I've decided to make this website look a little bit more professional by buying an actual domain name, instead of using the .blogspot.com. This one will naturally still works, but from now on, the official address of this website is: www.tooclosetocall.ca

Thanks for sharing the good news ;-)

The Conservatives are looking for a majority obviously, but they are also looking to sweep Alberta, like in 2006. We talk a lot about the currently only non-CPC riding: Edmonton-Strathcona, hold by the NDP. This party won this riding by a slim 463 votes in 2008. How did this happen?

Well, beyond the fact that obviously, the electoral machine of the NDP worked a little bit harder than the Conservatives one, we can also look at the provincial swings. Between 2004 to 2008, the NDP increased from 9.5%, to 11.7% and finally a "high" of 12.7% in 2008. During the same period, the CPC moved from 61.7% to 65% to slighty decrease to 64.7% in 2008. As for the Liberals, they went from a decent 22% in 2004, to a low of 15% in 06 and a really low 11.4% in 2004. So all in all, it seems the small swing of the NDP and the Tories were enough to give this riding to the party of Jack Layton. This is actually a good example of how the model can work: it can identifies where the provincial swing will be amplified or decreased.

So what about the current situation? Well, believe it or not, but the recent polls show a drop of the Tories, to a new "low" of 57.5%. Don't laugh, I know any party would do anything to stand that high in a province, but the fact remains: the current provincial swing is negative for the Tories. On the other hand, the NDP is stable at 12.7% and the Liberals seem to have found a new life, currently standing at 18.9%. We also have some polls that place the Green 2nd or 3rd in this province, but I won't talk about that right now.

So with those swings, the NDP would naturally keep its riding. It would be a close race again of course. But I think we are wrong to focus only on this riding. We should also watch Edmonton-Centre. This one was actually Liberal until 2006. And with the current swing for this party and the slight drop of the Conservatives, we could well have another riding to watch in Alberta. The current projection place the CPC at 41.4% and the Liberals at 36.1%. So almost a close race!

Also, there could be another race in Edmonton-Sherwood-Park, where the former Conservative candidate is running again, as independent. He did that in 2008 already and almost beat the official CPC candidate. This effect was so strong that I had to include a riding-specific effect in my model to not bias my other coefficients! My guess is that the Tories will win this riding again though, with an even larger majority. The model currently assumes no independent candidate, soI'll have to adjust for that.

Ok, here you go, I did my best to find some interesting ridings in Alberta. It's a tough job, believe me! I welcome your feedback. If you want more details about the ridings in Edmonton, this text from Daveberta is quite good.

It seems to be a question a lot of people are asking, whether on this site or elsewhere. The Conservatives were very happy to recruit this high profile candidate in order to get more votes in Montreal West, a region that is Liberal to death. But can Larry Smith really win the riding of Lac-Saint-Louis? Let's look into it.

First of all, here are the results of the 2008 elections.

CPC: 23.5%

LPC: 46.4%

NDP: 15.8%

Green: 8.6%

Bloc: 5.8%

By the way, you won't find a lot of ridings in Quebec where the Bloc is 5th and last! So this riding seems like a safe liberal seat. But let's look at the current projections. Since the last election, the polls indicate some important swings. In particular, the CPC had decreased from 21.7% provincially to 20.6%. The drop for the Liberals is bigger, moving from 23.8% to 18.7%. As for the other parties, the NDP is up, Green as well and the Bloc slightly up. But it's not really relevant for this riding since the game is played between the Liberals and the Tories.

So with the current votes intentions, we have the following projections:

CPC: 23%

LPC: 42.7%

NDP: 17.9%

Green: 9.3%

Bloc: 7.1%

It requires a little bit more explanations. My model is there to translate the provincial swing into riding-level swings, taking into account the region, incumbency effect and other variables. So, maybe a better way to see if the Conservatives can indeed win this seat is to look at what happens when the CPC and LPC experience a 1-point swing provincially. Here how a 1-point swing translates in this riding.

CPC: 0.18

LPC: 0.62

So in both cases, the swing is decreased in this riding. It means the Liberals can lose some votes provincially and still be safe there. For the CPC' it's a bad news as it indicates that, if past results are of any indications, even a big provincial swing wouldn't help. So what chances are left? Three solutions:

1) The historical trend about the link between the provincial swing and the swing in this riding doesn't apply any more. I don't like this solution cause it goes completely against the model.

2) A Within-province swing, i.e: even though the Conservatives remain constant around 20%, there is a shift within Quebec. In other words, this party loses some voters in some ridings but is gaining voters in others. We couldn't see such a trend with province-level polls of course. This explanation is possible, in particular we could imagine that Harper was successfull if getting more votes from the anglophone community in Quebec. But to what extent? I don't know. In 2008, in the region of Montreal West, the Tories got 18.18% (thus below the provincial average) and the Liberals got 45.3%. Thus you need a big within-province shift.

