I've decided to update the general projections for the week-end, since we got new polls from Ekos, Nanos and Ipsos. There ar a lot of discrepancies between the polls, especially with Nanos. The last daily update from them puts the NDP at... 8% in Ontario! My guess is it has to do with the methodology. Nanos asks a slighlty different question than the other pollsters. They ask the first two choices and that might mix up some Liberals and NDP voters. I'm saying that cause in the same poll, Nanos has the Liberals first in Ontario. They are definitely the only one with the Liberals so high and the NDP so low. Fortunately, it's only one poll and the weird results are thus washed out in the average. And since the latest Ipsos poll has the Tories higher than the other polls, it kind of cancels out these results.By the way, speaking of Nanos, I'll now use new numbers from them every three days only. It makes sense since they add 400 observations (and drop 400) every day. Thus, they have one new real poll every three days.
So, the Conservatives are down a little bit. We are talking of 2-3 seats but there is a trend since the beginning of the campaign, when the Tories where at 155+ seats. No reason to panic for them though, as the debates are ahead of them. And anyway, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't really want to already be at 160 seats. The syndrome of "too high too soon". And even though the lead is less important Ontario, the fact is that the Tories are projected at 41%, 2-points on top of the 2008 results. Do not underestimate the fact the Tories have a consistent lead in this province, as it wasn't the case during the 2008 campaign for instance.
For the Liberals, while they can be happy to have increased a little bit, they are still around the results of Stephane Dion. I'm always impressed by the coverage of the medias and the new standard for the Liberals. It nows seems that running a campaign such that the LPC stands at 27% and is projected to win 78 seats is good enough... Even though it was enough to have Stephane Dion pushed away. When you think that only 7 years ago, we usually considered this aprty as the Natural Governing Party of Canada, you can see we'e come a long way.
The NDP is doing really well, except in Nanos. But in any other polls, they stand firmly around 18-19% and they are really high in Quebec. Of course, the big increase in la Belle Province would only translate into 2-3 seats, but there is the symbol of being 3rd or even 2nd in this province. And the party who seems to suffer from this is definitely the Bloc.
