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When I started this site in October 2008, it was out of my admiration for the work that was being done by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight during that year's U.S. presidential election. His site sparked a passion for political polling, election forecasts and psephology in me — and it has now become my full-time work.
After developing this site from amateurish to slightly-less-amateurish, I was lucky enough to secure regular freelance work with The Globe and Mail and The Hill Times in 2010 and The Huffington Post Canada in 2011, as well as election-related work with some French-language media outlets.
Things changed in 2014 when I begin working with the CBC in the run-up to the 2015 federal election. Since the beginning of that campaign I've been working out of the newsroom with the Parliamentary Bureau in Ottawa.
It's been a life-changing move, as well as an honour and an inspiration to work with such a talented and professional group of journalists every day.
Now, regular readers might have noticed that the activity on this site has died down in recent months. My work with the CBC has curtailed the time I've been able to invest in this website.
But now that I have accepted a full-time position with the Parliamentary Bureau, the time has come to cease operations of this site.
I hope readers will continue following my work with the CBC. In addition to your local CBC radio and television stations and CBC News Network, here is where you can find me:
ThreeHundredEight.com will be kept online and accessible as an archive and a reference, but it will no longer be updated.
I owe a debt of gratitude to my readers over the last nine years. Thank you for visiting ThreeHundredEight.com, for giving me your support and encouragement, for keeping me accountable and always striving to get better.
I've loved this site, but it is now time to move on to the next chapter. I'm excited about it.
The five federal byelections being held on Monday are not expected to be nail-biters. They are taking place in traditionally safe seats for the incumbent Conservatives and Liberals.
But there are still some things to watch for when the votes are counted.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
The byelections are being held to fill the seats vacated by Stéphane Dion (Saint-Laurent), Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa–Vanier), John McCallum (Markham–Thornhill), Jason Kenney (Calgary Midnapore) and Stephen Harper (Calgary Heritage).
In the 2015 election, the closest contest of these (Markham–Thornhill) was still decided by a margin of 23 points — so a change in the seat count is not expected.
But there are a few questions that the byelections can help answer. Will the Liberals be hurt by the controversies surrounding the nomination processes in Markham–Thornhill and Saint-Laurent? Has the Conservative leadership race helped attract new support to the party, or has it put voters off? And will the NDP do better than the last byelection that was held, when the party finished with just one per cent of the vote?
I'm joined by the National Post's David Akin to discuss.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
More than two-thirds of the Conservative caucus has gotten behind one of the 14 candidates for the party's top job. Most are supporting either Erin O'Toole or Andrew Scheer — and O'Toole has now surpassed Scheer as the favourite of Conservatives in the House of Commons, even luring two of Scheer's former backers to his side.
But polls and other metrics suggest Maxime Bernier or Kevin O'Leary are leading the pack. If either of them wins, they could find themselves at the head of a Conservative caucus that overwhelmingly preferred someone else.
You can read the rest of this article here.
New Democrats vying for their party's leadership will gather in Montreal on Sunday for a debate focused exclusively on issues relating to Canada's youth — a demographic that swung in large numbers from the NDP to the Liberals in the 2015 federal election.
It'll include the four candidates currently in the running for the party leadership: Ontario MP Charlie Angus, Manitoba MP Niki Ashton, Quebec MP Guy Caron and B.C. MP Peter Julian.
You can read the rest of this article here.
In the budget presented by Finance Minister Bill Morneau on Wednesday, the Liberal government laid out its plans for the future of Canada's economy, with a focus on skills training and innovation.
But some of those plans extend to well after the 2019 federal election. The calculations the Liberals have baked into the budget could be at the whim of what happens in the interim, including changes in the world economy and the unpredictability of Donald Trump's presidency.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
So how does the budget position the Liberals politically? Does it give them something to sell to voters between now and 2019? Will the government's plan to stay in deficit well into the next decade hamstring the Liberals and give the opposition parties a vulnerability to exploit?
To break down the politics of Budget 2017, I'm joined by the CBC's David Cochrane, Catherine Cullen and Susan Lunn.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
Kellie Leitch is falling back and Kevin O'Leary is moving forward in their bids to lead the Conservative Party, according to the latest update to the Conservative Leadership Index.
Fellow contenders Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole also improved their standings in the index thanks to some key political endorsements.
