Ok so here we are, in election! I know most people are not happy about that, but I'm sure that most of my readers are, as any political junkie. Today, I'll not post new projections based on one or two polls. Instead, I would like to justify a little bit my model and why I think it is valid. Of course, you can get more details if you read the methodology under the tab FAQ.

The point I want to address today is the following: can we really predict riding-level swings using the provincial swings only? After all, I'm sure some of you are skeptical. Simply because one party increases by 4 points in a province doesn't mean this party will increase by 4-points in every ridings. The 4-points provincial swing is an average, and an average could hide a lot of variation. For instance, it is technically possible that this 4-points increase came from an increase of 12-points in 50% of the ridings, and a decrease of -4-points in the other 50%.

I showed in this post what the swing looks like. It isn't perfectly uniform, nor is it perfectly proportional. Actually there is a lot of variations. Nevertheless, it turns out that the provincial swing is still a good predictor, especially if we interact it with other variables. But before showing you numbers, let's see what kind of information we have about each riding. I'm talking here about information publicly available during an election, so the GDP per capita is not one of them.

-The past results of every party.
-The current incumbent.
-The province and region where the riding is located (ex: Montreal West or Quebec city).

So by using the provincial swing and these other variables, we can get a lot more predictive power. For instance, it is obvious that when the Conservatives increase in the province of Quebec, they increase much more in the region of Quebec city than on the island of Montreal. We know that because we can observe the past elections' swings. We can also look if a party did better or worse in the ridings it won the last election (an incumbency effect). This is really where the use of statistical tools such as a regression (or econometrics in general) helps a lot. Other websites can't take into account so many variables, not at once. I can even differentiate the swing in function of the level of support of the other parties (for instance, when the Tories go up in Ontario, do they take votes from the Liberals or the NDP?).

At the end, the predictive power varies across provinces and political parties. It works really well for Quebec and Ontario, for the two main parties. For instance, I can explain as much as 89% of the riding-level swing for the CPC in Quebec! This number is 86% for the Liberals. The remaining 12-15% could be inputed to riding-specific events, or on an efficient organization (to get the vote out).

On the other hand, it works usually less well for the NDP. The reason being that this party has experienced less variaiton over the last couple of elections (in most provinces, the NDP stayed really flat), so I have less variation to identify (pin down if you prefer) the coefficients. Nevertheless, I can explain around 76% of the swing for the NDP in Quebec, but only 22% in Ontario. When this number is that low, I actually switch to a simple linear-uniform model for this party. This is unfortunate but there isn't much that can be done. And anyway, as shown in my methodology, the linear-uniform model already provides a good approximation.

So, here you go. It seems that we can indeed project riding-level swings using only the provincial ones as the source of new information. In average, we could explain over 70% of the swing. But it works better in big provinces and for political parties that have experience changes over the year. I would say the best scenario for the model would be to have the CPC down a little bit (going closer to its 2006 results) and the Liberals up a bit. On the other hand, if the Tories get closer to 40% and the Liberals keep falling, we could face a problem of extrapolation. Indeed, since we've never observed the Liberals so low, we don't really know what would happen. But as long as the changes are not too big (and let's face it, they usually aren't), it works just fine. In 2006, given the correct percentages, the model would have predicted correctly 286 ridings. In 2008, it was 283. And most of the mistakes were in close races (where the margin of victory was less than 5-points). Better than that, in average, the projections were accurate within around 2-points (so for instance, the model predicted the CPC at 46% and the actual result was 44%.
The election isn't officially started yet, but we're already talking about a possible coalition between the LPC and NDP (and, to a lesser extent, the Bloc). This post is not intended to promote such coalition. Nor do I want to argue whether such coalition is legitimate or a good idea. My objective here is simply to show how many seats such a coalition could grab. And I'm well aware that the scenario studied here is highly unlikely to happen in Canada. So don't fall on me for that lol See that as an academic exercise, nothing more.

