peninsulas. As you can see, it would not take much of a regional "surge" to tip things dramatically in one direction or the other.

In terms of who Newfoundlanders and Labradorians see as the best person to be premier, Kathy Dunderdale was ahead with 46% (unlike most other surveys, MQO presented this information after removing the undecideds and none-of-the-aboves). Lorraine Michael of the NDP had 31% while Dwight Ball, interim leader of the Liberals, had 23%. It would seem that Dunderdale is somewhat more popular than her party, particularly outside St. John's.

The next election in the province is years away, but it is interesting how voting intentions have moved back and forth since the last election, and how the NDP is showing some staying power in a province where they did not have much success before 2011. The next leader of the Liberals could change things, and Gerry Byrne and Scott Simms, Liberal MPs in the province, have both indicated their interest in the job. Out of all the provinces scheduled to go to the polls in 2015, Newfoundland and Labrador could be the most fascinating.

McGuinty down to 54 seats, Aylward to 2

Five polls were released over the last 24 hours, four of them for Ontario and one of them for Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ontario

All four polls in Ontario showed a statistically insignificant gap between the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives. It's a remarkably close race.

The oldest poll was conducted online by Environics for the Canadian Press between September 26 and 28, interviewing 1,000 people. It found that the Progressive Conservatives stood at 36% to the Liberals' 35%, with the New Democrats trailing at 25% and the Greens at 3%. The poll found the Liberals ahead in Toronto and tied with the PCs in the GTA. The New Democrats were ahead in the north and the Tories in eastern and central Ontario.

The next poll was by Nanos Research for CTV and the Globe and Mail. This telephone poll was conducted on September 28 and 29, and surveyed 600 people. Nanos found the Liberals leading with 37.7% and the Progressive Conservatives trailing with 34.4%. The NDP stood at 25.5% and the Greens at 1.8%. Compared to Nanos's last poll from early September, the Liberals are down 0.4 points and the PCs 0.3 points. The NDP is up 1.2 points, all insignficant.

Then Sun Media released a Léger Marketing poll conducted online on September 28 and 29 and that interviewed 1,012 people. In this poll, the Tories led with 34% to the Liberals' 32%. The New Democrats came in at 29% while the Greens were at 5%. This is a two point drop for the Tories and a one point drop for the Liberals since Léger's mid-September poll, while the NDP picked up three points.

Regionally, Léger found the Tories to be leading in eastern Ontario (38% to the Liberals' 31%) and southwestern Ontario (33% to the NDP's 30%). The Liberals led in Toronto and the GTA (38% to the Tories' 34%) while the New Democrats led in Hamilton (38% to the PCs' 30%) and northern Ontario (39% to the Liberals' 30%).

Finally, Angus-Reid and the Toronto Star released a poll this morning. Conducted online between September 28 and 30 and interviewing 1,002 people, Angus-Reid pegs PC support at 34% with the Liberals at 33% and the NDP at 26%. The Greens trail in fourth with 6%. This is a two point drop for the Tories since Angus-Reid's mid-September poll and a one point gain for the Liberals. The NDP are unchanged.

Regionally, the Tories lead in the 905 (36% to the Liberals' 33%), southwestern Ontario (39% to the Liberals' 32%), eastern Ontario (36% to the Liberals' 30%), and northern Ontario (37% to the NDP's 33%). The Liberals lead in the 416 (46% to the NDP's 27%) while the NDP is ahead in the Hamilton/Niagara region (34% to the Tories' 28%).

It's a lot of new data. Interestingly, all of the online polls show an insignificantly slim lead for the Tories, while the one telephone poll has a less insignificant (but still within the margin of error) lead for the Liberals. Support for the Tories is very consistent, ranging between 34% and 36%. Liberal support is pegged at being between 32% and 38%, a much wider range that means the difference between winning and losing. NDP support is generally solid, at between 25% and 29%.

