Early Election Polls

I rarely more than glance at public polls because they are generally useless at explaining what is happening unless you look at them over a long period of time, which means months, not weeks and certainly not days. And even then you need to take what they say with a grain of salt.

However, I have seen many people talk about them and I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about.

Full disclosure I worked for 18 years in the survey business so I know quite a bit on how they are developed, collected and analyzed to produce the estimates that we all look at when we read polls. I also spent a good part of that 18 years crafting the message contained in the data for survey reports. 

At any rate, the pollsters and the pundits have been saying the Liberals have lost support and the Conservatives have the momentum in the early part of the election. They base this on the fact that a week before the election call the Liberals had large single digit or small double digit leads in the polls and that shrank to being a statistical tie just days after the election call. I would ask you to read one of my previous blog entries on just what I think of that. I find such claims to be very dubious.

However, let's, for the sake of argument, take that claim at face value. Looking at the polls for the past five days the indicate that the Liberals have settled at about 34% and the Conservatives have settled at about 31% and the NDP at 19%. For the past five days the numbers have not moved more than the margin of error (MOE) around those numbers. Which means that the numbers are not moving at all. That means that no party has momentum. If the Conservatives did have the momentum before August 18 (a dubious claim) it stopped five days ago and it has not picked back up since then. Consider that the Liberals won their 157 seats with 33% of the vote in 2019 while the Conservatives won 34%. With the Conservatives down 3 points from 2019 they are not winning any more seats and the Liberal might pick up a few.

This is subject to change. Either the Conservatives or Liberals could gain the momentum as the election unfolds or these numbers could stay the same as we saw in 2019. I cannot say with certainty which one will happen but the Liberals probably have the better odds, for all of the reasons I have outlined in previous posts.

Now let us look at the regional numbers. Keep in mind that these have even higher MOEs because of the smaller sample sizes so even something that looks like a big swing, such as in the Maritimes, could be nothing more than statistical noise.

In BC the Liberals are around 30%, with the Conservatives and the NDP being around the same level. At 30% the Liberals would hang on to their 11 seats and potentially gain 6 more for a total of 17

In Alberta the Conservatives are sitting at 49%. That is 27 points off of what they won in 2019. That is massive. In any other election the media would be talking about the collapse of their vote in their main stronghold. The Liberals are where they were in 2019 so that opens the possibility of the Liberals winning 4 seats in Alberta.

In Saskitoba the Conservatives are down and the Liberals are where they were in 2019. Three additional seats are possible there.

In Ontario all of the parties are at their 2019 totals. However, it should be noted that the PPC is pushing 5% in Ontario. That may not seem like much but if they can siphon off a couple percentage points in ridings where the Conservatives only won by a point or two those will be lost seats for the Conservatives, and almost 20 of those close seats saw the Liberals come in second. 

In the Maritimes the parties are sitting at what they gained in 2019 so we probably would not see any change there.

In Quebec, the Liberals are sitting around 39% while the Bloc is 13 points back and the Conservatives and the NDP are nipping at the Blocs heels. The available pool of voters in Quebec for the Liberals is 40% so they are pretty much at their ceiling. The others are fishing in a bigger pond but the are very close to each other meaning that they would split the anti-Liberal vote quite nicely if this hold. At worst, in this scenario the Liberals equal their 2019 seat totals. At best they can gain up to 25 seats, although 10 would probably be more realistic.

So the Liberals started the campaign at 155 seats. Let's not assume either the worst or best case scenario presented by the polls for each region. Let's assume the middle ground.

So we add 3 for BC, 2 for Alberta, 2 for Saskitoba, 3 for Ontario, 10 for Quebec and 1 for the Maritimes (The NDP seat in St. Johns is open so it could fall). That is 21 added to the 155 to equal 176 seats.

So when pollsters and pundits are saying the Liberals are losing the election what the f&%# are they talking about? I personally do not believe the Liberals would win a majority with just 33% of the vote but considering what I am seeing in the current polls it is not beyond the realm of possibility. And if these numbers were the final numbers on September 20 there is no way the Liberals lose.

I will add my usual caveat that elections are crap shoots and these numbers could change to the disadvantage of the Liberals but they can also change to their advantage. However, in order to change governments they will need to change much more in favour of the Conservatives than they would for us to see a Liberal majority government.

I have provided reasons why the most likely outcome of the election is a Liberal victory, possibly a majority government, in previous entries in this blog and as comments on other blogs. Looking at the latest polls, if an election were held today the outcome would be exactly that.