Federal polling - April 28

I'm an atheist but I am PRAYING that these numbers will be the final result on Monday.

alan smithee wrote:

I'm an atheist but I am PRAYING that these numbers will be the final result on Monday.

You don't want them to be even better?

Wouldn't mind seeing the trend continue personally.  Beginning to feel a lot like the Ontario provincial election in 1990. Hopefully the NDP don't run out of time to stop Harper from having most seats.

I heard yesterday from an NDP organizer in Montreal that the NDP candidate is ahead of Cannon and that Duceppe is in trouble as wee.

I hope Lawrence Cannon is shown the door on Monday.

That'd be sweeeeet!

But if Peter MacKay was defeated,I swear I will strip naked and do cart wheels from here,all the way down Ste-Catherine Street.

alan smithee wrote:

I'd like to see an NDP majority government.

But that isn't going to happen this election.

You have to celebrate small victories,unfortunately.

Two weeks ago, to me a small victory was losing maybe no more than three seats.

I'm keeping expectations in check, but the stars have aligned in such a strange and marvelous way I'm not saying anything is impossible anymore.

26.1% in Ontario, within 2% the Liberals. Fortress Toronto is beginning to look like it's built on sand.

Rob8305 wrote:

BTW, I wonder what Iggy is thinking about "Jack, you'll never be Prime Minister" now? :)

I am pretty sure that was M. Duceppe. I KNOW he said it, during the French-language debate; not sure if Dr. Ignatieff was as foolish on some other occasion.

Iggy was laughing when Duceppe said that

My Tory friend from Ontario thinks voters there will shy away from voting NDP come election day... the Clegg Effect.  And that's possible.  It also seems Tory insiders are happy where their Ontario numbers are and believe they have a majority even if they suffer loses in BC, the West, and Atlantic Canada.  And of course as I said, even if they come up short, I suspect there will be several Liberals willing to cross the floor and give him a parliamentry majority.

Keeping my fingers crossed... but let's not get too excited.  4 days to go and polls can change big time... though if they do, I'm hoping in a positive direction for us.

I've been a New Democrat for exactly 21 years.  I'm excited and scared shitless at the same time.  Hopefully you'll hear screams of joy from me on election night... and some tears of joy lol

Hunky_Monkey wrote:

It also seems Tory insiders are happy where their Ontario numbers are and believe they have a majority even if they suffer loses in BC, the West, and Atlantic Canada.  And of course as I said, even if they come up short, I suspect there will be several Liberals willing to cross the floor and give him a parliamentry majority.

Harper's very strident attacks on the NDP and the supposed effect an NDP government would have on gas prices today suggest that he and his team are not entirely sanguine about the numbers they're seeing.  I've read several articles today claiming that the NDP will "help" deliver a Tory Majority, but then I also read Andrew Coyne's condemnation of the Conservatives as anti-democratic and his declaration that he will be voting Liberal, and it cheered me up, oddly enough.  I hope most people vote NDP, and I hope that enough disgusted  Conservatives vote Liberal in close Con-Lib races in Ontario that  they are held to a minority (or even lose seats!)

The one thing that gives me cause for concern in the NDP numbers is that the party's support in the polls is highest among the 18-34 year old age bracket - which is also the demographic least likely to vote. The Tories almost always get a little bit of a ballot box bounce on election day because historically their voters are more likely to turn out. NDP support is also a lot softer than the Tories' or Liberals' - for eg, Angus Reid found that while 71% of NDP respondents were 'committed voters' (ie unlikely to change their minds) the Tories had 84% committed voters.

I will say that younger voters do seem to be somewhat more engaged in this election than elections past (perhaps due to increased awareness of the importance of exercising our democratic rights after the upheavals in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, etc), but it's one thing to tell a pollster that you support Jack Layton and the NDP, and it's another thing to actually get out and vote.

While I take the increased voter turnout at advance polls as a very good sign, I still can't get the spectre of a repeat of what happened to Nick Clegg and the UK LibDems out of my mind. I suspect that some of the more recent attacks may result in a levelling-off of the NDP vote - something similar happened in Ontario in 1990 with the Liberals' last-gasp "Children Would Starve Under the Socialists" ads.  Bob Rae wrote in his memoirs that the NDP's overnights had them into the 40s before the ads ran, then falling back slightly at the end of the campaign to the high 30s.

We have yet to see the effects of the latest attacks on the NDP, as a result I expect the NDP numbers to drop a bit the polls catch up.

One of the best things that Layton could say right now is that Harper looks like he is running scared. This will seriously de-motivate their base and reverse the whole "bully" effect that Harper has going for him (e.g. strong leader and all that jazz). It would be a credible statement now because of the more than 1000 people that showed up at the Edmonton rally and all the commentary about the Conservatives losing support in BC, Sask, Man, and SW Ontario.

