The advance polls

The data is out on the advance polls and the vote is down. Not dramatically across the whole nation, but deeper in some provinces than others.

Here in BC it is down a total of 14%. But once again, not everywhere.

In Victoria the advance vote is only down a tiny amount.

Saanich Gulf Islands it is up a tiny amount.

In Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, it is way down.

Advance polls are a good measure of how strong the ground campaigns are in a riding.

So, given the fact that the Liberals in the Victoria riding is running a weak ground campaign and the NDP is not quite as strong as last time, does this mean the Conservatives have picked up more vote?

As I read the tea leaves in various ridings across the country, the only trend I can make out is that the advance vote is up in the marginal ridings where the Conservatives either just won or just lost the election last time.

One thing I have noted in this election is that all the campaigns are having trouble getting enough volunteers this time. Signs on lawns are way down. In general the ground campaign is the weakest I have ever seen. As far as I can see, the only party that has a moderately strong get out the vote campaign is the Conservatives.

So, who is not getting people out to the advance polls? I am of the opinion that it is the Liberals that are the weakest on getting out the vote. Based on the tea leaves, I am estimating the Conservative GOTV campaign will be worth a net extra 150 000 votes on election day.

The one region where the advance polling went up was in Quebec. The rise seems to be in areas that are strongly ADQ - I have no idea what it means for the election but it is not good for the Liberals.

Based on the advance polls and the nature of this election, I see the voter turn out dropping even further than before. I am expecting only about 14 500 000 votes.

The drop in turn out and the weaker on the ground campaign favours the Conservatives in most of Canada, the NDP in core areas and the Bloc in the non-anglo and non-bleu parts of Quebec.

There is not much to say on this.

The longer version.

The Economist is paying attention to the election

They are also endorsing someone - Stephen Harper. I know that this does not sound surprising, but it is as they do not regularly have editorials on who they endorse in Canadian elections. The first time I know of was in the last election when they did endorse Harper.

The newspaper is read by a lot of the people in senior positions in government and industry, but knowing when it arrives in the mail, people are not going to see it until Wednesday at the earliest.

Here is the article:

Canada's general election

The fear factor

Oct 9th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Why Stephen Harper does not deserve to be dumped

IT IS not easy to be a successful Conservative in Canada. Perhaps it is the effect of living next to the United States. Perhaps it is because the country was founded on the collectivist principles of “peace, order and good government” rather than the individualist “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” of its neighbour. Perhaps it is because the things that Canadians most value about their country are its publicly run health service, its European-style welfare state and its tolerance. All are associated with the Liberals, who have been the natural party of government in Canada for the past century. To cap it all, conservative ideas of deregulation and unfettered free-market capitalism have been brought into disrepute by the financial turmoil south of the border.

So perhaps it is not surprising that the hopes of Stephen Harper, Canada’s Conservative prime minister, of endowing his minority government with a parliamentary majority at a general election on October 14th may end up being dashed. At first his decision to call the election looked shrewd, as the Conservatives raced to a lead of 15 percentage points in the opinion polls. Then the Wall Street panic got going. Canadians began to worry that Mr Harper was not doing enough to protect them. His poll lead has been cut by almost half. Unless he bucks the trend he could even lose power.

That would be unwarranted. It was a surprise when Mr Harper won the last election in January 2006, ending a dozen years of Liberal rule. Few pundits imagined that he would survive longer than a year. That he has governed for 32 months is a tribute to the political skills of an underestimated man. He does not offer a soaring vision of radical change. Canadians have not warmed to him: he comes over as a bloodless control freak. But he is hardworking, and a skilled parliamentary tactician. He governs a rather successful country that needs incremental improvement, not a revolution.

Mr Harper promised Canadians some modest measures. Some of these were sensible. Others, such as the cut in the sales tax, were not. But he got most of them done. He patched up Canada’s relations with the United States, which had deteriorated. His decision to keep Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan was unpopular, but he was careful to ensure that it was backed by leading Liberals. He has increased defence spending, which shows realism in a country that lays claim to a large chunk of the disputed Arctic.

Mr Harper’s political home is in the west, in oil-rich Alberta where they like their politicians in the carnivorous mould of Sarah Palin. In office he has tried to woo eastern Canada, dropping his previous opposition to abortion and gay marriage, and recognising French-speaking Quebec as a “nation within a united Canada”. But his inner oilman has won out when it comes to the environment, an important issue in a country that is both a heavy carbon-emitter and especially vulnerable to climate change. Stéphane Dion, the Liberal leader, bravely proposes a carbon tax, which he claims would be revenue-neutral. Simply to rubbish this as a “crazy” idea that would “screw everybody”, as Mr Harper has done, shows a disappointing lack of leadership, and is grounds enough to deny the Conservatives a majority. In fact another minority Conservative government would not be a bad result for Canada: neither of the main party leaders has done enough to persuade Canadians that they deserve untrammelled power.

