Here are the latest projections using an average of all the recent polls. Since most of them gave the Conservatives a big lead, the new seat projections are naturally more favourable to the Tories. They are getting very close to a majority. You can see the details here.

By the way, I'm glad to see that 308 has finally updated his model and is now able to make riding-levels projections. I'm particularly glad to see that his projections are now much closer to mine, especially regarding the Liberals and the NDP. I have been complaining for months that 308 was underestimating the NDP and overestimating the Liberals. So it's good to see that 308 has finally admitted there was a problem.

Oh I would like to just add one comment about the recent debate regarding polls. I love polls, of course. But I have to admit that pollsters make me sad sometimse. In particular, I hate when the pollsters improvice themselves as political analyst and give us, along their new numbers, the reasons as to why a party increased or not. Not only are those changes within the margin of error most of the time, the fact remains that to assess whether one news really hurt a party or not, you need much more than a simple poll. After all, I completed my undergrad with a minor in political science and I had to read electoral studies. When you do, you realize how complicated it can be to determine the effect of one issue. So I'd really appreciate if pollsters could simple improve their methodology, calculate the margin of error correctly and stop thinking they have a ph.d in political science. For instance, I think that one big mistakes of almost all polls is that they don't interview comitted voters only. How can you interview 1000 people, get their vote intentions and think it's perfect? When you know that on election day, more than 40% of people won't vote?

Ekos has released its new poll and it's bad news for the Liberals. They stand at only 24.8%! The Conservative would enjoy pretty much the same level of support as in 2008, but with a bigger lead in Ontario. The NDP would lose votes and seats, but thanks to the drop of the Liberals, they remain mostly constant in term of seats. The Green are projected to win a first seat (Guelph). Before some of you remind me that the Greens are overestimated in the poll, I know that. But I take this poll at face value, simply for a curiosity exercice. Actually the real question is more: how could the NDP win so many more seats than the Green in Ontario, with almost the same percentages? The answer lies of course in the fact that the NDP has established forteresses in this province, something not enjoyed yet by the Greens.

Anyway, for these projections, I'm using only the Ekos poll just to show how high the Conservatives could go with such a favorable poll. They would be really close to a majority. And actually, for the first time since I'm making projections, the total Safe+Potential clearly exceeds 155 for the Tories. They would need a very high ratio of wins in close races though to achieve that. Note that with a uniform swing model, the projections would be 155 for the CPC.

If we see more polls like this one, I would have to re-evaluate the prospect of having elections this spring. Although Harper would need to trigger the elections himself since I don't see the LPC and NDP bringing the government down with such bad numbers.

Here is the pdf. I won't update the "latest Canada projections" because it's only one poll. I'll wait for more numbers from other compagnies.

Here are the latest projections, using the latest polls from Abacus, Ekos (as well as Angus and Decima, but weighted less since they are older). As we can see, not much change again this week. Polls are pretty consistent across pollsters, even at the provincial level. Details riding-by-riding can be found (and downloaded as a pdf) here.

The Conservatives are still short of the desired majority. They have 126 safe seats (leading by more than 5%) and are involved in 26 races. This means that even in the best case scenario, they would still be 5 MPs short. However, with a good campaing and an aggressive targeting of some ridings, the Conservatives could actually get a majority.

The Liberals under Igniatieff are still doing only marginally better than under Dion, which says a lot. Of course Iggy didn't have the opportunity yet to offer his ideas during a campaing, but things don't look too well for this party.

The NDP is going down slightly but keeping most of its seats. As for the Green, they are in a race in only one riding, in Ontario (which makes me wonder why Elizabeth May doesn't want to run in this province...). As always, the Bloc has the easy life with 50 seats, thanks to the split of the federalist vote.

So basically, if an election was held tomorrow, we could expect a House of Common quite similar to the current one. In particular, even a coalition LPC+NDP would still be far off a majority.

Another interesting fact provided by the Abacus is the second choice of the voters. 56% of the Conservatives simply don't have one! This number is way higher than for any other party. Interestingly enough, NDP voters would favour the Green as second (33% of the voters), but then would split quite evenly between CPC and LPC (15% and 20% respectively).

New year, same results? It looks like this, at least as far as canadian politics is concerned. With the latest polls from Angus-Reid and Ekos, the projections don't change much. The Conservatives still have a comfortable lead but are still far away from a majority. The NDP is doing quite badly, especially in one poll. However, thanks to a lot of riding won with a big majority, this party is still projected above 35 seats (with no less than 30 seats "safe"). Still no seat for the Green, even though they are a serious contender in two ridings (Bruce-Grey and Guelph, both in Ontario). If this party can really get as much as 10% of the votes during an election, I believe it could create some surprises. After all, in a lot of polls, the Green party is actually in front of the NDP in the Prairies. Still about the NDP: the two polls place this party at two very different level in the Atlantic,: 10% in Angus, 26% for Ekos! Gotta love the effect of small smaple sizes!

The riding-by-riding projections can be downloaded here.

As we get closer and closer to the federal budget, rumours of elections are very high. However, with those polls, I don't really see who would really want to go in elections (except the Bloc of course). My prediction? A lot of talk and threats, but at the end, the budget will pass using some kind of tricks (most of the liberal MPs won't show up, etc). Unless of course Harper actually wants an election.

With the MPs about to spend the holidays and a couple of weeks away from the House, here are our first projections published on this website. Details can be found here. The polls used are the latest ones from Harris-Decima, Nanos, Angus-Reid and Ekos.

If a federal election was held tomorrow, the results would look closely to the previous election. The Conservatives would lose a couple of seats, largely due to a slight drop in Ontario and in the West. The Liberals would still be far from power, while the NDP would remain mostly stable (although in its case, the 39 seats include 7 wins out of 9 close races (where the leader has less than a 5% margin, therefore we should consider those 39 seats as the upper bound for this party). The Greens' only hope is in Ontario, in the riding of Guelph with a hot race between them, the CPC and LPC.

Rumors are well going on about a possible spring election (after the next budget) but I wouldn't be so sure. As of now, no party has a clear incentive to go into an early campaing. Ignatieff and the Liberals seem to be doing better than a couple of months ago, but they would need a really strong campaing in order to kick Harper out of power. For the Conservatives, even by winning all their close races, they would still fall short of the majority (147 seats), again. The only party ready to go is naturally the Bloc, but this isn't enough to trigger an election. Of course, everything can happen during the next couple of months, but if the last couple of years of minorty governments taught us something, it's that defeating the government is not easy when it requires all three opposition parties to agree!