With the MPs about to spend the holidays and a couple of weeks away from the House, here are our first projections published on this website. Details can be found here. The polls used are the latest ones from Harris-Decima, Nanos, Angus-Reid and Ekos.If a federal election was held tomorrow, the results would look closely to the previous election. The Conservatives would lose a couple of seats, largely due to a slight drop in Ontario and in the West. The Liberals would still be far from power, while the NDP would remain mostly stable (although in its case, the 39 seats include 7 wins out of 9 close races (where the leader has less than a 5% margin, therefore we should consider those 39 seats as the upper bound for this party). The Greens' only hope is in Ontario, in the riding of Guelph with a hot race between them, the CPC and LPC.
Rumors are well going on about a possible spring election (after the next budget) but I wouldn't be so sure. As of now, no party has a clear incentive to go into an early campaing. Ignatieff and the Liberals seem to be doing better than a couple of months ago, but they would need a really strong campaing in order to kick Harper out of power. For the Conservatives, even by winning all their close races, they would still fall short of the majority (147 seats), again. The only party ready to go is naturally the Bloc, but this isn't enough to trigger an election. Of course, everything can happen during the next couple of months, but if the last couple of years of minorty governments taught us something, it's that defeating the government is not easy when it requires all three opposition parties to agree!