The index is a composite of four leadership race metrics (endorsements, contributors, fundraising and polls) that has been developed to help gauge the state of the 14-candidate race to replace Stephen Harper as the party's permanent leader.
You can read the rest of this article here.
When New Democrats last voted to select a new leader in 2012, most of the party's eligible voting members were in British Columbia and Ontario. An analysis of NDP donors suggests these two provinces will again carry the most weight in this year's leadership vote, but that Quebec and Alberta might be more important than they were five years ago.
The party did not provide a breakdown of its current membership, but looking at the regional distribution of NDP donors provides clues to how the profile of that membership might have changed since 2012 — and what that might mean for the four candidates currently in the running.
You can read the rest of this article here.
The four candidates for the NDP leadership debated for the first time on Sunday. The event kicked off a race that has been dormant for nearly a year. It won't come to a conclusion until October, when New Democrats decide who should replace Tom Mulcair as their leader.
The debate was a collegial affair. But did it provide any clues as to how this campaign might play out for the next seven months?
Unlike the Conservative leadership race, which has 14 candidates in the running, so far the NDP has a more manageable group to showcase: MPs Charlie Angus, Niki Ashton, Guy Caron and Peter Julian.
But that group may grow soon.
To help navigate the NDP leadership campaign, I'm joined again by NDP insiders Sally Housser of Navigator and Robin MacLachlan of Summa Strategies.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
The provincial election in British Columbia is now less than two months away. And that means the polls are back.
After the failure of the polls in the 2013 vote, British Columbians might be forgiven for looking at them with skepticism. But the performance of the polls since 2013 suggests there is no reason to assume they are unreliable or that British Columbians are somehow unpollable.
Nevertheless, there is justification for looking at the latest numbers with a fair bit of caution.
You can read the rest of this article here.
If Jason Kenney is named the next leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives on March 18, it could mark the end of the once dominant Alberta PCs — and the beginning of a campaign that could result in a single Alberta Conservative Party taking on the governing New Democrats in 2019.
But while the chances of Kenney succeeding in achieving his short-term goal look good, his longer term aim of merging the PCs with Wildrose, a party led by Brian Jean, the leader of the Official Opposition in the Alberta legislature, will not be so simple.
To help break down the state of Alberta politics and what to expect in the coming months, I'm joined by Alberta pollster Janet Brown and Graham Thomson, columnist for the Edmonton Journal.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
With less than two months to go before voting begins for the Conservative Party leadership, Maxime Bernier and Kevin O'Leary are the front-runners, according to an analysis of endorsement, fundraising and polling data.
Bernier narrowly leads O'Leary based on a composite of four metrics (endorsements, fundraising, contributors and polls) that estimates how much support each candidate would likely have on the first ballot if the leadership vote were held today — call it the Conservative Leadership Index.
You can read the rest of this article here.
Support for Justin Trudeau's Liberals has sharply declined over the last three months, dropping to its lowest levels since the last federal election.
The party has taken a hit in the polls in every region of the country, boosting both the Conservatives and New Democrats as a result. But despite the governing party's worsening fortunes, the Liberals still have as much support today as they did when they secured a majority government in October 2015.
You can read the rest of this article here.
Kevin O'Leary was not one of the 13 candidates participating in the Conservative Party's leadership debate in Edmonton Tuesday, due to what he called its "bad format."
Those who did participate, struggled to be noticed on the cluttered stage — and with less than three months to go before the ballots are counted, candidates need to get noticed.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
O'Leary's decision to avoid the debate might have been the quintessential front runner's move, but O'Leary is far from being a runaway favourite for the leadership. Maxime Bernier is also widely seen to be in a strong position, while candidates such as Andrew Scheer, Lisa Raitt, Kellie Leitch, Erin O'Toole and Michael Chong are trying to secure second choice support that could keep them in the running.
Calls for the other candidates in the race to step aside are beginning to grow.
But will they be heeded?
To help lay out where things stand at this point in the race, I'm joined again by Conservative insiders Chad Rogers of Crestview Strategy and Tim Powers of Summa Strategies.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
The Conservative leadership debates have not featured any of the mythical knockout punches that are supposed to win elections, but the subtle (and not so subtle) manoeuvring that will help decide the outcome has been on full display — most recently during Tuesday night's event in Edmonton.
And that includes Kevin O'Leary's decision to skip it.