Here is the comparison between the two daily tracking polls, by region, and the 2008 election results:

Canada

Nanos (A25-27): Cons - 36.6%, Lib - 21.9%, NDP - 30.4%, BQ - 6.0%, Green - 4.1%, Oth - 1.0%

EKOS (A25-27): Cons - 34.8%, Lib - 22.3%, NDP - 27.5%, BQ - 6.1%, Green - 6.8%, Oth - 2.5%

2008 Election: Cons - 37.7%, Lib - 26.3%, NDP - 18.2%, BQ - 10.0%, Green - 6.8%, Oth - 1.2%

Atlantic

Nanos (A25-27): Cons - 29.4%, Lib - 33.3%, NDP - 29.2%, Green - 5.1%, Oth - 3.0%

EKOS (A25-27): Cons - 28.9%, Lib - 31.5%, NDP - 32.0%, Green - 4.2%, Oth - 3.4%

2008 Election: Cons - 29.6%, Lib - 35.0%, NDP - 26.0%, Green - 6.0%, Oth - 3.3%

Quebec

Nanos (A25-27): BQ - 25.1%, Cons - 13.5%, Lib - 15.0%, NDP - 42.5%, Green - 2.4%, Oth - 1.5%

EKOS (A25-27): BQ - 25.4%, Cons - 13.8%, Lib - 16.7%, NDP - 37.2%, Green - 4.2%, Oth - 2.7%

2008 Election: BQ - 38.1%, Cons - 21.7%, Lib - 23.8%, NDP - 12.2%, Green - 3.5%, Oth - 0.8%

Ontario

Nanos (A25-27): Cons - 41.1%, Lib - 27.9%, NDP - 26.1%, Green - 4.5%, Oth - 0.4%

EKOS (A25-27): Cons - 39.9%, Lib - 28.4%, NDP - 22.8%, Green - 6.5%, Oth - 2.4%

2008 Election: Cons - 39.2%, Lib - 33.8%, NDP - 18.2%, Green - 8.0%, Oth - 0.8%

Prairies

Nanos (A25-27): Cons - 53.8%, Lib - 14.6%, NDP - 26.0%, Green - 4.9%, Oth - 0.7%

2008 Election: Cons - 59.2%, Lib - 13.7%, NDP - 17.6%, Green - 7.7%, Oth - 1.8%

Man./Sask.

EKOS (A25-27): Cons - 46.2%, Lib - 19.4%, NDP - 27.3%, Green - 5.7%, Oth - 1.4%

2008 Election: Cons - 59.2%, Lib - 13.7%, NDP - 17.6%, Green - 7.7%, Oth - 1.8%

Alberta

EKOS (A25-27): Cons - 60.8%, Lib - 11.6%, NDP - 17.8%, Green - 8.1%, Oth - 1.7%

2008 Election: Cons - 59.2%, Lib - 13.7%, NDP - 17.6%, Green - 7.7%, Oth - 1.8%

BC

Nanos (A25-27): Cons - 45.3%, Lib - 23.1%, NDP - 26.9%, Green - 4.1%, Oth - 0.6%

EKOS (A25-27): Cons - 35.7%, Lib - 19.5%, NDP - 28.6%, Green - 13.4%, Oth - 2.8%

2008 Election: Cons - 44.5%, Lib - 19.3%, NDP - 26.1%, Green - 9.4%, Oth - 0.8%

That's a huge difference between 35% and 45% for the Conservatives in BC. There's five to ten seats in question there.

Cameron even had some traditional Labour supporters eating out of his hand.

Really,what happened to the British Labour Party is what happened to Canada's Liberal Party.

Layton didn't just appear from nowhere.

Does anyone have a link to the regional numbers? Was there any mention of the Prairies? And what about the NDP's number in Ontario - 25 is better than it used to be, but does it imply any gains?

If that's really the case it would be a massive victory for the NDP in BC as the Conservatives have a big Alberta-style overvote in some of their ridings.

ghoris wrote:

The one thing that seems wonky is that they show Ontario as Lib 34, CPC 33 and NDP 25.  Those numbers seem inconsistent with all the other polls, and since total sample size is only 1,000, the regionals have a high margin of error.

 

Yeah, the Lib/Con numbers really seem out of whack there.  But, in terms of their overall numbers, next to EKOS, H/D was the pollster closest to the mark in '08.

vermonster wrote:

A rough back of the envelope calculation would suggest that the NDP is ahead of (or tied) with the Conservatives during the most recent day's polling - it would take that kind of improvement to balance out the lower results from a couple of days back. 

In yesterday's Globe, John Duffy said that the NANOS one day numbers from Tuesday's calling had the NDP at 36.2 and the Cons at 35.

Northern Shoveler wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

Perhaps Harris Decima polls should be Cons - 33%, NDP - 32%, Libs - who cares?  

Actually after having had that line thrown at me as an NDP voter for forty years I don't find the joke particularly funny.  I was hoping we would not be as arrogantly dismissive of 20% to 25% of the voters as other s have been of the NDP. I thought we were better than our opponents.

Agreed. Time for some modesty, before we're humbled for presumption.

Look, Layton and the party is being hit mercilessly now from all sides, and I think we can expect to see our numbers dip before the polling ban. Then it's a goddamn long weekend.