Alright, let's use the newly published turnout numbers from this morning to estimate the YES and NO side again. with different methods. All methods use some form of polling averages (by age, region, etc). Remember, those are estimates. You could call them educated guesses and I wouldn't be too mad.
Quick note: Elections BC's numbers are the same for December 1st, 2nd and 3rd. So the graph stops at December 1st technically.
1. Using age and region
It has been stable for a long time now. Yes the Lower Mainland and the Island have been catching up after receiving their ballots later (Van Island is ahead actually now) but it doesn't seem to influence the overall shares much. And that is despite the fact that my regressions show the 18-34 are now the only ones voting more than in 2017. The 55+ are now voting less and this is statistically significant. Good news for PR but maybe not by enough.
Remember, these estimates here are the most conservative ones and the most "against PR" I have, mostly because it's a function of age and in BC, the 55+ just represent a large share of voters (and they hate PR).
2. Using age and region but assuming the two are independent from each other
See my previous blog post for details. Similar to the one above but I try to account for age and region at the same time using assumptions.
3. Using the votes in 2017 by party (and using the Research Co. and Angus-Reid polls only with a weight of 25% for the latter as it's older)
The nail biter one! The YES would actually be ahead if I used a 50-50 average with the older Angus-Reid poll. This shows how close it is. At this point, it could come down to the (around) 8000 newly registered voters. Or it could come down to how the BC Conservatives and independent voters side.
If I assume 75% of the newly registered voters will vote YES, then my estimates would be ahead by fewer than 500 votes!!
Conclusion
Still a tough (impossible?) one to call. Some things look good (turnout on Van Island, the fact the ridings with more 18-34 voters are voting more) but it remains that the voting intentions by age makes it hard for PR to win. Yes the regression shows the 18-34 voting more but that might not be enough to beat the NO vote of all the 55+ (who represent a bigger share of the electorate overall).
Technical note: I still find that when the riding received its ballots is a strong determinant of the turnout. This is crazy! Although it might really be capturing more the effect of the random strikes of Canada Post than anything else at this point.
In my estimates that are the most against PR, the YES side trails by 24,000 votes. Elections BC has received 39% of the ballots but processed only 32.6%. This means there still are 209,579 ballots not processed. And more will come until December 7th. All it takes for the YES to win is that that the new ballots are around 55% in favour of PR.
Update:
Update:
Some have asked me to post my regression tables updated with today's numbers. Here there are.
Notice that I'm now using the % for each party in 2017 instead of simply accounting for whether the riding was won by the BC Lib, BC NDP or BC Green. The percentages provide more information but it also make the regions less important (so for instance it's not so much that people on van Island are voting more, it's that ridings with a high percentage of Green voters do; The two are obviously correlated).
