Jack Layton's New Democrats appear to have caught up to Stephen Harper's Conservatives among British Columbia voters, according to an EKOS Research poll released this morning.
And if the EKOS seat-projection model is correct, the NDP could be poised to garner 16 of B.C.’s 36 seats in Parliament, while the Tories take only 15 and the Liberals win as few as five.
The Oct. 5 EKOS projections – which are based based on automated telephone surveys conducted Oct. 3, 4 and 5 – show the NDP and Tories each have 32 per cent support in B.C., with the Liberals slipping to 21 per cent and Greens rising to 15 percent.
“The tightening in B.C. is not an overnight sensation. We’ve been watching B.C. voters move in the NDP’s direction for some time now,” EKOS director of strategic communications Paul Adams said. "That gives us some confidence in these numbers."
However, EKOS' Oct. 5 projection is the only major poll to find the Dippers running neck-and-neck with Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. At the other end of the spectrum lies a Harris/Decima survey, also released this morning, that found the Conservatives at 46 per cent to the NDP's 22 per cent in B.C. While the remainder of the major polls fall somewhere in between, all put the federal Liberals running a distant third in B.C.
Conversely, voters appear to be moving back toward the Liberal Party of Canada in Atlantic Canada and Ontario, and toward the Bloc in Quebec. EKOS found nationwide voter intention at: 35 per cent for the Tories, 25 per cent for the Grits, 19 per cent for the NDP, and 10 per cent each for the Green and Bloc.
“People are making up their minds,” Adams said. “The undecided share is gently falling, from about 12 per cent a couple weeks ago to 7 per cent over the weekend.”
Adams warned that support for the Greens could soften in the week ahead, leading to further shifts among the other center-left parties.
“About a third of Green voters say they are likely to change their vote before election day," he said.
Furthermore, under Canada’s antiquated first-past-the-post electoral system, there is no evidence to suggest that the Greens will win even a single seat in Parliament. EKOS' Oct. 5 national seat projections stand as follows:
Tories: 130 seats
Grits: 78 seats
Bloc: 58 seats
NDP: 42 seats
“These seat projections are not so much intended as a prediction of the outcome on October 14 as they are a reminder that in places like British Columbia – where there are quite a few three- and four-way races – even subtle shifts in public mood over the final days of this campaign could radically reshape the political landscape,” Adams said.
“It won’t come as a surprise to you that B.C. has been notoriously difficult territory for pollsters,” Adams told The Tyee.
“We saw the Greens come within a point or two of the Liberals, then fade back. We saw the Tories start with a commanding lead – especially outside Vancouver – then fall back. The only other province with this degree of dynamism would be Quebec,” he said.
Monte Paulsen edits The Hook.
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Luke Skywalker
3 years ago
Pollsters and Trends
Trends are incremental but I have seen huge daily shifts in the BC numbers by Ekos, Harris Decima, and the weeklies by Ipsos.
They are wonky and don't make much sense.
The only pollster in BC whereby the daily trends are incremental (aside from a few blips) has been the Strategic Counsel tracking poll of the 10 BC battleground ridings.
And the trends therein continually show:
1. The CPC up a few points from 2006;
2. The NDP down a few points from 2006;
3. The Liberals down a further few points from 2006;
4. The Greens up a further few points from 2006;
And I also believe that one can extrapolate those trends to the overall federal provincial scene here in BC.
http://www.thestrategiccounsel.com/our_news/polls/2008-10-05%20Election%20Tracking%20(reporting%20Oct1-Oct4).pdf
Grumpy
3 years ago
Harper =
A very scary guy.
politico
3 years ago
Bizarre
...range of numbers there.
It will be weird to see the NDP actually drop a seat here in BC when all is said and done. Especially after all this hype.
I find it interesting how the NDP in second and the Liberals in third is somehow news.
Twas the same last election and ya gotta admit that here in BC old Gordo has not done much for the brand.....
Ah well.....
18.5 million bucks is an expensive price tag for one leaders ego at least the mainscream is happy to buy in to the bafflegab, of course they are the main recipient of that 18 million - but who is counting eh?!
Luke Skywalker
3 years ago
And The Next Set (Today's) - Ekos Numbers...
Con - 38% (+6%)
NDP - 26% (-6%)
Lib - 20% (-1%)
Numbers in BC just don't change this erratically overnight.
http://www.ekoselection.com/index.php/2008/10/daily-tracking-october-6-2008/
de Falla
3 years ago
Margin of Error
The article doesn't mention the following:
"In total, 2606 Canadians responded to the survey over this period. The margin of error associated with this rolling sample is +/-1.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Please note that the margin of error increases when the results are sub-divided (i.e., error margins for sub-groups such as region, sex, age, income)."
Based on the data available at the Ekos website, the margin for error on the BC results should be around +/- 5% or more.