I'm talking here about a coalition PRE-election, where the NDP and LPC officially announced that they would do one. If such a situation should occur, then I believe the two parties should actually "exchange" candidates in some key ridings. Indeed, it is the case that in some ridings, the CPC can win, but the total sum of votes for LPC and NDP is actually greater. When it is the case AND those two parties want to do a coalition, then they should be logical and leave only one candidate. That would avoid a split of the "coalition votes". But of course, to really forecast what would happen in such circumstances, we need to take into account the second choices of the voters. Indeed, it is obvious that in the event that the NDP removes its candidate, not all voters will follow the order and give their vote to the Liberals. Some will simply not vote, while other will vote for another party, including the Conservatives.

So here are the details of this experiment:

- I'm using the latest projections, based on the average of most recent polls.
- I'm using the second choices as given in one of the latest Ekos poll.
- I'm assuming that the coalition would do such a candidate swap only in the ridings where they can potentially beat the Conservatives. Specifically, it has to be the case that CPC is first, and LPC+NDP is greater than CPC. As you'll see, the number of ridings currently in this situation is not that big.
- The "coalition" would remove the candidate from the party that is currently third. In other words, if the Tories are first, the Liberals second and the NDP third, then the NDP candidate would have to go.
- When one candidate is removed, I'm using the second choices of the voters of this party and redistribute the votes.

This redistribution requires some explanations and assumptions. First of all, I'm well aware that some voters would switch even though their first choice is still technically available. For instance, in our previous example, we could expect some Liberal voters to actually change their votes simply because they don't want a coalition with the NDP. That could happen to some voters that are exactly between the Tories and the Liberals. Here, I'm assuming that this isn't the case. This introduces a bias, but hopefully it will be canceled out by the next assumption. The second choices are biased as well. Indeed, it is one thing to not name the Liberals as your second choices when you are a NDP voters (possibly, you don't have a second choice, which happens in around 30% of the cases), but it's another thing to be told by the NDP to vote LPC. We can imagine that some voters that didn't have the Liberals as second choice would still switch their votes, simply because they understand the whole principle of the coalition and the candidates exchange. I don't model that. So at the end, I have two assumptions who both introduce a bias, but in the opposite direction. In the future, I could try to "play" with those assumption and see what it would change (or even better: maybe we'll have one pollster asking specifically how many people would switch or not, in the event of a coalition).

So, enough about the technicalities, let's see if such a deal could actually benefit the Liberals and NDP. Based on the current projections (they are a little bit different from the ones displayed on the right because I added the latest Ipsos poll), here is what such a deal would change:

Number of ridings where the LPC+NDP>CPC: 34

seats actual coalition
CPC 153 148
LPC 72 74
NDP 32 35
Green 0 0
Bloc 51 51

So, out of the total of 34 ridings where the coalition votes is higher, such a deal would only take 5 seats away from the Conservatives. The main reason? Well it is the retention rate. Specifically, only 32% of NDP voters have the Liberals as second choice (and 33% of LPC have the NDP). Those numbers are not high enough to warrant such a deal pre-election. However, let me say two things.

1) The current projections are very favourable to the Tories. We'll see what happens during the campaign. Such an exercisee would give different results if the Liberals go up and the Tories go down. For instance, if we were to go back to the levels of support of 2006, you would see that such a coalition would be much more effective.

2) As I've said, maybe one of my assumptions is to harsh. Do you really think that only 32% of the NDP voters would switch to the Liberals, while 23% would prefer to vote for the Green and 25% would simply not vote? I have a hard time believing that. Polls usually showed that the NDP voters were quite pro-coalition, back in 2008 (but in the same time, as I've said, some Liberals voters could be scared off as well). So I might adjust those assumptions. In my simulations, it seems that the coalition becomes effective when the retention rate is at 45% or more.

In any case, as I've said, this is simply meant as an exercise. I will repeat it or modify it during the campaign. In the mean time, let me know what you think. By the way, you might think that "stealing" 5 seats away from the Tories is not that big of a deal, but if those 5 seats are the difference between a majority and minority, it could well be important!
I know we are not officially in election right now, but everybody knows we actually are. So we have our first poll, conducted between March 22nd and 23rd, thus at a time where the government had already fallen or was about to. It is from Ipsos-Reid. If this poll is true, it's game over already! Just remember that you are supposed to apply the margins of error to these results. Still, it's an interesting experiment to use this single poll for projections.

