Quickly on the Mustel numbers

Mustel is in with their poll of BC

My overarching comments are:

1) The results are in the realm of possible

2) The results are consistent with past results from Mustel

and that is about it.

So the headline numbers have the Liberals at 52% and the NDP at 35%

They had a sample of 483 with 21% undecided.

Once again I have a problem here, they seem to be saying that 79% of the people answering the poll expressed an opinion as a decided voter. That it much higher than the 62% that are likely to actually vote in this election. This is huge margin of error in the poll because a lot of people are telling the pollsters untruths, this time around about one in six people that answered obliviously lied.

The sample since of 483 gives you a much broader curve. If we pull out the 21% of undecided and accept that the other 79% will be voting, even the liars, that gives us a sample size of 382 to work with and a margin of error that is just about +-5% at the 95% confidence level. The results for the NDP and the Liberals are as likely to be 2-3 points higher or lower than the number reported in the poll.

I tend to believe that the NDP is reasonably correct at 35% to 37% level. Nothing out there is telling me that the NDP support has risen and the nature of the election ahead of us, knowing what we know now, the NDP is not going to gain ground. The NDP's only hope is for something to happen that no one is expecting and changes the politcal landscape - say someone in office fathered a love child with an aide. Actually I do not think that sort of thing would move the polls. It would have to be something criminal related to office to make a difference.

The Mustel Liberal numbers look high to me and I suspect their support is closer to 47%, though that stretches the margin of error curve of the Mustel poll. If any poll has the space for 'flexibility' it is the Mustel one.

The Greens seem to be in the range of 13% in most of the polls. I suspect they will hold more of their vote this time as the NDP has decided to be become the brown party for the election and no one really can bring themselves to believe that Gordon Campbell is the political leader on the environment in North America.

I see there being 3-4% of the vote going to third parties, mostly the Conservatives.

Quick and dirty:

• Liberals - 63
• NDP - 21
• Ind - 1

Greens will still not be realistically close to winning any seats. They will likely have lot more fourth place finishes behind the Conservatives this time around.