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13th
SEP

Majority/minority watch

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

The excellent Democratic Space website, which will launch its ’08 election site tomorrow, already has a set of seat projections up based on a poll of polls from the first half of the week. They give the Tories 146, Liberals 92, NDP 30, BQ 38, Others 2, and Greens a goose egg. A majority is 155.

Of course, the confusing thing is that since mid-week, one well-publicized poll from Harris/Decima suggested the Tories have been trending upward, while the EKOS poll, also released yesterday, had the trend going the other way.

As more polls are published in the coming days, which trend, if either, is correct should become more certain. So-called “rolling polls” blend results for several days, so if there is a trend, it takes a few days to become evident.

Every pollster will defend his or her own numbers as being correct. From a journalistic perspective, it is a good idea to understand something about sample size, methodology, and so on in order to evaluate competing claims. It is also a good idea, when the information seems to be conflicting, to reserve judgment, rather than throw great weight to one poll or another — even when, as sometimes happens, the storyline of one poll is much more interesting than the storyline of another.  

But from the Conservative perspective, as long as the question of majority or minority continues to be a matter of media speculation, it is not a good thing. In the last election, true, the Tories apparently benefitted a little from a “bandwagon” effect in Quebec as their numbers rose and they started to look viable there. However, there is an even more well-established pattern of at least some voters in English Canada pulling back from the Tories when they think they are closing in on a majority. Judging from the Bloc’s campaign, it seems they think that some Quebec voters may be susceptible to the same reflex this time.

P.S. Also take a look at Calgary Grit who explains how he does his “probabalistic” seat projections. 

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and the Globe and Mail, and is now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty, and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.