Remember when I posted this? Showing the huge gap that happened between the CPC and LPC right at the beginning of the last election? And how I thought that could well happen again. Well, it's too early to tell, but the Conservatives sure are happy to fall tomorrow.

This poll is just crazy and, let's face it, some of the numbers are more than likely due to a small sample size (and/or at the extreme of the margins of error). But still, I believe they reflect a general trend going on. The Tories have a 19-points lead nationwide. In Ontario, they stand at 46%, 16-points ahead. In Atlantic, they even stand at 54%! (I don't believe this number if you ask me though). They are even up in Quebec (25%) and let's not mention everything west of Ontario.

With this poll only, you get the projections above. Yes it isn't a typo, the Conservatives could win as many as 183 seats. If you look at the detailed projections here, you see that the new seats would mostly come from the Atlantic and Ontario. Again, while I can believe the big lead in Ontario, I trully think the Tories are not at 54% in Atlantic Canada and this is only due to a sample size of less than 200. But even if we use an average of other polls for this region, we would still get the Tories with 168 seats.

The Liberals would not even finish as the official opposition. Again, if we use an average for the Atlantic, this party would get 59 seats. Miacheal Ignatieff would still go back to Harvard if that was the case. You have to admit that it would be a weird situation, with the Conservatives getting a huge majority without any breakthrough in Quebec, and the Bloc as the official opposition!

Time will tell us if this poll was simply way off or not. But as John Ivison from the NP writes, it would be almost impossible for Ignatieff to avoid a big loss on May 2nd. And you should really wonder how on earth did the opposition parties decide to take the government down!
The NP lists 20 ridings where the action will likely take place during this election. This is very interesting but it is based on the results of the last election, and not the CURRENT situation. Using the latest federal proejctions, let's see if those 20 ridings are really that interesting.

Vancouver South: Ujjal Dosanjh won by only 20 votes last time. But thanks to an increased in this province since Ignatieff is the leader, this riding seems safer for the Liberals.

Burnaby-Douglas: Here the NDP would lose this seat won by only 798 votes last time. This is due to the fact that the Tories are pretty stable in BC since 2008, as opposed to the NDP who dropped a couple of points. With that being said, the polls in BC seem to have a high debree of volatitly (most likely due to the small sample size) and sometimes the NDP is pictured as being very high (around 30%), while some other times, this party would finish 3rd, barely ahead of the Green.

Esquimalt-Juan De Fuca: Another seat won by a handful of votes by the Liberals last time. As for Vancouver-South, the margin of victory seems to be safer, but still under 5-points. The question for those ridings is how effective could the Conservatives be in targeting such specific ridings.

Edmonton-Strathcona: The only seat not won by the Tories last election. The projections still give this riding to the NDP, but it's gonna be a close race. If I had to guess today, I would say the NDP will eb able to keep it simply because this party in this province will most liekly invest a lot of money and effort and this simple riding. And the NDP seems to have become quite efficient in that (like Outremont in Quebec).

Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar: close win for the CPC ovet the NDP back in 2008. The model currently projects this riding to stay within the CPC, with a slightly increased majority.

Winipeg North: Weird case for this riding. Easily won by the NDP in 2008, this party lost it to the Liberal in a surprising by-election in 2010. Since the model does an average of the last general election's results and the by-election's ones, this riding is projected as being a safe NDP seat again, despite the incumbency effect now working for the Liberals. It's a very tricky riding to predict when you see such a big difference between a general an a by-election. My feeling is that the notoriety of the Liberal candidate will be less of a factor during a general election.

Kitchener-Center: tough loss for the LPC in 2008, to the CPC. Since then, the Tories have increased their leads in Ontario and are thus projected to not only keep the seat, but have an "easy" win.

Brampton-Springdale: The Conservatives lost this riding by 773 in 2008 and are now projecting to win it by a margin of... 0.7%! So yes, it is definitely a riding you want to watch.