In terms of trends, this is Environics's first poll of the campaign so they have nothing to tell us on that score. But the other three all show stability for the two main parties, with changes being comfortably within the margin of error. However, they also all show the Tories slipping a little and two of them have the NDP gaining. Taken together, it would appear that Liberal support is solid, PC support is sliding, and NDP support is on the rise.

Regionally, Environics, Léger, and Angus-Reid all put the Liberals ahead in Toronto and running neck-and-neck with the Tories in the GTA. They all show the PCs leading in eastern, central, and southwestern Ontario, while the NDP is ahead in the Hamilton region. Two of the three have the NDP leading in the north, while the other shows a close race. For the smaller sample sizes that regions have, this is pleasantly consistent.

The projection has only moved slightly, however, as these polls have generally fallen on either side of the last set of numbers. The Progressive Conservatives still have a 0.1 point edge (if it can be called that) with 34.2% support. The Liberals follow with 34.1%.

Both parties have dropped 0.4 points since the last projection of September 27.

The New Democrats are up 2.2 points to 25.9%, while the Greens are down 1.5 points to 4.5%.

Only one seat has changed hands, with the Liberals losing it to the New Democrats. This puts the Liberals at a projected 54 seats, the bare minimum for a majority government. With a Liberal Speaker, the legislature would be tied at 53-53 between the government and the opposition.

That opposition is now projected to be made up of 32 Progressive Conservatives and 21 New Democrats.

The one seat that switched hands was in southwestern Ontario. The Liberals are now projected to win 11 in the region, with eight going to the Tories and two to the New Democrats.

At dissolution, the Liberals held 15 seats in the region and the PCs six.

There are enough close races to keep the result up in the air. The Liberals lead in 13 of them and trail in four others, while the PCs lead in four and trail in 10.

This puts the Liberal range at between 41 and 58 seats. The Progressive Conservative range is between 28 and 42 seats.

This means that the Liberals could win anything from a majority to one less seat than the Tories. The odds are still heavily favouring a Liberal government, however.

The New Democrats lead in one close race and trail in four others, meaning they could win between 20 and 25 seats.

Newfoundland and Labrador

One poll from MarketQuest Omnifacts Research was released yesterday for Newfoundland and Labrador, and it was a little controversial.

Taken online and over the telephone between September 28 and 30, the poll of 464 people pegged Progressive Conservative support at 54%, up one point since their last poll earlier in the campaign. The New Democrats were up four points to 33%, while the Liberals fell five points to a woeful 13%.

The controversy erupted when the Liberals questioned the credibility of the poll. But in my experience, when a party starts saying that the numbers in a poll are cooked it is more of a sign that the party itself is cooked. Standard operating procedure is usually to claim that "I don't pay attention to the polls."

Many polling firms employ people with former ties to political parties and governments, and governments are often clients. It's just how it goes, and it seems unlikely that a parent company would sabotage its polling firm's credibility by putting out numbers which can be shown to be false on election day. How easily people are ready to believe that professionals are capable of lying, cheating, and breaking every ethical code in the book for marginal partisan gain is, frankly, depressing.

On that cheery note, let's take a look at how this poll has shifted the projection. The Progressive Conservatives are now projected to take 53.8% of the vote, up 0.8 points since the last projection of September 21.

The New Democrats are up 4.1 points to 32.8%, while the Liberals are down 4.8 points to 13.2%.

With this shift in support, the Liberals have dropped two seats to the Tories. The Progressive Conservatives are now projected to win 42 seats, with the New Democrats taking four and the Liberals two.

The PC gains come in the regions of the Avalon and Burin Peninsulas and the main part of Newfoundland.

The Progressive Conservatives are now projected to win eight seats in the Avalon and Burin Peninsulas (excluding St. John's), with one seat going to the NDP. In the rest of Newfoundland, the Tories are projected to win 19 seats and the Liberals and NDP one apiece.