3) A star-candidate effect. Larry Smith is well known and he will likely beneficiate from some kind of boost, independently of what happens to his party province-wide. However, the boost would need to be pretty big for him to win. We are talking a boost of 10-points, taken from the Liberals. For a non-cabinet minister, non-leader of a party, that is pretty big.

So at the end, the short answer to the question of this post is no. If he wins, that would be a big surprise. My guess is that Harper is more playing long-term in Montreal West: he wants to be the choice of the English-speaking community in Quebec. While it will likely not be the case yet this time, this strategy might pay off in a couple of years.

The Liberals are having a somewhat good start of the campaign, with the 1000-persons rally yesterday in Montreal. Of course, you could argue that the Conservatives are currently winning because they managed to focus everyone on the word coalition instead of talking about the wording of the non-confidence motion. But in any ways, polls have been harsh for the Liberals. On the other hand, the NDP is consistently projected high (around 19-20%). This constitutes a big change as compared to before the election where this party woud stand around 14-15%.

Yet today a little ray of hope with the release of this new Abacus poll. There is also a new HD poll, but we don't have the regional breakdown yet, so I won't use it for my daily-projections (but the HD poll is much more in line with the other recent polls though). Oh, and I saw this poll from Forum Research. I don't really remember this compagny. This one is actually saying a very different story than Abacus, with the Conservatives being at 41%! But since there isn't a regional breakdown provided (well, there is, online, if you subscribe and pay, so no thanks), I can't use it. It's too bad, I could have used the two polls to illustrate how to introduce some uncertainty in the model, something I'll talk about again very soon. If anyone has access to the regional details of the Forum poll, please let me know.

So back to the Abacus poll. That would give the projections displayed here (sorry no fancy picture for single-poll projections).

CPC: 128

LPC: 89

NDP: 42

Green: 0

Bloc: 49

Yes, the Tories would still win, but would go back to a smaller minority. I know, I know, I said good news for the Liberals. But at that stage of the campaign, limiting Harper to 128 seats would already be an accomplishment for Ignatieff and his party. I'm not saying he'll not be able to increase his level of support substantially during the next 34 days, but for now, let's be realistic and use what we currently know.

But before any liberal fan gets high expectations, remember this is only one poll, going against the general trend and with a sample size of 1000 only. It means that some of the weird results in some provinces (the NDP at 33% in the Atlantic, while the CPC stands at only 24% there; the high Prairies score for the Liberals; etc) are probably due to a ridiculously small sample size.

Not that I want to talk about a coalition anymore (as a former sutdent in political science, I find it fascinating, but as a voter, I'm getting tired of it), but for the first time in a long time, the number of seats for LPC+NDP is actually higher than the CPC. Just saying...

When I estimated the "May effect", i.e: the boost that the leader of the Green party can expect when running in a given riding, I said that I didn't understand why she choose the riding of Saanich-Gulf-Island in BC instead of Guelph in Ontario.

Well when reading this article (in french), it seems that May and the Green party did do some research before choosing. She says that (my translation) "The party did a lot of research, in collaboration with two poll firms. That allowed us to determine that, out of all the ridings in the country, this one was where the voters were the closest to the values of the Green party".

Is that true? If this is the case, then how come the Green did better in Guelph than in this riding? I understand that the Green party gets its best score in BC, but the fact remains that Guelph seemed better, with potentially more votes to take from the NDP.

But we'll see. I modified the model to take into account of this May effect and so far, the projections don't agree with ehr when she says "the race is between the Conservatives and us. The Liberals and NDP are far behind". Yes the Green party seems to be in the race, but the Liberals are still projected 2nd, despite losing some votes to the May.

I hope we'll get a poll specifically for this riding throughout this campaign so that we could compare and maybe adjust the projections. But in the mean time, I'm still not sold on her choice of riding.

The election is officially started and we've got a couple of new polls (AR, Léger, Ipsos). They all show a big lead for the Conservatives and all the medias are talking about the Tories being "on the edge of a majority". According to the latest projections, the Tories are indeed in majority territory. So if you are a Liberal, you better hope that campaigns DO matter.

You can see the riding-by-riding projections here.

Some of you might say that 155 seats is a very narrow majority and you'd right. But if you look in details, you'll see that the Conservatives are projected to win 143 safe seats (i.e: where their margin of victory is more than 5-points). And then, they have a short lead or are within 5-points of the leaders in 33 other close races. So currently, the model projects the Tories to win 12/33 close races. This is a very low percentages, especially given the record of the CPC in the past election. As I explained, this party is really good at winning close races (probably by getting the vote out). Therefore, I would see the current projections as a Conservatives majority, period. They could well win as many as 176 seats in the perfect world! This party seems to be really high in the Atlantic (the last good region for the Liberals) and in Ontario.