Perhap The Hook should pay heed to the spirit of the law of the land and publish methodology when reporting these kinds of numbers.
G West
3 years ago
I think people may well be
I think people may well be as disillusioned as I am with polls and polling. Many respondents may well be just giving the polling companies disinformation - I know that's what I do.
The whole exercise has become a ridiculous farce and the sooner people realize polls are for dogs the better.
politico
3 years ago
Gwest
Good post!
Crawford
3 years ago
Robo-polling
This afternoon I got a call that must have come from EKOS: A recorded voice, asking me to pick a candidate and party from a list based on my riding, North Vancouver.
Don Bell and the Liberals were choice #1, so I assumed it was a Liberal poll. But maybe not. In any case, I hit #1 and was thanked for completing the survey.
It may be that the sudden growth in the number of potential Liberal seats is the result of strategic voters like me being polled.
Or it could be that the robot doesn't distinguish between males and females, seniors and 8-year-olds, strategic votes and disinformation providers. We'll just have to track the polls and judge the pollsters by their accuracy on October 14.
galaxysnetwork
3 years ago
Oct.2 debate, miscellaneous
Elizabeth May & Jack Layton tied, 1st place ; somewhere in 2nd place were Ducceppe & Dion, despite Ducceppe's greater facility w/ English language than Dion's ; despite some of the neo-Conservative platform's "carrots" having real appeal, the Prime Minister seemed much less convincing, despite his facility w/ both English & French. -- The socio-economic realities of the present are becoming increasingly less attractive to most of us who are average working folk, which is "most of us". . .
Prior to inhabiting the "Prime residency", "Mrs. Harper" was known as "Ms. Lorena Tesky" -- harking back to Dionne Brand's editorial on "Patriarchy". -- ah, 'tis all "curiouser & curiouser"
galaxysnetwork
3 years ago
Ms. May
While many of us would be surprised to see Elizabeth May pitch Peter McKay (nearly rhymes??) out of his "seat", one admires her grit & grasp of the long-term issues.
bcandbeyond
3 years ago
Anyone but Harper
It may be in the nick of time, but - reliable polls or not - voters are tuning into the fact that Stephen Harper is in denial about the poor state of the economy and he cannot be trusted.
Consider voting strategically to keep a Harper majority out.
www.bcandbeyond.wordpress.com
www.voteforenvironment.ca
Name
3 years ago
Caveat emptor...
Strategic voting requires fine-scale polling that looks at the actual current split for your particular riding, so people need to be very cautious about over-reliance on sites like voteforenvironment.ca.
I checked out that site and they're offering advice that could actually help get a Conservative elected in our riding (Vancouver Kingsway) for the first time in history. This is because they're relying pretty much on the outcome of the last election and on national polls, neither of which may give an accurate picture of our demographics at the moment.
This has traditionally been a swing Liberal/NDP riding, though the Liberals have won the last 3 times. Our last Liberal MP, David Emerson, famously crossed the floor and joined the Conservatives - provoking outrage among many constituents, although many others certainly saw having direct access to a "Cabinet Minister" as a good thing.
The Conservatives have tended to be way behind, but they've been catching up, especially among the riding's large Asian population. If you go by lawn signs alone, they are now a major force to be reckoned with and this will be a close 3-way race, not the Liberal/NDP race that voteforenvironment.ca is calling.
The Toronto-based group seems to be oblivious to all this, dismissing the Conservatives as nothing to worry about and thus encouraging voters to vote for any one of the other candidates.
But if the ABC vote gets split between Libs, NDP & Greens this time, it's quite possible that the Conservative could actually get enough take the seat.
This is of course speculative, but you'd have to do polling just for the riding to know either way.
G West
3 years ago
Bad news for pee wee
I see that Harris Decima now has the Conmen behind the Liberals in Ontario:
http://www.thestar.com/federalelection/article/513093
And overall Harper is down to 31% - a full 10 points off his high and definitely trending the WRONG way for the sweatervest crew. I also think the muzzle was a bad idea....
Dion, despite his shortcomings, seems to making real gains in Ontario and the Liberals are now leading in the most important (electorally) province in Canada.
Quebec is also trending the wrong way for Harper and the Liberals are in second there behind the Bloc...I guess pee wee's thoughtless disrespect of culture and the arts - along with his wooden performance in the French debate - have hurt him as much as I thought it would.
Quebecers, of all Canadians, recognize and cherish the importance of culture and identity.
Perhaps Stephen is taking his cues from Maxime Bernier!
Anyway, we shall see but it may well be that Harper's calculation on timing this thing was about 6 weeks off.
If he'd called the election in August for a vote in the middle of September then I think he would have had his coveted majority....
On reflection, he may well have been wiser to wait till 2009 so that his claims for being a good steward of the economy would have something more than hot air to hold them up.