In these two regions, the Progressive Conservatives held 27 of the seats at dissolution, while the Liberals held three. That score is still 27 for the PCs, but the Liberals are down to one and the NDP stands at two.

There are only a few projected close races at this point. The Tories lead in one of them and trail in another. The Liberals lead in one of their own, while the NDP trails in one.

This puts the Progressive Conservative range at between 41 and 43 seats. The New Democrat range is now between four and five seats, while the Liberals are projected to win between one and two seats.

In other words, it appears that the NDP are well positioned to form the Official Opposition.

It should be an exciting week. Prince Edward Island is heading to the polls on Monday, while Manitoba votes on Tuesday. There may be another poll out of Manitoba before that happens.

Ontario goes to the polls on Thursday, and I suspect we will hear from every firm at least once before that happens. Newfoundland and Labrador then votes next Tuesday, and I have an inkling we could have three or four more polls out of the province before then. That would be welcome, as we have only heard from MQO Research since the campaign began

Final projections will be posted on the day of each province's vote. Post-mortems may have to wait until after the Newfoundland and Labrador vote, but I am very curious to see how the projection model performs. PEI, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Manitoba are all small provinces which makes things more unpredictable. Newfoundland and Labrador has the NDP in uncharted territory and Manitoba is incredibly close. Ontario is even closer, so plenty of surprises could still be in store.

NDP gains in Manitoba and PEI, Selinger and Ghiz on track for re-election

Yesterday, I was alerted to a poll that was released by MarketQuest Omnifacts Research for Prince Edward Island. This is the same firm which broke the ice in the Newfoundland and Labrador campaign. Few media outlets picked up the poll, but I have the details and so the Prince Edward Island projection has been updated.

But before getting to the MQO poll and PEI, let's take a look at the new poll by Probe Research for the Winnipeg Free Press.

The telephone survey, taken between September 21 and 28 (and so dipping its toe into the survey dates of both the Viewpoints Research and Environics polls) and interviewing 1,000 Manitobans, found that 46% support Greg Selinger's New Democrats, with another 43% intending to vote for the Progressive Conservatives.

The Liberals stood at 7%, while the Greens are at 4%.

Considering the margin of error, this is no change at all since Probe's last poll from the end of June which put the NDP and PCs tied at 44% and the Liberals at 9%. But coupled with the polls from Viewpoints and Environics, we can say that the NDP is ahead.

They are particularly ahead in Winnipeg, with 53% to 35% for the Tories. Outside of the city, the vote intentions are flipped: 54% for the Tories and 34% for the NDP. A big problem for the PCs is that in Winnipeg they only lead in the southwestern part of the city, and there by a statistically insignificant three points. It doesn't seem that the Tories will have much luck in the city.

It's worth noting how the polls have changed over time in Manitoba. PC support has been remarkably consistent, hovering between 40% and 47% for at least a year. But the NDP has taken off, standing in the mid-40s after being in the mid-30s in the spring. And the Liberals have sunk below the symbolic 10% mark.

With this poll, which I suspect will be the last of the campaign, the New Democrats are projected to win 44.7% of the vote, with the Progressive Conservatives taking 43.3%.

The Liberals take 8.1% of the vote while the Greens take 3.5%.

This is a gain of 1.6 points for the NDP since the September 27 projection, and a loss of 0.6 points for the Tories. The Liberals are down 1.5 points while the Greens are up 0.6.

This has not resulted in any seat changes. The New Democrats are projected to win 36 seats, the Tories 20, and the Liberals one.

With the NDP gain, several seats have dropped out of the PCs' range. Only one Tory seat and one NDP are now considered close, putting the NDP range at between 35 and 37 seats and the PC range at between 19 and 21 seats.

The NDP's advantage in Winnipeg is extraordinarily important, as the city has over half of Manitoba's ridings.