Vaughan: Another tricky case since this riding changed colour after a by-election. After years of Liberal domination, the Conservatives won it back in 2010. The current projections give the riding back to the LPC for... 0.1%!

Eglinton-Lawrence: a close win for the LPC in 2008 and a riding currently projected to be even closer, although the Liberals should be able to keep it.

Simcoy-Grey: A very easy win in 2008 for the Tories, but the MP has since then been ejected from the caucus and is running as an independant. The model currently proejcts this riding to remain a safe Conservatives seat, but I haven't made any adjustment to take into account of this major independant candidate. Will she be able to win? Or will she split the votes enough to aloow a third party to win? I'll have to think more about this one.

Outremont: The surprised win by the NDP during a by-election and the even bigger surprise that this party was able to keep it during a general election. With the NDP being so high in Quebec in almost every poll, it seems Mulcair will keep this seat. But it will largely depend on the star-factor of the new liberal candidat, Martin Cauchon.

Lac-Saint-Louis: easy win for the Liberals in 2008. So why is it on this list? Cause the Tories are running a new star: a former CFL player. It still seems like a really, really long shot to win this riding. Especially with the Tories being usually polled low in Quebec.

Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe: A close win for the LPC last time. Given the new strength of the Tories in the Atlantic, this riding is now projected to switch to the Tories in a very close fight. However, if the rumours of Bernard Lord running are true, I think ths riding will then become a safe win for the CPC. [update: it seems Lord has ruled himself out]

Halifax: honestly, I'm not sure why this riding is on this list. The NDP won it easily last time and are doing quite well provincially in NS. I think the NP is wrong on this one.

Egmont: a win by only 55 votes back in 2008, for the Tories. The projections seem to indicate that the race will indeed be very close again, with a slight edge currently given to the Conservatives.

St-John's South-Mount-Pearl: Not much change there, a close win for the Liberals (over the NDP) in 2008, and currently projected as an unsafe LPC seat. Except that the race is now between the Liberals and the Tories. How is that possible? Well, as I explained in another post, I'm assuming that 50% of the effects of the ABC (anything but Conservatives) campaign are gone. Therefore the Liberals are down, the Tories up and the NDP down. But as it is the case for almost the entire province of NF-L, this is tricky to predict.

The three territories: No change according to the model, but given the lack of polls for those ridings, it's hard to tell.

So here you go, the NP is right in that most (if not all) of those ridings are interesting to watch. As opposed to 2008, we currently project 4 changes as compared to the results of the 2008 election. But with so many close races, it's really hard to tell.
So it's almost official: we are in election! The only question remaining seems to be whether the 41st federal election will start tomorrow (with a vote on the budget, well an amendment to it) or on Friday (with the vote on the non-confidence motion of the Liberals). I'm pretty sure the Tories would rather be defeated on the budget and avoid the vote of Friday about the ethic of this government. But in any case, by Saturday at the latest, the campaign will be started. [update: it seems there will not be any vote on Thursday after all. So the government will fall on Friday].

So what can you expect from this blog? Well first of all, I've updated the latest federal projections and you can see them on the right. As the election begins, the Conservatives are 5 seats shy of a majority (or even 4, if you choose the speaker of the House from the opposition). Moreover, if you add the safe seats plus the potential ones, the Tories could well have a majority secured.
The Liberals and the NDP are pretty much where they were in 2008, with a couple of seats lost for both parties. Whether we'll see a quick shift in vote intentions like in 2008 or not is unknown, but the fact that we'll start an election with the Conservatives having a virtual majority is completely new. The Bloc could go back to over 50 MPs, despite not increasing in term of percentages. As for the Green party, they will have to work really hard to finally get their first elected MP.

During the campaign, this blog will have daily updates (with some exceptions). We'll likely have 2 to 3 daily polls, so each day I'll use those new polls (and only them) to make some seats projections. As for the "general proejctions" (the more reliable ones, based on an average of all recent polls), I'll update them every three days. There is no point in updating them every day as the average will prevent big changes to occur on a daily basis.