The first credit-crunch election

If the voters go further and eject Mr Harper, that, sadly, will not be because they have been convinced by the cerebral Mr Dion’s worthy carbon tax. It will be because the opposition—a gang of four, comprising the socialist New Democrats, the separatist Bloc Québécois and the rising Green Party as well as the Liberals—has succeeded in panicking the voters on the economy. And yet, in a sinking world, Canada is something of a cork. Its well-regulated banks are solid. Growth has slowed but not stopped. The big worry is the fear that an American recession will drag Canada down with it.

Mr Harper says, rightly enough, that his government has taken prudent measures to help Canada weather a storm it cannot duck: he has offered tax cuts and selective aid to help vulnerable manufacturing towns. But it is his seeming non-reaction to what is so far a non-crisis that looks likely to deny him the majority he was seeking, and could even let in the opposition. In what is the first credit-crunch election in a big Western country, Mr Harper’s ejection would set a dispiriting precedent that panic plays better politically than prudence.

The Ballot Box Question

This federal election is going to end in an odd way. Because of the Thanksgiving Day Weekend coming up, tomorrow is the last effective campaigning day. Door knocking and phone calls over this weekend will not go over well. This can not be accident and has to be what the Conservative party had in mind for the election.

Effectively the public is going to have a three day break from the in your face politics before they vote because of the holiday. On Tuesday people will be going to the polls after a weekend with the family or friends.

The media will still be looking for something to cover in the election, but will be devolving to images of politicians and turkeys. Serious analysis will be hard to come by over the weekend and so the pundits will be sniffing at every political turd as if it were a fine wine trying to say anything.

The weekend will be a defacto dead zone for polling - no one is going to get good results if they are calling on this weekend. If the companies are dumb enough to release anything after tomorrow morning, the pollsters will be that fine wine for the pundits.

The weekend is a holiday weekend - people are not watching the news or reading papers as they normally do.

The public is being given three days to think about the election without the noise of the campaign. It is over this weekend that a lot of people will come to terms with what matters to them out of this election, the so called "Ballot Box Question".

The media, public and politicians are going to come into election day blinder than they have been as to the outcome than at any point in a generation of more.

Thanksgiving is a time where a lot more people sit around a table in a larger family group than normal. The dinner is longer, there is more chance for talking and the election will come up in a lot of places. Because more often it is going to families and not friends around that turkey on Sunday and/or Monday, there will be less agreement about politics. Most of us have friends that broadly agree with us about politics (I admit I do not fit that generalization) but come from families where political differences do exist.

Groups of five to fifteen adults will be talking about issues over the weekend. In the context of thankfulness they will be thinking about the economy above all else. This could lead to a lot of people going to the polls on Tuesday thinking about who is going manage the crisis the best. Whether the partisan people like it or not, the person that will inspire the most confidence with economic issues will be Stephen Harper.

Another ballot box question that could come out is "Why bother voting at all?"

There has been a huge attempt by two parties and a number of online groups to make the environment the ballot box question, but as far as I can see that is dead in the water at the moment and likely for several further years.

This very different situation of election timing reinforces to me that I do not have enough data of the right type to be able to have any confidence in a prediction. Though my gut tells me if it is the economy that is the issue people think of, the Conservatives could gain a lot of 30 second Conservatives on Tuesday.

Ben Could Not Come Out to the Airport

There was a rally for Stephen Harper at the Victoria Airport today.

I went along to support Gary, Jack and Troy. It was good to see a lot of friends there, with what is happening in my life with my father in law and the birth of Max, I have been rather out of the picture for many months.


It was your classic political rally.

I did get the chance to shake hands with Laureen Harper and Stephen Harper. Ben could not miss school after having been sick earlier in the week - the late french immersion is not easy - so I asked his question for him of the Prime Minister.

I asked him about children being able to vote and his quick answer, which he needed to do because he had to work through the crowd, was that it is complicated and he asked back "what do we do about so many youth aged 18 to 30 that are not turning out to vote?"

The Jack sign in the last picture is one we are using for in the local Conservative campaign for Jack McClintock, nothing to do with Jack Layton even if the two of them look very similar. I will post their pics side by side and let you see how they both look like senior RCMP officers.

Seat projections

I do not think I am going to make another projection on the seats at this time because I can not find a consistent set of polling numbers that jive over the regions.

Clearly there was some strong shifts against Harper after the leaders debate, but I am still left with the following questions:

Which people are going to vote? We know that only about 60-65% of Canadians are going to vote. The polling companies are not weeding the non voters. They do weed out the undecided, but there it is not clear if they are voters or non voters.

Will Harper being outside of majority territory push him back up?

Will the NDP continue to gain on the Liberals?

Where will all those Green voters go?

I am also looking at the work by Werner Antweiler at UBC and it is making me rethink my whole paradigm with seat projections.

So, I could make a random gut based guess at the moment, but instead I am going to re examine my model and see if there where the trend in the polls is going.

