ORANGE CRUSH: ARE JACK LAYTON AND THE NDP REDRAWING THE BOUNDARIES OF CANADA’S POLITICAL LANDSCAPE? - April 25, 2011
[Ottawa – April 25, 2011] – After several years in a political rut characterized by trench warfare between the Conservatives and the Liberals, Jack Layton and his NDP party appear poised to reshape Canada’s political landscape. With all the necessary provisos and caveats about weekends and how things can still change, we are reporting the results of over 3,000 cases collected from Friday to Sunday which suggest an astonishing shift in the voter landscape from the outset of this campaign. While the Conservatives are still hanging on to a fairly stable (if somewhat diminished) 33.7 front runner position, the NDP wave which has continued in Quebec is now gaining a strong foothold throughout English Canada. The NDP stands at 28.0 points nationally and they are seeing important gains in virtually all parts of the country. Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals are stuck at 23.7 points but are still in the game in Ontario.
These results, if they were to hold, would produce a profound transformation in the Canadian political firmament, tantamount and arguably more far reaching than the Reform explosion in 1993. With the current splits, these levels of support would produce 131 Conservative seats but the NDP would have 100 seats while the Liberals would hold 62. Together, the NDP and Liberal Party would have a majority and 31 more seats than the Conservatives, as well as nearly 20 more points in popular vote. It is hard to imagine how these totals would not produce the once unimaginable outcome of a Jack Layton led coalition government deposing Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. Unless of course, Stephen Harper could convince Michael Ignatieff that the Conservatives were more appropriate political bedfellows for the Liberals. The potential political machinations to this scenario are difficult to calculate. Couple with that we still have a very fluid electorate which may well not have caught up to the implications of its current voting intentions. These results set the table for a dramatic and still unclear conclusion to Campaign 41.
We will be offering more interpretation and analysis tomorrow, as well as another 1,000 cases and a fresh 3-day roll of some 3,000 cases. Perhaps the country was in some form of mood disorder based on too much Easter chocolate, but it is hard to overstate the improbability of the current results given the received wisdom at the outset of this campaign. The NDP have experienced an unperfected doubling of their poll support from 14 to 28 points since the writ was dropped. They now have a large lead in Quebec and are poised to gain the lion’s share of the 75 seats there (up from their current single seat). They also now lead in the Atlantic and are within the margin of error of the lead in British Colombia. Their growth has come from a plummeting Bloc Quebecois but they have also benefited from a swoon in Green support. They are now cutting into Liberal support and possibly even some Conservative support in British Colombia. Evidence suggests that the NDP vote is actually firming up and they continue to hold a sizable advantage on second choice. They may not have reached the ceiling of this JackQuake which is shaking the country.
It is important to remember that these numbers are a reflection of what would happen if an election were held today (not necessarily May 2nd). There’s still lots of potential flux in an electorate who have already demonstrated some unexpected shifts.
Click here for the full report: full_report_april_25_2011
April 25th, 2011 at 6:17 pm
I am a liberal, and rather saddened at the turn of events in the campaign for my political party, especially as I think it is the most balanced and with the best policies for average Canadians. Michael Ignatieff would make the best Prime Minister.
I also never liked Jack Layton, and don’t agree with all the personal praise (in his leadership index and popularity).
Having said that, the NDP as government especially in a coalition with Liberals is VASTLY preferable to me than a majority government by Stephen Harper.
So if you poll projections are accurate, there is glad political tidings from my saddened outlook.
In fact NDP government is preferable to any government run by Stephen Harper.
So I am not without hope that in the circumstances, a Liberal resurgence high enough to make a difference being likely, your poll today applies to May 2nd.
An NDP coalition government run by Jack Layton. Who would think of it? Happy to think of all those offensive military officials and big-wig corporations reactions to such an outcome!
April 25th, 2011 at 7:46 pm
All those on the Left must realize now that it’s a wave not a mere uptick. People from coast to coast are choosing the NDP to defeat Stephen Harper. I urge those who have voted Green or Liberal join the Orange wave and help us defeat Stephen Harper. Help the NDP form a progressive government that work work for every Canadian improve their lives.
The choice is clear on May 2nd vote for Change Vote New Democrat!
April 25th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
I think one of the most interesting observations which could be made after looking at the results of this Ekos Poll is the overwhelming lead the NDP has in the category of combined 1st and 2nd choices.
That fact alone seems to indicate that this ‘trend’ may well have some sticking power AND mack a difference not only in this election but also in the future.
The one thing which makes me a bit concerned is the possibility that Harper may gain some seats in key Ontario ridings.
One hopes that, if voters are moving to the NDP, enough of them do so in order to avoid a finesse by the Conservatives.
The other interesting thing about the decided voters in this poll is how poorly Harper himself is trending.
We knew at the beginning of the campaign that Harper evoked strong emotions - it would appear that his popularity is going down, not up.
April 25th, 2011 at 8:15 pm
looks like the weekend tactics by the liberals (negative ads) and the bloc (parizeau? really?) had the opposite effect. this will be a nice breath of fresh air for politics in canada and i hope the result is as you’ve spelled it out here.
April 25th, 2011 at 9:09 pm
I too am a Liberal/NDP voter…but I’m going with the NDP since Ignatieff has taken the Libs a hard right turn. He’s too much like Harper… he left me when he talked about “cut and run” in reference to Iraq .. a George Bushism used by the American Imperialists. His selling out the Dion green agenda and the insistence of continuing in Afghanistan seals the deal… I’m outta here.
