Federal Polling-April 29

NDP RISE CONTINUES AS LIBERALS SWOON AND CONSERVATIVES STUCK - April 29, 2011

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ONTARIO SPLIT AS UNCERTAIN BUT TECTONIC TRANSFORMATION OF POLITICAL LANDSCAPE UNDERWAY

[Ottawa – April 29, 2011] – In what would have been unthinkable at the outset of this campaign, the Canadian political landscape is being profoundly reshaped in ways that are still unclear. What is clear is that Canadians are opting for dramatic change on May 2nd. The Conservatives remain stuck at 34.5 points, well short of the majority that they insisted was essential to ward off the adventure of an untested coalition. The NDP, who began the campaign at a scant 14 points, have now more than doubled their support and at 29.7% and are breathing down the necks of the stalled Conservative Party. The hapless Liberal Party, meanwhile, is in full collapse having achieved yet another historical nadir at 20.0%. A very soft Green Party is at 6.9% and is available for the picking. The Bloc Quebecois remains stuck at 26.2% in Quebec and will be dramatically humbled in the next Parliament.

While the Conservatives are hanging on to a strong lead in Ontario, with a newly split NDP/Liberal saw off, and continuing to enjoy a commitment advantage from a loyal base who are circling the wagons, it is increasingly an obscure likelihood that they will achieve success in this campaign. The NDP vote has stiffened and still has room to grow. When we look at only those who are certain to vote, the Conservatives are at 35.5% but NDP vote resolve has risen and they are now very close behind at 30.6%. These numbers leave lots of political machinations open and the uncertainty in Ontario leaves the question of whether the NDP and the Liberals combined will reach the magic number of 155 seats.

The NDP now have significant strength in British Columbia, and have risen sharply to tie the Liberals in Ontario. They have a huge lead in Quebec and are tied for the lead in the Atlantic. The Conservatives are strong in the west and, due to a newly split NDP and Liberal vote in Ontario, have a 12-point advantage over the Liberals and the closing NDP. The Conservatives are in serious trouble in Quebec and are locked in very tight three-way races in the Atlantic provinces. The Liberals are in retreat everywhere and what dwindling hopes they have lie in Ontario and Atlantic Canada. Overall, the public judgement of the Liberal Party has been unremittingly harsh.

There are very clear fault lines but also evidence of a potential consensus. While the Conservatives remain very strong with older Canadians and males, the NDP are showing strong connection with the Gen X and Gen Y, where they now lead. The NDP have also seized much of the university-educated vote from the Liberals and have significant representation in all regions and demographic groups, outside of over 65 voters who are the lynchpin of Conservative support.

In the end, there is no question that we are witnessing a dramatic transformation of what has been a log jammed political landscape. The only real question remaining is whether or not the new leader of the opposition will have the moral authority to claim the office of Prime Minister and government with the support of the hobbled Liberal Party. The two keys to that question are voter turnout of under 45 Canada and how Ontario settles in this momentous campaign. The answers to these questions will lie in the weekend deliberations of a newly engaged electorate.

http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/full_report_april_29_2011.pdf

bekayne wrote:

josh wrote:

Pollster Frank Graves said the latest numbers suggest the Conservatives are out of reach of winning a majority.

http://ipolitics.ca/2011/04/29/ndp-still-closing-on-conservatives-libera...
No they don't. In about half of the Liberals remaining seats (in this poll, projected to about 50), the Conservatives are within 10% in at least half of them

It is still quite unlikely. The Conservatives probably won't win anywhere near to all of these 25 seats.
But that's the problem with FPTP. It won't be fair if we win the majority of seats in Quebec with 40% either.

"moral authority'?

Give us a freakin break. Bandying about CONservative talking points like "moral authority" is absolute bull shit.  If "moral authority" is anything to go by when running the country then Harper should have stepped down long ago, as he has NONE.

I don't think any of these poll numbers matter anymore. At this point it is all going to come down to who gets down to the polls on Monday, and in that department, the Harperites are very well-organized. 

And on Andrew Coyne, I don't know about NDP numbers, but him endorsing the Liberals over Harper is earth-shattering enough.

(hah... cross-posted with you , Sean)

I can't think of an election where NDP supporters should be more motivated to go to the polls.  The same is true for Conservative supporters.  I suspect many Liberal supporters are feeling demoralized and perhaps they won't show up in as large numbers. 

The poll that indicates the NDP are in the lead could have been the EKOS sample from last night.  A 2.2% jump in one night in a tracking poll is a lot. 

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

There are no credible seat projections.