Interesting research from UBC

UBC Reports | Vol. 54 | No. 10 | Oct. 2, 2008

Re-engaging Non-voters Key to Election Victory: UBC Study

By Lorraine Chan

The fight for the elusive swing vote may not be the key to a party’s victory, says a UBC researcher. Data shows that victory rather lies in turning non-voters into voters.

In the first study of its kind, UBC economist Werner Antweiler looks at the voter migration patterns of the three most recent federals elections in Canada and the three most recent provincial elections in B.C.

His findings suggest that the real deal-breakers during a tight electoral race reside within the large pool of non-voters who are “tethered” to a party, but decide to abstain from voting.

“The swing vote alone doesn’t decide elections,” observes Antweiler, an associate professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business.

“In my view, it comes down to giving the people who normally vote for a party a reason why they should come out and vote again for that party,” he says. “What carries much more weight is non-voters turning into voters, and voters turning into non-voters.”

More than eight million eligible voters stayed at home in each of the last three federal elections. In 2000, 2004, and 2006, only about 60 to 64 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballots.

Using sophisticated statistical techniques, Antweiler analyzed aggregate riding-by-riding election data to track the inflow and outflow of voters from each party and from the pool of non-voters. His findings were recently published in the journal Electoral Studies.

Antweiler says previous research shows that Canadian voters tend to exhibit a degree of “tethered partisanship.”

“People’s political choices don’t change much over their lifetime. They would rather abstain than switch support to a less-favoured party. Most voters don’t float and drift; they’re tethered.” To test his theory, Antweiler looked at the 1996, 2001 and 2005 provincial elections in B.C. He found that in 2001, disaffected NDP voters did not massively switch their preferences to other parties, but merely abstained. That year, 124,000 of the people who voted NDP in 1996 stayed home. However, the NDP regained much of its vote in the following provincial election in 2005. About 208,000 voters who sat out on the previous 2001 election turned up to vote, or voted for the first time. The 2001 non-voters who voted in the 2005 provincial election split their preferences roughly 30 per cent and 70 per cent between the B.C. Liberals and the NDP, respectively. “The results indicate that NDP sympathizers who abstained in 2001 returned to their original preference in 2005.”

Compared to the B.C. provincial scene, the federal elections yielded much more complex findings, says Antweiler. Voter migration patterns varied widely from region to region. In addition, the 2004 merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance Party birthed the Conservative Party of Canada.

This “severed” tether forced voters to find new homes, notes Antweiler.

In Ontario, most of the Canadian Alliance voters shifted loyalties to the new Conservative Party, but about 30 per cent of the Progressive Conservative voters in 2000 drifted to the Liberal Party in 2004. This gain for the Liberal Party, however, was offset by 13 per cent of its 2000 voters staying at home in 2004. In Western Canada, the disruption for the new Conservative Party was even more significant, but it mattered less for seats in the House of Commons. About 13 per cent of Canadian Alliance voters simply abstained, “presumably unhappy or uncertain about the direction of the new merged party,” says Antweiler. More dramatically, the base of the Progressive Conservatives collapsed in Western Canada. Only about 36 per cent of those who voted Progressive Conservative in 2000 cast their ballot for the new Conservative Party in 2004; the rest went elsewhere or abstained. Antweiler says the high volatility of the vote in Quebec means that many federal elections are won and lost in this province. His findings show that in 2006, only about 60 per cent of Liberal Party voters in 2004 cast their ballot again for the Liberal Party in 2006, while another 23 per cent withdrew their support by not voting.

In comparison, the Conservative Party gained new support by attracting more than 500,000 votes from the pool of 2004 non-voters and new voters in Quebec.

Antweiler cautions that the relatively large simultaneous gains and losses of voters for the Conservative Party in Quebec also signify the party’s lack of consolidation in this province.

“Given the unsettled state of voter preferences in Quebec, it is more likely than not that Quebec will be the key political battleground during the forthcoming federal election.” For more information about voter migration research, visit: http://strategy.sauder.ubc.ca/antweiler/votermigration

Some Quick Federal Election Observations

First off, I have upgraded my sign, I have left the world of the bag sign and have a three by four foot coroplast one on my fence now. I am curious to see if it last to election day.

Burma shaving today was not too bad because the negative responses were much more muted, but then everyone seemed more muted today. I am supposed to be out there tomorrow am again, but I am not sure if I will be able to if I am feeling sick.

Ben had a chance to ask a question of a politician again, he asked Keith Martin, Liberal MP for Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, if he was in favour of kids being able to vote. Ben said the answer was very clear and to the point - No - though Keith Martin did say he could join the Liberals and help the party win.....

I like the fact Ben and Daniel are bothing taking an interest in the election. I am not telling them what think and make it entirely clear that they need to explain to me who they support and why and if it is one of my friends, why they are supporting him. I do not accept "Because you are supporting him"