A new poll from Legermarketing with some interesting questions about the hypothetical new party of Legault. Interesting ti read but I don't make projections for this party (it would be very difficult anyway since we don't have past election's results for that).

The PQ still has the lead but would get a very narrow majority. The Liberals are up 4 points since last time and would make the election night very entertaining. The ADQ is stable and is still the key to another minority government. As for QS, they are not as high as in some previous polls, but would still win a second seat.

I said it before and I'll say it again. To see that the PQ is not able to break the 40% threshold consistently when facing a Liberal party that has been in power for 7 years now and with a hated leader, this is really not a good sign for the separatist party. I don't know if the PQ would do much better with someone else than Marois, I doubt it. It could help in the short term, but nothing else. On top of that, if the members of the PQ thought that QS stole a lot of votes from them last election, imagine next time if QS actually gets as much as 8%.

Just a note: I use a single poll to make the projections for Quebec because of the lack of polls. As opposed to the federal level, we have usually only one poll every month. So I prefer using only this last one. On top of that, the main reason I use an average of all polls for the federal projections is because of small sample sizes by province. Here for Quebec, I don't have this problem.

Here are the details for the projections.

This Monday, the Hill Time online was showing how very few ridings are consistently what we call a close race, i.e: where the winner has a lead of less than 5% over the opponent(s). This is interesting but I do feel it's only half the story.

Of course, it makes sense that a close race last election won't necessarily be one this time around. The main reason? Parties' levels of support change between election. So if a riding was a close race in 2006 in Ontario between the Conservatives and the Liberals when those parties were at respectively 35.1% and 39.9%, it's only logical that the race is over when the same two parties now stand at 39.2% and 33.8%.

Nevertheless, I do think the Hill Time is too quick on dismissing the importance of being a close second during an election. I think what we should really be looking at is whether those close races changed colour the next election. So here are some table for the 2004 to 2008 elections.

2004	close races	close win	kept in 2006	close in 04, win in 06	net diff.
CPC	36	25	19	8	2
LPC	51	23	5	3	-15
NDP	22	7	7	7	7
Green	0	0	-	-	-
Bloc	8	2	2	6	6
2006	close races	close win	kept in 2008	close in 06, win in 08	net diff
CPC	33	18	17	11	10
LPC	44	22	7	3	-12
NDP	13	6	4	5	3
Green	0	0	-	-	-
Bloc	9	3	1	1	-1
2008	close races	close win
CPC	31	17
LPC	29	12
NDP	12	6
Green	0	0
Bloc	10	5

A couple of interesting things here. First of all, notice how inefficient the NDP votes was back in 2004. High enough to put this party in the race in 22 ridings, but only 7 wins? That's a really low rate of convertion. It seems that over the year, the NDP has become much more efficient and that alone could explain why the NDP can actually lose some percentages but actually win more seats (kinda like in BC or Ontario).

Second of all, the Liberals just got destroyed the last two elections. Their losses in previously hot races are huge. By simply looking at those losses, we cna explain 27 out of the 58 seats lost between 2004 and 2008. If you ask me, this is significant. It shows that a lot of the action is actually happening in those close races.

That can also help explaing the rise of the Conservatives. Let's just look at 2008. Out of the 33 ridings where the Conservatives were in the race in 2006, they won 28 of them in 2008! On the other hand, for the Liberals, the numbers are 10 for 44. Don't tell me this didn't have a massive impact of the victory of the Tories.

So to sum up, I agree that being a close race in one election is not necessarily a good predictor of whether this riding will be a hot race next time. But those close races are important and should be watched closely because they are the sources of a lot of the action/changes. Moreover, looking at how the Conservatives are slighlty but surely grabbing more of those previously close races, I wouldn't be surprised if they actually manage to get a majority the next time around. I mean, look at the numbers for 2008. They lost 14 ridings by a margin of less than 5%. With a good riding targeting, this party won't even need to increase its level of support substantially to win this majority. But this is another story.

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.

Jean Charest and its government are reaching new high of impopularity in Quebec. With 70% of Quebecois saying they are unsatisfied with the current government. In term of support, the Liberals are now at a low level of 25%. The PQ, with 41% of the votes intentions, would easily win a majority (actually in this case, there is absolutely no need for any model whatsoever).

Quebec Solidaire is still fourth but would now get as much as 12% of the votes! I said it before, I'll believe it when I'll see this party that high during an actual election. Nevertheless, at that level of support, QS would get 3 seats and be a real contender in a lot of ridings in Montreal.

If the trend goes on, Quebec could be the first province to elect a female as Premier. Of course, we are still far away from a general election and we all know how the Liberals always manage to bounce back or how the PQ can get rid of its leaders. BC could soon have a female Premier since Christy Clark seems to have the lead in the leadership race for the BC Liberals. She wouldn't have been elected, but she already said she would likely trigger a new election if she's selected as the new leader. So we'll have to wait and see to discover which province will be first.

You can get the details of the projections by clicking on the picture, in the right column.

As opposed to the federal level, polls are way less common at the provincial one. Therefore, for our projections, we used the latest poll from Légermarketing. Here are the details.

The PQ would win a majority of seats if an election was held tomorrow. However, it would be a narrow majority, like the one the PLQ currently enjoys. To see that the PQ, in a period where the PLQ and especially its leader Jean Charest are so unpopular in public opinion, is projected below 70 seats is quite surprising. One could ask what it would take for the PQ and Pauline Marois to take off and reach a level of 40% in votes intentions.

The ADQ would lose a couple of votes since the last election, but thanks to the large drop of the PLQ, would still make some gains in term of seats. Nevertheless, if this party wants to play a major role in Quebec politics, it needs to go back close to 20%. By doing so, they could almost surely force a minority government and hold the balance of power.

Finally, QS would not only keep its current seat but gain a new one (in Gouin) for its co-leader. I'm still skeptical of all those polls putting QS around the 8-10% mark, but if they do get as many votes during the next election, I' sure they would indeed secure at least two seats. (Btw, yes the PVQ is projected below 0% in some ridings. I'll correct that next week. It isn't a big deal, it just means this party is really, really low in those ridings)

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!