Everything fro a Layton plurality to a Con majority from a Liberal historic low below 40 seats to close to 2nd place in seats is possible

The NDP could be anywhere between 50 and perhaps even a little over 100 seats.

If this were fiction the suspense writers would get an award

Yes, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

I think the floor for the NDP is somewhat higher now, more like 70 or 80, and the Liberals finishing second in seats is highly unlikely. If there really is a poll that puts the NDP in first (and not just a one night isolation from Nanos or EKOS), with all the negativity going on, and that includes being close to the Conservatives in Ontario, then the ceiling is well over 100 (some projections are as high as 108 even at 28-30 percent). But we should all be out campigning, not speculating on possible outcomes.

Huron-Bruce - go Grant!

Also Oshawa!

Policywonk wrote:

Northern-54 wrote:

EKOS sample sizes are almost 3 times as large as NANOS.  EKOS uses an automated system where people can use the telphone key pad to input their preferences.  This eliminates interviewer bias.  EKOS lists political parties while Nanos asks for voters to pick their top two choices and the pick which one they like.

I prefer EKOS polls over Nanos this election.  They are less likely to gyrate significantly and obscure trends because of their absolute size.  Tomorrow's Nanos numbers are almost sure to show an NDP decline due to the inordinately large NDP share of the vote night being dropped off of the poll.  On the other hand, EKOS numbers are more stable because they survey 1100-1200 per night as opposed to 400.

If the surge is continuing, Nanos may show no change instead. I think the negativity may pushing people towards the NDP. We would need to be much closer to or ahead of the Conservatives in Ontario for the chance of a plurality of seats overall, but at least Ontario looks like it will give us quite a few more seats at the expense of the Liberals. Are there any we could pick up from the Conservatives in Ontario, aside from Essex and maybe Kenora.

Quote:

Andrew Coyne, I don't know about NDP numbers, but him endorsing the Liberals over Harper is earth-shattering enough

It doesn't surprise me that much, actually. His reputation as a hard right neoconservative is a bit undeserved; if anything, he's just a generic centre-right establishment figure, somewhere between a Red Tory and a Paul Martin Liberal, much closer to Jeffrey Simpson than to Mark Steyn. An NDP endorsement from him would blow my mind, obviously, but especially given the current Tory configuration, a Liberal endorsement isn't really outside of his comfort zone.

When today's EKOS poll was released, Frank Graves said the Conservatives had little chance of a majority. Then he did the seat predictions. Now he seems to be changing his tune:

http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/seat_projection_april_29_2011.pdf

[OTTAWA - April 29, 2011] In an interesting development, as the Conservative Party's overall margin over the NDP has shrunk to a mere five points, the newfound parity of the NDP and Liberal Party in Ontario appears to have produced significant benefits in terms of seat returns. So while the Conservatives have lost ground to the NDP and have remained flat in Ontario, the new tie between Liberals and NDP in Ontario is causing vote splitting that has elevated the Conservative Party's prospects. While they have remained under 40 points in Ontario, they would now be ticketed to receive the lion's share of Ontario seats with less than two-fifths of its votes. With 61 of Ontario's 106 seats, the Conservatives are now projected to win 146 seats. This means that they would basically reproduce their current number of MPs although their caucus would be a dramatically different Ontario-based government. The vote splitting also would reduce the joint total of NDP and Liberal seats (109 and 42, respectively) to 151, which is shy of the 155 needed to have a majority.

http://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2011/04/from-orange-crush-to-red-c...

EKOS is full of it. The NDP is going to be doing better then that in Saskatchewan. We can't catch a break from anyone.

Caissa wrote:

[OTTAWA - April 29, 2011] While they have remained under 40 points in Ontario, they would now be ticketed to receive the lion's share of Ontario seats with less than two-fifths of its votes. With 61 of Ontario's 106 seats, the Conservatives are now projected to win 146 seats. This means that they would basically reproduce their current number of MPs although their caucus would be a dramatically different Ontario-based government. The vote splitting also would reduce the joint total of NDP and Liberal seats (109 and 42, respectively) to 151, which is shy of the 155 needed to have a majority.

http://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2011/04/from-orange-crush-to-red-c...

I hope that if the Conservatives win many more than their 51 seats in Ontario, that they lose a lot of seats in B.C., Manitoba, Saskatchewan, even Alberta.  I would hate to see them add any seats to their current total.  If I can't have a defeated Conservative government I want a greatly chastened and reduced one.

And I hope that this Star story about the Afghan detainees is true and has real consequences for the Conservatives:

http://tinyurl.com/5tq4fn4

Contempt of Parliament and now there is a serious possibility that Canada will be charged with war crimes?

