New HD Poll: 3% Conservative Lead

Harris-Decima has released a new poll today, being reported in the Canadian Press. The poll was taken between August 27 and September 6 and involved just over 2,000 people. No news on the exact number just yet, as we're waiting on the details from Harris-Decima.

One odd quote from Harris-Decima's senior vice-president Jeff Walker: "Walker said a similar result on election day would mean the Liberals would gain only a handful of seats from the Tories in Quebec."

The Liberals are extremely unlikely to win any seats from the Tories. They'll win them from the Bloc.

We often see these kinds of statements from pollsters, from every polling firm. It surprises me how often they make glaringly incorrect statements, like in response from Strategic Counsel's most recent poll, where the pollster said that the 14% NDP result was pretty much the same as the last election (where they had 18%). He then went on to say the NDP needed to be reduced to 10% (!) for the Liberals to make gains.

These are expert pollsters, but they aren't expert political analysts.

Anyway, the national result:

Conservatives - 34%
Liberals - 31%
New Democrats - 15%
Greens - 10%
Bloc Quebecois - 8%

Nothing new here, but still a very close race between the two parties. Certainly not something that would give us an electoral "result that looks to us to be not that different from where it is today". The Liberals gain 5-points, the NDP lose three, and the Conservatives lose two, and that's the 2008 result all over again?

We have partial regionals. Undoubtedly we'll have the rest tomorrow. In British Columbia, the Conservatives are at 37%, the Liberals at 27%, the NDP at 19%, and the Greens at 16%. Good result for the Greens and the Liberals, bad for the NDP.

Ontario:

Liberals - 39%
Conservatives - 34%
New Democrats - 16%
Greens - 10%

Good spread for the Liberals, not-so-bad result for the NDP. The Tories could still take a good swathe of seats with 34%.

Quebec:

Bloc Quebecois - 36%
Liberals - 31%
Conservatives - 16%
New Democrats - 9%
Greens - 6%

Nothing unusual here, a slightly stronger Liberal result than some of the ones we've seen. The Liberals seem to have gotten themselves back to this side of 30%, while the Bloc seems to have gotten itself back to their 2008 electoral support.

Once we have the rest later, I'll calculate the seats from this poll.