Since the first official debate in Saskatoon on Nov. 9, the candidates have been up against each other 11 times. The party will hold one more official debate, and more local events are likely to be organized.
You can read the rest of this article here.
The Conservatives and New Democrats have been in the midst of leadership contests for months, but the Bloc Québécois, which kicked off its leadership race at the beginning of February, will reach the finish-line first, on April 22.
Calling it a race, though, might be generous — because it is setting up to be a coronation.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
The Bloc has been without a permanent leader since Gilles Duceppe resigned on election night in 2015. There are two candidates officially in the running: Félix Pinel, who ran as a candidate for the party in the last election, and Martine Ouellet, an MNA sitting in Quebec's National Assembly.
Ouellet, who twice ran unsuccessfully for the leadership of the provincial Parti Québécois, left the PQ caucus after making her candidacy official and is sitting as an independent. If she wins the vote — she has the support of most of the Bloc's 10-member caucus — she intends to continue sitting as an MNA in Quebec City until the province holds its next election in October 2018.
Will Ouellet face any serious obstacles in her run for the Bloc Québécois leadership, or is her victory all but assured? How would Ouellet balance being a federal party leader and a provincial legislator at the same time?
And after two elections in which the once dominant Bloc has seen its support slide to less than 20 per cent in the province, does the party still have relevance in Quebec's federal political scene — or a future, with support for sovereignty at new lows?
To discuss the race and the future of the Bloc, I'm joined by Radio-Canada's Philippe-Vincent Foisy and Le Devoir's Marie Vastel.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
If Kevin O'Leary does not win the Conservative leadership race in May, polls suggest most Canadians will have just one question after someone else is announced as the party's next leader.
Who?
Abacus Data recently polled Canadians on their views of some of the leading candidates for the party's top job. It found that a majority of Canadians either had no strong opinion or no opinion at all about Maxime Bernier, Lisa Raitt, Kellie Leitch and Andrew Scheer.
You can read the rest of this article here.
Members of Parliament might feel pressure to toe the party line and maintain party unity in the House of Commons. But a few MPs have stood out for their willingness to rise and vote "Yea" when the rest of their colleagues vote "Nay."
Still, this breaking of the ranks is rare: even the biggest rebel in Parliament votes along party lines 87 per cent of the time.
You can read the rest of this article here.
With 14 candidates in the running, more than a year of campaigning and over a dozen debates to be held before the votes are finally counted on May 27, the Conservative leadership campaign poses unique challenges to journalists.
How do we balance coverage when there are so many candidates vying for attention? Which events are the pivotal ones in the race? And how do we gauge how the actual decision makers — expected to be no more than 150,000 Conservative party members that are eligible to vote — plan to cast their ballots?
The CBC's Catherine Cullen, who has been covering the leadership race since its beginning, joins me to discuss these challenges and what she is hearing and seeing behind the scenes on the campaign trail.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
Maxime Bernier's donor base remains the broadest and deepest among the contestants for the Conservative Party leadership, according to an analysis of fundraising data from the fourth quarter of 2016 — before Kevin O'Leary threw his hat into the ring.
But while the data provides no clue of O'Leary's impact, it does suggest that none of the other candidates have the diversified regional backing needed to win a vote that will give equal weight to each part of the country.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Conservative leadership contestants turned on Kevin O'Leary in a testy debate on the West Island of Montreal, questioning his conservatism and claiming the businessman and television personality has no plan to back up his rhetoric.
But O'Leary, participating in his second debate after attending one in Halifax earlier this month, did not strike back at his rivals, focusing instead on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the need to grow the Conservative Party base.
You can read the rest of this article here.
With the West leading the country in population growth and Atlantic Canada stagnating, the Conservatives continue to have the most to gain from the demographic trends revealed in the latest census release from Statistics Canada.
And while the numbers are a mixed bag for the governing Liberals, the changing population figures in Canada's 338 ridings point to potential difficulties for the NDP.
The electoral map won't be redrawn until after the next census in 2021, so at least one more election will be decided using the current boundaries. But it's better for a party's future to be on the right side of the demographic trends.
You can read the rest of this article here.
During the last campaign and in the months that followed, the Liberals pledged that the 2015 election would be the last fought under the first-past-the-post electoral system.
That promise no longer stands. So what happened?
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
After more than a year of speculation, debate, committee hearings, town halls and an online survey that was roundly panned by critics, the Liberals decided to abandon their promise to change the way Canadians vote.