Wow...And our idiot savant leader is calling the NDP a threat to our 'reputation and credibility'..That's rich Steve-O.

Question is..When are Canadians going to wake the fuck up?

Harper's back on top in Nanos leadership index:

101.3 (+18.1)

91.9 (-3.4)

30.3 (-4)

Harper just made a phone call to Premier Brad Wall offering to pay 50 percent of flood relief. 

Has he made any calls to Manitoba?

alan smithee wrote:

Contempt of Parliament and now there is a serious possibility that Canada will be charged with war crimes?

Wow...And our idiot savant leader is calling the NDP a threat to our 'reputation and credibility'..That's rich Steve-O.

Question is..When are Canadians going to wake the fuck up?

Some are

Ipsos Reid

Cons 38

NDP 33

Lib 18

BQ 7

Green 4

Ipsos Ontario

Cons 40

NDP 34

Lib 21

Atlantic

NDP 42%

Con 32%

Lib 23%

Liberal vote looks like it is collapsing to the NDP to stop the Cons

Yup.Ontario

This is a tweet -- give me a few minutes to see if there is a link so I can be sure it is not scrambled ok?

THIRTY four in ONTARIO?

*squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!*

*faint*

Anonymouse wrote:

While NDPers might me more motivated than ever, the party has been under withering attack and that might prompt some swing voters to go back to the Liberals or to stay home. That is my worry.

I'd actually argue that the attacks from the the 3 other party leaders (and their underlings) are not a bad thing. It makes Harper, Ignatieff and Duceppe look desperate, participating in the same petty political games that so many in the country have come to hate. For wavering voters, it confirms that the NDP is, in fact, the greatest threat to a Conservative government. Those attacks work in the NDP's favour, and in fact help build the sense of momentum and excitement that will help turn out past non-voters, as well as former Bloc, Green, Liberal (and even Conservative) voters who have been attracted by the NDP/Layton surge.

The attacks that worry me more are the ones that are showing up more and more in the media - the reporters and "analysts" who are taking the Harper talking point attacks and repackaging them as reputable journalism. It is one thing when a media outlet reports "Harper today said that a Layton government would bring about death, destruction and dead puppies" - voters are smart enough to recognise that for what it is - a desperate blatant attempt to maintain power. But when a "journalist" reports something like "Markets are increasingly concerned that a Layton victory would create death, destruction and dead puppies," voters have less inclination to reject it out of hand. They don't necessarily recognise that the "journalist" is simply repeating talking points they've been fed by a Conservative operative, or that the media outlet is owned by a massive corporation that has a vested interest in supporting Harper's corporate tax breaks and right wing power.

I think it is important for the NDP - Layton, candidates, spokespeople, volunteers, and neighbours - not to fall into the trap of trying to defend against these specific attack narratives. It only grants them legitimacy to be forced to debate the idea that an NDP government would create more "dead puppies". Instead a better tactic seems to be to continue to deliver a message of standing up for the common folk and Canadian values, emphasis on how different the NDP is from the other parties, and a slight tone of mocking their attacks as a sign of exactly how desperate the old parties are that they would stoop to such ridiculous and unbelievable attacks. 

At last, the Ontario vote is starting to move. By averaging the "current" Nanos (two days out of date) and the current EKOS (yesterday) I find the NDP would take not only Parkdale--High Park, Beaches--East York, Davenport, and Oshawa, but now even Bobbi Stewart wins Guelph.

Note that this is not reliable because it ignores what happening locally on the ground. Just an interesting statistical calculation. Very close are York South--Weston, and maybe Essex, London North Centre, Kingston and the Islands and Scarborough Southwest.

JeffWells wrote:

I - I don't know what to say. I mean, if this is anything like the truth, this is approaching winning conditions. I mean, like, majority government.

Majority for whom?  Right now a bunch of journalists on Power and Politics are talking about how  the Tories could eke out a majority with just Ontario (as Chretien did).

SRB wrote:

JeffWells wrote:

I - I don't know what to say. I mean, if this is anything like the truth, this is approaching winning conditions. I mean, like, majority government.

 

Majority for whom?  Right now a bunch of journalists on Power and Politics are talking about how  the Tories could eke out a majority with just Ontario (as Chretien did).

Sounds like they're engaging in fear mongering/wishful thinking. The Conservatives will not be sweeping Ontario, not with the second party just six points behind. And Chretien didn't win with just Ontario. He also swept Atlantic Canada, won 19 seats in Quebec and even four in Alberta.

According to this, fwiw, the Cons say they would need 74 seats in Ontario to get a majority, and that they're not anywhere near that.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/982356--exclusive-ma...