April 4th: Nanos update and new Legermarketing poll

Note: Every day, a post is dedicated to the newly released polls and projections are made using those polls only. This shouldn't be considered as the official projections of this site as they are less accurate since based on less polls. The "latest projections" based on an average of most recent polls are available in the right column of this site and are updated every 3-4 days.

We are lucky today since we not only get the daily update from Nanos, but we aslo get a poll from Legermarketing with a huge sample size of 3000. They don't tell the same story everywhere though. The Conservatives keep increasing in the latest Nanos update and now stand at 42% nationally! They seem to have taken the lead in the Atlantic (but carefull with the small sample size) and regain a more comfortable lead in Ontario. As for the Liberals, the boost they got 4 days ago is definitely gone.

In the other poll, the story is a little bit different. The Tories stand at "only" 37% and they lead in Ontario by only 39% versus 34%, which would represent an improvement for the Liberals as compared to 2008. Leger also place the Liberals first in the Atlantic. One thing that surprised me in this poll is the answer to the question "which got the best campaign so far?". I was expecting the Liberals to score better than they do.

I haven't updated the main projections yet as I would rather wait for one more poll, for instance from Angus-Reid. But if you wanna know, the Conservatives has slipped just below a majority (I give more weight to the Leger poll than the Nanos one since the sample size is 3x). By using the two new polls only, we get the displayed projections (details are here). While the Tories are a little short of a majority, they are still projected to win 135 safe seats and be involved in 28 races. So the majority is still possible, just less likely. What this poll shows is the ceiling the Tories have reached in the West. Being at 39% nationally is nice, but with only a 5-points lead in Ontario, it doesn't really help. They really need to either increase in the Atlantic or in Ontario in order to secure a safe majority. But if you ask me, I would still bet on a Tory majority at the moment as I believe this party will be able to target the ridings it needs.

For the Liberals, one thing that seems to come from nay polls is the fact they ar eback in the Prairies. Ok they are still far behind the Conservatives, but they are definitely up compared to 2008.

Nothing else to say so far. I'll probably write a more analytical post later today. I'm thinking about looking where the Bloc is in danger.