What was behind the decision to renege on that campaign promise? Did electoral reform ever stand a chance of succeeding?
To break it down one last time, I'm joined by the CBC's Aaron Wherry and the Ottawa Citizen's Kady O'Malley.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
The Conservative leadership race will be decided by a preferential ballot, so the candidate with the broadest support and widest acceptability stands the best chance of winning. An analysis of fundraising data in the campaign suggests Maxime Bernier shares the most contributors with other candidates, giving him a potentially decisive edge.
But Bernier's advantage might have been disrupted by the entry of Kevin O'Leary into the race in January.
You can read the rest of this article here.
Kevin O'Leary is the favourite for the Conservative leadership, says one poll. Only he can defeat Justin Trudeau, says another. A majority of Canadians aren't familiar with most of the 14 contestants in the running, according to a third.
But do these polls tell us much about who will actually win the Conservative leadership race?
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
While most leadership race polling takes all Canadians or supporters of a party as its sample, in the end the only people who will cast a ballot in the upcoming Conservative and NDP leadership votes are party members.
A small and dwindling portion of the population, members are difficult for pollsters to find — so the potential for pollsters to gauge a leadership race correctly is limited.
And it isn't much easier for those in the midst of a leadership campaign.
To discuss the challenges of polling a leadership race, as well as the role of the media in reporting on these polls, I'm joined by Paul Adams, associate professor of journalism at Carleton University and David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
The Liberal Party raised the most money from contributors in the fourth quarter of 2016, though the funds raised by both the Conservative Party and the candidates vying for that party's leadership combined for more donor dollars, according to data published Tuesday by Elections Canada.
And among those Conservative leadership candidates, Maxime Bernier topped the list for the second consecutive quarter, increasing his total money raised to over $1 million.
You can read the rest of this article here.
"Answer the question, Pam."
It happens rarely, but sometimes the Hansard official transcript records the content of a heckle hurled across the aisle of the House of Commons during question period — as it did on Dec. 6, when Conservative MP Garnett Genuis was displeased with the response he was getting from Pamela Goldsmith-Jones over on the government benches.
"No, no, that's all talk. You're not doing it," NDP MP David Christopherson said on Dec. 13 in response to Navdeep Bains, the minister of innovation, science and economic development.
You can read the rest of this article here.
After taking questions directly from Canadians in town halls across the country for two weeks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returns to Parliament Hill next week to face opposition questions in the House of Commons.
To some, the town halls seem to be a better way of holding the prime minister to account than the daily theatre of question period. So does what happens in the House of Commons — unwatched debates, pre-determined votes, unanswered questions and all the heckling — matter?
Peter Milliken was the Speaker of the House of Commons from 2001 to 2011. He joins me to discuss the importance of what happens in Canada's Parliament, the role of the Speaker and how decorum in the House might be improved by the current Speaker, Geoff Regan.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
Justin Trudeau's approval ratings have dropped to their lowest level since he became prime minister, according to a new poll. But an analysis of the popularity of his predecessors suggests Trudeau's sliding numbers are typical of a prime minister roughly 15 months after taking office.
The survey, published by Forum Research for the Toronto Star, found Trudeau's approval rating sitting at 48 per cent, down three points since December and 10 points since November, with his disapproval rating increasing to 42 from 32 per cent two months ago.
Those are the worst numbers Forum — or any other pollster — has registered for Trudeau since he became prime minister.
You can read the rest of this article here.
Justin Trudeau and his ministers will gather this week for a cabinet retreat in Calgary, site of a Liberal breakthrough in the last election that will soon be put to the test in a pair of byelections.
The Liberals won two seats in Calgary in 2015 — the party's first victories in the city in almost 50 years — and Trudeau's team will look to take advantage of its time there on Monday and Tuesday to build on that progress.
You can read the rest of this article here.
Can a candidate for the Conservative leadership win the party's top job and become prime minister without speaking French well enough to order a plate of poutine in a brasserie?
Kevin O'Leary hopes so — and the poor performances in Tuesday's French-language debate suggest a few of his leadership rivals do, too.
Bilingualism isn't a requirement to win either office. But demographics, the electoral map and the party's history in Quebec suggest it is an enormous, and potentially decisive, advantage.
You can read the rest of this article here.
