We just got two new polls, from Angus-Reid and Ekos. The latter shows a little fall back for the Tories, while the former actually show a big lead for this party. Using only the AR poll, the Conservatives are projected at 154 seats, thus a majority (remember I don't project the three territories) while the Liberals would get only 71. On the other hand, by using only the latest Ekos poll, the Tories stand at 137 seats only. When using those two polls as well as the other recent ones from Nanos, Ipsos and Harris-Decima, we arrive at the projections illustrated in this post. Details are here.So it seems there is some kind of volatility. AR conducted the survey online between March 8th and 9th, while Ekos conducted its survey between February 24th to March 8th. That could explain the reason, even though given the recent scandals affecting the Tories (court decision about the 2006 election and the in-and-out funding scheme; Oda; etc) we could have expected the opposite: the survey conducted recently only should show the Tories lower. In any case, if you actually apply the margins of errors, most changes are not significant.
One thing to notice in the AR poll is the 20% for "other parties" in Atlantic Canada. Did I miss something there? Was there an independant candidate who announced he would run? The talk of a new party? Because 20% is really high.
Also, the two polls show the Bloc falling slighlty in Quebec, to around 35%. They would still get a lot of seats of course, thanks to the stupid electoral system and the division of the federalist vote, but there could be something there. How low can the Bloc actually go?
So, does it look like we are going in elections? I really don't know. There are talks that the Liberals could use their opposition day, March 21st, to bring the government down (or at least try to) but I find it very unlikely that the three opposition parties would trigger an election one day before the budget. After all, the general population isn't that aware of the recent scandals.
I'll post right after about the second choices and the retention rate of each party, regarding their 2008 voters. Some interesting stuff there as well, from the Ekos poll.