For the Liberals, the best scenario (i.e: winning all close races) would be... 77! Yes, Micheal Ignatieff starts the campaign with having a best scenario equal to what Dion did 2 years ago. I really wonder why the Liberals wanted to bring the government down so bad Of course, we'll see on May 2nd if Ignatieff was right to gamble. But he sure has a steep hill in front of him.

When you look at those projections, you can see that the NDP didn't have so much so lose for voting against the government. There can't expect to make big gains, but they are not really at risk of losing a lot. So that might explain their decision.

So here you go folks, enjoy the elections. It is Harper's majority to lose and it's a new game in (recent) Canadian politics.

Elizabeth May is a puzzle for me. In 2008, she had an unique deal with Stephane Dion in that he agreed not to run any liberal candidate versus her. Yet, where did she decide to run? In the riding of Peter McKay! While she did get a pretty decent score of 32%, it wasn't enough to win and quite honestly, there was no way she would win this riding. In 2006, the Green party only got 1.59% in this riding! So why would she choose to run there? I understand this is where she lives, but still, the Green party is at the point where having an elected MP matters more than that.

So you would think May learned from her mistake and would run in a riding that she can win. But no, instead of running in Ontario where the Green did pretty good in two ridings (Guelph at 21% and Bruce-Grey at 27%), she decided to go to BC and run on Vancouver island in the riding of Saanich-Gulf-Island, a riding where the Green party only got 10.46% of the votes, well behind the Tories and the Liberals.

But can she win this riding? After all, it is clear there is a May effect. But how big is this effect? Let's estimate it using the results of 2008 and the by-election of London North/Centrer where she ran in 2006 and got a surprising 26%.

According to my estimates, in 2008, the Green party was in Central-Nova 29-points above what it should have been! Of course, this is the combine effect of Elizabeth May running AND having no Liberal candidate. Surprisingly, using the same estimation, I find that the NDP was down 15-points in this riding, while the Tories were up 8-points. Again, see those numbers as what would have happened if May wasn't the candidate and the Liberals had a candidate. It's interesting to see that some NDP voters decided to switch in order to give the Green party a chance. It isn't completely surprising given that a lot of NDP voters have the Green as second choice. It's also worth noting the little boost that CPC got. I'm guessing some Liberals voters were upset with the deal and switch to the Tories. As for the Liberals, if they had ran a candidate, I estimate they would have got 21%. So without May and with a liberal candidate, the results would have been:

CPC: 38%

LPC: 21%

NDP: 35%

Green: 3%

Instead of respectively 47%, 0%, 20% and 32%. Note how the maths sum up: the 21% of the Liberals were split into +8 for the CPC and +13 for the Green. Therefore, May got 13+15=28 points more than if it was a regular Green candidate.

So what about the May effect in the by-election in 2006? In the 2006 general election, the Green party got 5.49%. Then, during the by-election, May got 26%! So, at the end, it seems Elizabeth May does benefit of a huge boost in term of votes whenever she runs in a riding. Quantitatively, I would say she can get a jump as high as 20-points. Mostly at the expense of the NDP. Indeed, the Liberals were barely affected in the by-election. In both cases, I would say the May effect was: 5-8-points taken from the Liberals, 10-15-points taken from the NDP. (yes she got around 13-points from the Liberals in 2008, but there was no candidate. It's not the same as having liberal voters deciding to switch simply because it was Elizabeth May).

So let's be generous and give May a 20-points boost, taken at 1/3 from the Liberals and 2/3 from the NDP. Does it allow her to win her seat in BC? Using the latest Ekos poll who puts the Green as high as 19.7% in BC, we have the following projections for Saanich-Gulf-Island:

CPC: 36%

LPC: 42%

NDP: 0.1%

Green: 21.5%

Let's add the May effect. One problem is that this riding has already a low percentage for the NDP, so not so much votes to take from them! At the end, May would need to steal as much as 11-points from the Liberals. It's more than what we have observed in the past. And remember, I'm using a poll very favourable to the Green!

So back to my question: why running in a riding where the Gren party was low in 2008 and where the NDP is low as well? That doesn't make any sense. On the other hand, the current projections place the Green at 36% in Guelph and 28% in Bruce-Grey. In both case, if you add the May effect, you would get a win for her and her party (especially in Guelph). So why did she decide not to run in one of those ridings? I don't know. Let me know if you have a theory.

I'll modify the model to take into account of this May effect of course.