The Conservative leadership campaign was shaken up on Wednesday when businessman and reality television personality Kevin O'Leary finally joined the race — just in time to miss Tuesday's French-language debate.
What impact will his candidacy have on a campaign in which none of the 13 other contestants have taken the mantle of the front runner?
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
O'Leary faces many challenges. Name recognition, however, is not one of them — unlike some of his rivals. But O'Leary speaks little French and has just two months to sign up new members, while some of the other contestants, such as Maxime Bernier and Kellie Leitch, have already been at it for the better part of a year.
His lack of French was the reason he opted out of joining the campaign before the French-language debate. But apart from demonstrating the questionable linguistic skills of some of the contestants who participated, did the debate change the dynamics of the campaign in Quebec and outside of it?
To explain the significance of O'Leary's entry into the race, Conservative insiders Tim Powers of Summa Strategies and Chad Rogers of Crestview Strategy are back on this week's episode of the Pollcast.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
The third debate of the Conservative leadership campaign held in Quebec City on Tuesday, the only official debate to be held entirely in French, featured some sharp exchanges between candidates, with much of the fire being directed at Quebec MP Maxime Bernier.
The debate also proved to be a serious challenge to the French-language skills of some of the 13 contestants taking part.
The crowd was clearly partial to the two local candidates — the loudest applause came when Bernier and Steven Blaney were introduced, while polite applause greeted the 11 other non-Quebec contestants.
You can read the rest of this article here.
In his bid for the Conservative Party leadership, Andrew Scheer has the bulk of endorsements from current and former politicians.
But because of the rules of the campaign, the contest will be decided in favour of the candidate who can garner the broadest base of support nationwide. Seen through that lens, Scheer's endorsement advantage over Erin O'Toole, Maxime Bernier and Lisa Raitt narrows.
Scheer has 58 endorsements from current and former politicians at either the federal or provincial level. O'Toole has 23, followed by Bernier with 16 and Raitt with 13.
You can read the rest of this article here.
This week's cabinet shuffle signals the Liberal government's reaction to the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump as the new U.S. president. But will it also mean a change in direction on the troubled electoral reform file?
Maryam Monsef, the beleaguered minister of democratic institutions, was shuffled out of her portfolio to become the new minister of status of women. Her replacement is Karina Gould, the former parliamentary secretary to the minister of international development.
Joining me to discuss what the shuffle means for the future of electoral reform is the CBC's Aaron Wherry.
Note: I mentioned at the end of the episode that we'd have a regular episode later this week. Unfortunately, we had a scheduling issue with our planned guest and we weren't able to cobble together a show in time. So, this will stand as this week's episode!
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
A newly published poll commissioned by the government suggests Canadians aren't as keen on investing in the high-tech "new economy" as the Liberals and have mixed views on increasing immigration.
The survey, conducted last summer, found most Canadians want the government to focus infrastructure spending on "traditional" projects like public transit.
It also found many Canadians were concerned terrorism was more likely to increase than decrease, with some blaming that on higher levels of immigration and a perceived lack of screening of refugees.
You can read the rest of this article here.
The campaign to name the next leader of the New Democratic Party will be markedly different from the ongoing Conservative leadership race — and not only because the list of candidates for the job is expected to be much shorter.
Thanks to the rules of the NDP leadership vote, the winner will not necessarily need the same broad regional backing that is key to winning the Conservative title.
And whereas the final suspense in the Conservative race will only come at its end on May 27, the NDP campaign will finish in a flurry of activity as the results are announced, round by round, through October.
You can read the rest of this article here.
With a federal government willing to meet with premiers and provincial and territorial ministers on a regular basis, federal-provincial relations are likely to continue to loom large while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in office.
Elections will be held in two provinces in 2017 as British Columbians and Nova Scotians head to the polls. And while no provincewide votes will be held in Alberta and Ontario, the premiers of these provinces will nevertheless have difficult political obstacles to tackle this year.
Though a third referendum on Quebec's sovereignty is very unlikely for the foreseeable future, a change of venue for one politician could bring that debate back to Ottawa.
With that in mind, here are five provincial politicians to watch in 2017.
You can read the rest of this article here.
Both the Conservatives and New Democrats will choose new leaders in 2017, but the Liberals will also have some important decisions to make, including how to handle the prime minister's ongoing fundraising controversy and whether to move forward with electoral reform.
Here are five federal politicians to watch this year.
You can read the rest of this article here.