Now to Prince Edward Island. The poll by MarketQuest Omnifacts was taken both over the telephone and online between September 23 and 25. Surveying 411 people, the poll is smaller and somewhat older than The Guardian's poll by CRA. But the results are not much different.

MQO found that Liberal support in PEI stood at 53%, exactly the same as the CRA poll. It differed on PC support, pegging them at 32%, and NDP support, finding them at 12%. The Greens stood at 3%.

The NDP level of support is problematic, as they aren't running a full slate of candidates. And this is where we run into a problem - how to adjust for something like that? Should we assume that survey respondents don't know whether or not an NDP candidate is running in their riding? Certainly many, maybe the majority, are aware of this and so the voting intentions number may not inaccurate. It is a bit of a puzzle, but in any case it is unlikely that the NDP will play a big role in Monday's election.

With this poll, the Liberals are now projected to win 52.9% of the vote, down 0.2 points since yesterday's projection.

The Progressive Conservatives are down 1.9 points to 34.2%, while the New Democrats are up 3.1 points to 8.1%. The Greens are down 0.9 points to 4.1%.

The seat projection has not changed: 26 seats for the Liberals and one for the Tories. The seat ranges are also unchanged: 25 to 26 seats for the Liberals and one to two seats for the Progressive Conservatives.

New poll boosts Newfoundland & Labrador NDP

A pleasant surprise appeared yesterday morning, when MarketQuest Omnifacts Research released a new poll for the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial election, the first of the campaign.

MQO appears to be a newcomer, at least under this name. From what I can tell, this is a successor organization of Omnifacts Bristol, which we last heard from in the 2006 New Brunswick election. They actually did a good job of calling that result.

The poll finds that Kathy Dunderdale's governing Progressive Conservatives lead the pack with 53%, a result very similar to the Corporate Research Associates' latest poll. The New Democrats followed with 29%, an excellent result for them and, again, within the margin of error of the CRA poll. The Liberals followed in third with only 18% support.

On leadership, Dunderdale came out on top with 64% saying she would be the best premier. Lorraine Michael of the NDP was well behind with 22% while Kevin Aylward of the Liberals was at 14%.

Being the first poll of the campaign, this MQO Research survey takes up an enormous portion of the new projection for Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Progressive Conservatives are projected to take 53% of the vote, down eight points from the September 1 projection. The New Democrats take 28.7%, up 11 points, while the Liberals take 18%, down 3.1 points.

This results in the Progressive Conservatives winning 40 seats, the Liberals four, and the New Democrats four. I believe that because of their having more of the popular vote the NDP would likely be called upon to form the Official Opposition, a first in their history.

It isn't a given, however. Parliamentary precedent exists that would bolster the cases of both the NDP and the Liberals. Being the incumbent Official Opposition, the Liberals may be called upon to stay in that role. It would appear to be up to the discretion of the Speaker.

The two seat gains for the New Democrats come in the Avalon and Burin region and the main part of the island. This gives the NDP one seat in each of the four regions.

Note, though, that current projections are based on parties running candidates in the same ridings as they did in 2007. The New Democrats are slated to run more candidates than they did in 2007, but I have to wait for the official candidate list before having the projection's list of candidates match the real one exactly.

Since the first projection on August 31, this has been a slow leak of seats from the PCs to the Liberals and now the NDP.

There are not a lot of projected close races, but the PCs and Liberals are each leading in two of them, the NDP in one. The PCs trail in three close races and the Liberals in two.

This puts the Progressive Conservative range at between 38 and 43 seats, the Liberal range at between 2 and 6 seats, and the New Democratic range at between 3 and 4 seats. In other words, the race for second is still up for grabs

Having MQO Research active is great news for Newfoundland and Labrador polling, as that means we could have as many as three firms conducting polls during the campaign. I imagine the Corporate Research Associates will weigh in at least once, and NTV has been doing polls with Telelink of late. Hopefully we'll hear from all three of these firms soon.