Thanks to a bunch of polls confirming the large Liberals' lead (although Ekos yesterday kind of decided to ruin the party), the projections now have the Liberals ahead. Make no mistake though, it's still a race between them and the Conservatives. We'll soon have the final polls of most firms, but if the situation remains like this during the weekend, it's going to be incredibly hard to make a final call on Sunday. Here below are the most up to date projections (sorry, I haven't updated in like 203 days, mostly because I didn't really have new polls to add).
 |
| Vote intentions; Seat projections with 95% confidence intervals; Chances of winning the most seats |
So, why the change? After all, most other models have had the Liberals ahead for a while, some are even giving the Grits enough seats to put them relatively close to a majority. Well, first of all, I add Nanos and Ekos every three days (one Nanos today, Ekos later this afternoon). So while the narrative can be driven by three successive Nanos polls showing a 6 points lead for the Liberals, my numbers can remain unchanged. Also, some riding adjustments were made based on the most recent riding polls. In particular, the Environics ones showed big gains for the Liberals in Ontario.
Speaking of Ontario, some polls now have the Liberals with a 20-points lead! Something definitely happened in this province last week. Not gonna try to guess what, but the impact is that Justin Trudeau can now win the seats he needs there. Once again, nothing is guaranteed and the recent trend according to Nanos (or Ekos) is for the race to become tighter. I really, strongly disagree with anyone calling this race a sure Liberal win at this point. The Liberals might be peeking at the right time, they haven't won a minority just yet. A slight underestimation of the Tories in Ontario for instance and Harper at least gets first crack at forming the next government.
In Quebec, the NDP is now second for the first time in my average, which coincides with Nanos putting them behind the Liberals for the first time today. On the other hand, Ekos yesterday had them comfortably ahead (but I'll add a new Ekos poll today). Speaking of which, I made some minor tweaks because I had the model showing the Bloc with a 95% interval of 1-12, yet only 1 seat in average. In other words, the Bloc was losing almost every single close race he was involved in with the NDP. The adjustments are minor but were necessary to reflect the fact the NDP is far from being as dominant as it used to be. Specifically, Thomas Mulcair now "only" has a 80% of winning the most seats in la Belle Province, compared to 20% for the Liberals.
BC remains the only true 3-way race in the country and I think it's becoming very likely that we'll have to wait for this province before calling this election. I guess some media won't be happy or simply won't care and will still call it with only 3 ballots from Ontario.
Notice that the Liberals could thus win the Atlantic (all four provinces), Quebec (in votes, not seats), Ontario and BC. Quite a contrast to only 2 weeks ago when Justin Trudeau was only dominating the Atlantic. And my simulations now show a remote possibility for a Liberal majority.
I'll try to update frequently between now and Monday morning. I'm sure we'll get a lot of polls from every major pollster. It's gonna be very interesting in particular to see if Abacus and Angus Reid also show the Liberals ahead. And if Ekos keeps showing a tighter race than the other pollsters.
