{"id":98,"date":"2008-09-10T14:37:46","date_gmt":"2008-09-10T19:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/election08.cusjc.ca\/?p=98"},"modified":"2008-09-10T19:40:45","modified_gmt":"2008-09-11T00:40:45","slug":"tories-on-the-brink-of-majority%e2%80%a6really-on-the-brink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Tories on the brink of majority\u2026really on the brink"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"&quot;Times New Roman&quot;;\" lang=\"EN-US\"><strong>Paul Adams<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">Doing seat projections from polling data can be a bit risky. Polls are estimates of public opinion, even if usually quite accurate ones. Figuring out how these figures will translate into the distribution of seats in our first-past-the-post system is a tricky and imprecise business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">However, pollsters and journalists have spent the last two weeks implicitly making seat projections every time they have spoken of the Conservatives \u201cbeing in majority territory\u201d or \u201con the brink of a majority\u201d. They just never show their work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">So here is what they are talking about. Taking EKOS&#8217; national sample of over 2000 Canadians from Monday and Tuesday, and running them through a model that takes into account both the special arithmetic of our first-past-the-post system, and the parties\u2019 historical patterns of support, when we say the Tories are \u201con the brink\u201d we really mean it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">A majority is 155 seats. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">The model gives the Tories 156 seats, Liberals 82, NDP 37, BQ 33. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><em>Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and Globe and Mail, now a member of Carleton\u2019s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Adams Doing seat projections from polling data can be a bit risky. Polls are estimates of public opinion, even if usually quite accurate ones. Figuring out how these figures will translate into the distribution of seats in our first-past-the-post system is a tricky and imprecise business. However, pollsters and journalists have spent the last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election2008","category-election-2008-campaign-strategy","category-election-2008-media-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}