Until now, my model was merging Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan together. I was alllowing the coeffecient to vary depending on the province though. I decided to change that and to estimate the model for Alberta and the Praires separately. I used to merge the two because I was favouring the polls from Nanos and this pollster combines Alberta and the Prairies. But since I'm now using an average of all the recent polls, I don't need to do that anymore. Moreover, while Alberta seems pretty stable in recent years (with a complete domination of the Tories), Man/Sask experienced bigger variations from the other parties, in particular the Liberals. The new model is projecting more seats for the Liberals in the Prairies. SOmething that makes sense since the LPC increased from 17% to 24% in this region, while both the CPC and NDP fellThe new model is thus used for those projections and you can also use the new model yourself. Let me know if you find a problem.
Some comments about those latest projections. It's almost sad: more than 2 years after the last election, a lot of talk, a lot of ads, and where are we now? At almost the very same situations! Of course, the difference being that the Conservatives would start a campaign projected at 10 seats shy from a majority, something that hasn't been the case in the past. But still, things are pretty stable. However, this overall stability hides some real variations at the province-level. For instance, the CPC is now stronger than ever in Ontario but has declined a little bit in the West.
I'm still predicting no elections this spring. There will be a lot of noise around the budget, but at the end, one party will pass it along the Tories. Or this party will simply not have enough MPs for the vote. I'm predicting this party to be the NDP who will jump on the first measure they could back.