Regulars may have noticed that I added the three territories to the model. Since we usually don't have polls just for those three ridings, I based the model on the overall results, nationwide. It's not perfect but at least I'm now projecting 308 ridings out of 308.

The simulator is there and I invite everyone to use it. Being able to make your own projections should be fun for a lot of you. And as far as I'm concerned, I'm the only website offering this, as both DemocraticSpace and 308 currently don't do that.

Besides the usual projections posts, I will also write some other posts. For instance, I'll show you how many seats a coalition LPC-NDP could get. I'll also show you historical results or additional details about the model (for instance, I'll explain the predictive power of using the provincial swings to make projections at the ridings-level). Or why I think Elizabeth May would have been better to run in Ontario.

If you want to follow all the updates, the easiest thing to do is to subscribe both to the RSS feeds and my Twitter. I also hope to get a lot of comments during this campaign.

So let's start having fun for the next months (and a couple of days more)!
The federal budget will be presented tomorrow and almost evryone expects the government to be taken down by the opposition by the end of the week (whether it would be for the budget or the recent scandals is yet to be seen). So where do the political parties stand just before this budget and likely snap election?

The only poll released this week (so far) is the latest Nanos poll, conducted between March 12th and 15th. If we use only this poll, it gives the projections of this post (note: because Nanos groups Alberta, Sasktachewan and Manitoba together, and my model splits those three provinces in two, I used an average of the other recent polls to make the seat projections in those provinces. In any case, it shouldn't really matter as those three provinces are not the ones where a lot of changes are expected, especially Alberta). The Conservatives would make big gains in Atlantic and Ontario.

So, basically, if an election was to start today, the Conservatives would start this campaign with a virtual majority. Even when using the average of other recent polls, the projections always put the Tories around 150 seats or higher. So I think it's pretty safe to assume that Harper and his party want an election to happen now. Of course, a campaign is long and a lot of things can happen (ask Harper in 2006...), but the fact is that for the first time in a long time, we have a party that has a clear potential to get a majority. Even more impressive is the fact that this majority would be possible without any gains in Quebec. For the Tories, as long as they keep 8-10 seats in Quebec (and most of their seats are pretty safe), they can simply focus on Ontario, Atlantic and BC. For Ontario, polls have consistently shown a big lead for this party, in the range of 13-15 points, over the Liberals. In my opinion, such a big lead in a province with 106 seats would be enough to secure a majority. Then there is Atlantic Canada where the CPC did good last time, except in NFL. If the recent polls are to be trusted, it seems most of the ABC effect is gone and the CPC can expect to make some gains there. Finally, BC has become the source of many seats for this party over the year. I don't think this is a province where the CPC can expect to make a lot of gains, except maybe in the suburbs of Vancouver. But we are taking 2-3 seats, nothing compared to Ontario.

The Liberals are in bad shape. Not only would they start this election far behind the Tories, but there isn't much indication that Michael Ignatieff can expect to make a big come back. The leadership index of Iggy is usually always low, no matter which pollster asked the question. In many cases, Jack Layton is seen as being a better potential PM' which is really bad for the Liberals. Of course, we could have a surprise. Maybe Ignatieff could have a perfect campaign, win the debates and increase his level of supports substantially. But at the end, for the Liberal leader, I don't think getting back to power is really possible. The best bet for the Liberals would be to have a "loss" like the PQ in Quebec in 2008: yes you lose the election, but it's almost a moral win. In other terms, the Liberals should focus on gaining seats back and make sure Harper doesn't get his majority. From then, everything is possible. Harper would probably quit (or be forced to quit) and the Liberals could start getting ready for next time, where they could get the government back. But again, if the polls have to be trusted, it seems the main concern of Iggy will be to remain the official opposition! Looking at the Nanos poll, the Liberals don't even have the Atlantic as a safe source of seats anymore. And by being so far behind in Ontario, this party would be virtually wiped out of the map except in Montreal and Toronto.

