2015 Federal Election Link Round-up, Week 3

With the trial continuing to unfold in Ottawa, one might be forgiven for forgetting there is a national campaign happening! But the pollsters have started to weigh-in, so we're in it now.

Friday, August 21, 2015

- My analysis of the Duffy polls and the latest Poll Tracker update.

- The riding projections have now been updated to align with the latest Poll Tracker.

- I spoke on Maritime Noon about the latest Duffy polls.

- The Poll Tracker has been updated with the new Forum poll. Boosts the NDP in the seat count, the Liberals in the vote.

- With all the talk about kids lately on the parties' campaigns, I took a detailed look at what parents are thinking of the race.

- A couple polls from Abacus Data and Angus Reid on the Duffy trail. Potentially bad news for the Conservatives.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

- Some interesting riding polls conducted by Environics for LeadNow. I'm not sure how to handle them, since they are from an interest group. At this stage of the campaign, though, it is not too important to take riding polls into account. If these are still coming out in October, then I'll have some serious thinking to do. The vast majority of them line-up with the projection pretty closely.

- A CROP poll with some surprising results makes waves in Quebec. No, this isn't a rerun from 2011. Full regionals are here.

- I was on Power and Politics last night, talking about the latest numbers.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

- Discussion sur le sujet des sondages: Format libre, Radio-Canada à Moncton (37:30)

- Exclusive, original content alert! I wrote a post here on ThreeHundredEight about the latest Saskatchewan poll, with regional breakdowns.

- To discuss the findings of his latest poll, Abacus Data CEO David Coletto joined me on the Pollcast. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes so you don't miss an episode - we're currently recording two per week!

- Here's my deeper analysis of the state of the polls.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

- The riding projections are now up-to-date with the Poll Tracker.

- Two updates today! The Poll Tracker has been updated again, now with the just-released Abacus Data poll. It has a heavy weighting because, when it comes down to it, the data is the only new data since the Léger poll that was out of the field on August 12 (almost a week ago). And look out for the new Pollcast episode coming soon - David Coletto of Abacus will be joining me to talk about his latest numbers.

- The Poll Tracker has been updated with the newest Nanos poll. These four-week polls pose a bit of a problem for the weighting model. But to let you know how I am handling them, I am treating each Nanos poll as if it is a new poll with 1/4 of the total sample. So, from the model's perspective, it is as if Nanos was releasing a weekly poll of 250 people.

- A few new polls were out today. Nanos has its weekly tracking out, though again we're still talking about a poll that includes almost two weeks' worth of pre-writ information. Forum has a poll for Spadina-Fort York, showing Olivia Chow leading Adam Vaughan by a wide margin. It matches the current projection almost perfectly, which is a good sign that the new by-election methodology is on the right track. And finally, a big-sample poll for Saskatchewan showing a close race between the Conservatives and the NDP.

Monday, August 17, 2015

- I looked in detail at the race in Quebec, thanks to the regional breakdowns of Léger's new poll.

- The riding projections have been updated to match the latest numbers from the Poll Tracker.

- The Poll Tracker has been updated, incorporating the latest numbers from the Léger poll. The Conservatives have taken a hit.

- This latest update also includes a change in how by-elections are handled. After doing some testing, I have settled on a better method than one that relied entirely on the results of the by-election, where the polls were in that region at the time, and how things have swung since then. That is still a consideration, but now the previous general election is also taken into account. The weighting applied to the swing from the general and the by-election is now determined by the turnout in each. One immediate impact of this change is that the Greens' chances in Victoria and the old Calgary Centre riding have been reduced.

- On The House, we discussed battleground Saskatchewan. That shows how weird this campaign is - Saskatchewan is a battleground!