The NDP is tricky. Polls have not been really nice to them recently, but this party is usually quite stable in elections. On top of that, their vote has become much more efficient the year, thus theirs seats are mostly safe. The downside of this is naturally that potential gains are difficult. I would say the NDP can expect to increase in Quebec (at least in term of percentages) and in BC. The latter is probably the best potential source of additional seats. Of course, with the Liberals so low and Iggy being impopular as he is, there is a slim chance to see the NDP actually becoming the main opposition to the Tories, at least in some provinces. If such a switch was to happen, the NDP could finally break the 20%-mark and become a real contender. But for that to happen, they need to make sure to remain stable in Ontario and the Prairies.

The Green party hasn't much to hope for. Yes we'll see other polls putting this party as high as 10% nationwide, and even in 2nd place in the Praries or Alberta some times, but at the end, on election day, they will likely get 6-7% max and maybe one seat.

Finally, the Bloc has an easy life as always. But an election could be costly for this party. In term of percentages, we could well see this party falling even more, to around 35%. Fortunately for them, unless one of the federalist parties increases a lot, they are safe in term of seats. With the Tories not focusing on Quebec anymore, the Bloc will try to play the card of "we are the only way to block a Tories majority", but this time, it seems not to be true. And let's not forget the possibility that the Tories will keep some key promises for Quebec for an election, such as the sale tax hamronization.

So here you go folks. We'll know by Friday if we have an election or not. It seems almost unavoidable but we never know. Forcing an election is never easy, but the key difference this time is that Harper likely wants to be defeated.

[Update] There is also a new Harris-Decima poll, but unfortunately, we don't have the provincial breakdown yet. Nationwide, the Tories stand at "only" 34%, 28% for the Liberals and 17% for the NDP. The Canadian Press uses the term "Deja vu", but I would like to see the numbers in Ontario before saying that. I'll update the latest projections as soon as I have access to those numbers.

Note: while this blog is mainly written in english, I've decided that posts related to Quebec's politics will be written in french from now on. It makes more sense after all.

Alors que le dernier sondage Légermarketing nous indiquait que le Parti Conservateur avait une avance de 13 points sur les Libéraux et fleurtait avec une majorité, les intentions de votes provinciales nous montrent un Parti Liberal de Jean Charest au plus bas, à seulement 27%. Le PQ de Marois continue d'être assez largement en tête, avec 37%. Il semble cependant que la barre des 40% devienne difficile à franchir pour la formation souverainiste. Au final, je crois que Marois peut être sereine quant au vote de confiance qui aura lieu d'ici peu.

L'une des raison pour laquelle le PQ semble incapable de dépasser 40% pourrait être le fait que Québec Solidaire récolte 11% des votes. La plupart des sondages récents ont placé la formation de gauche aux alentours de 10%. Est-ce que cela arrivera lors d'une vraie campagne électorale? Dur à dire, mais si tel était le cas, QS pourrait créer quelques surprises, surtout sur l'île de Montréal.

En utilisant ce sondage et le modèle, cela donne les projections indiquées. Le PQ remporterait facilement une majorité. Le PLQ tomberait à 34 sièges et Charest serait personnellement battu dans Sherbrook. Pas que ce soit vraiment pertinent, car à 27%, il démissionnerait de toutes manières.

L'ADQ reste en-dessous de ses précédents scores sous Dumont, mais grâce à la chute des Libéraux, ferait des gains en termes de sièges.

Quant à QS, ce parti conserverait Mercier, mais gagnerait en plus Gouin et Laurier-Dorion (de très peu). QS aurait également des chances dans Anjou et Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jacques, mais il faudrait un gros effort de ce parti dans ces deux comtés.


En passant, la fameuse règle qui voudrait que le PQ obtienne davantage de sièges que le PLQ, à pourcentages égaux, ne semble plus être vraie. Je posterai bientôt une analyse démontrant que si le PLQ et le PQ devaient être à égalité, le résultat de l'élection ne serait probablement pas une facile victoire du PQ, comme en 1998. Tout cela pour dire que le PQ, bien que bénéficiant d'une confortable avance, n'est pas à l'abris de se retrouver avec une très faible majorité, voire une minorité. Cela dépendrait de la capacité du PLQ à rester au-dessous de 30%.

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