April 25th, 2011 at 9:19 pm
This latest poll is very good news for the country. A Conservative government that shows consistent contempt for facts and a thorough-going mean streak deserves to be defeated. They’re counting in voters to prefer a “tough-on-crime” posture to actually reduced crime rates, witness their attack - all the way up to the Supreme Court! -on the drug-injection centre in Vancouver, which the distinguished British medical Journal, Lancet, says reduces both deaths and costs, and which keeps potential criminals off the streets. Not to mention their numerous other policy failures.
I have hopes now that the Canadian public has their eyes increasingly open and can see through the Harper government’s haughty contempt for their intelligence.
April 25th, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Election is NEXT WEEK, 8 Days away.
The POLL is a snapshot of LAST week.
There is going to be a CHANGE before election day, becasue the polls follow, they do not LEAD.
Follow the ISSUES. The LEADER on MOST ISSUES - THAT Matter Most to EVERY Person in Every Riding.
Which one can Govern CANADA that way, that will balance the INTERESTS on ALL Sides best. The Provinces, the Left and right, French and English, present and future of CANADA, whose hands will we put it in?
Which Leader will we trust MOST New Tuesday (or for those who have already voted) when we actually check the X on the BALLOT?
THAT Person & that Person’s Candidate will form the Government.
ONLY if WE Add Direct Democracy to the MIX, is there a chnce we can take the LEADERS and PARTIES out of the EQUASION.
DO Not follow the POLLSTERS & Leaders YOU will END UP AT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE.
Follow the People to the Promised Land.
April 25th, 2011 at 11:31 pm
I wonder if half the voting population has already voted.
April 25th, 2011 at 11:40 pm
The are some major issues regarding polling nowadays. 30 years ago 60 to 70% of people answering the phone would respond to a poll. Today they are lucky to get 15%. Who has a landline now anyways? The bad news is the polls themselves are the newsmakers rather than what they are polling. Good news for Jack. I guess that is something.
April 25th, 2011 at 11:55 pm
I’m delighted at the prospect of an NDP/Liberal joint venture of some shape - but outright coalitions are very difficult to negotiate and involve great continuing strains inside the caucuses. Atlee’s memoirs made it very clear that only the prospect of total annihilation made the British WW2 government function at all.
April 26th, 2011 at 12:05 am
I find it interesting that the Ekos poll is dramatically different from the other polls. I can only hope that the most positive outcome from Ekos would be that Canadians wake up and realize what an economic disaster it would be for Jack Layton to lead an NDP-Liberal coalition. Smiling Jack will have his hands in the pockets of every middle income Canadian to pay for his economic promises. The rest will come from increased taxes on corporations, who will unfortunately not be able to offer our graduates a job because of Jack’s plundering. You can kiss the Canadian economic recovery good-bye!!!
April 26th, 2011 at 12:53 am
I voted New Democrat for years but this year I’m voting for a truly inspiring candidate Elizabeth May. I Iwatched her 20 minute interview with Steve Paikin of TV Ontario, she is one terrific babe. I predict she will take 50% + of the vote on my island Salt Spring and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that enough of the wealthy self satisfied burghers on the Saanich peninsula will vote for her that we will have our first Green member of Parliament. Intelligence, eloquence, civility, she has it in spades. I do hope Jack’s surge continues, a New Democrat Prime Minister withe Liberal and Green support would be fantastic. I had hoped to live till November 2012 to see Obama reelected but he is such a disappointment. With Jack as P.M. and maybe a couple of terrific liberals like Gerard Kennedy and Martha Hall Finlay and maybe Ken Dryden in influential positions along with Thomas Mulclair and the fellow whose name I forget (I’m almost 83) who threw John Bairds copy of the Conservative platform over his shoulder I could die happily next thanksgiving the weekend when I was conceived in 1927 Jack Hallam, 2056, 135 Brinkworthy Road Salt Spring Island, B.C. V8K 1S2 resident of Saanich and the Islands email address jackhal@telus.net
April 26th, 2011 at 1:03 am
a/ There are still a significant (although not huge) number of undecided voters.
b/ We can always hope this spectacular result is the one time in twenty that polls are inaccurate.
April 26th, 2011 at 2:09 am
I’ve read the same thing as Luke and I share his concern.
With the alarmingly low response rates, the uncertainty would appear, at least to me, to be due not primarily to the sample size, but rather to the methodology used to extrapolate from the people willing to answer a survey to those who aren’t.
My gut feeling is that an interactive voice response system of the kind Ekos seems to be using would be more likely to exacerbate the problem by making people hang up. We all get these kinds of automated phone calls from time to time, and we all get annoyed at them. It’s a lot easier to hang up on a machine than on a person. But even for traditional polls, it’s got to be a problem because with the number of telemarketing calls we get, many of us probably just say no without hearing them out.
You can try to account for these things by adjusting for gender, income, etc., but in the end, even after taking these things into account, what are the quantitative differences in voting patterns between people who are patient enough to answer a survey and those who aren’t? I’m not sure anybody really knows.
My hunch is that the people most likely to hang up would tend to be the same ones who have such a short attention span they haven’t noticed the serious ethical problems with our government on about a million different issues over the past few years. That will only be captured partially by questions like income and education.
The pollsters probably know something about this - a lot more than we do - and, I would speculate, their success in predicting the outcome probably has a lot to do with how they deal with this problem.
What really concerns me is the huge gap between the different pollsters in their estimation of the Conservative vote in Ontario, because that’s ultimately what’s going to determine whether they get a majority. On April 24, Ekos and Nanos had them at 37.7 and 47.8, respectively. That right there is probably the difference between a minority and a comfortable majority for the Tories, even leaving all other provinces alone. In previous surveys (see http://www.electionalmanac.com/canada/polls-ontario.php )there have been big differences (by and large, Ekos has had the Tories lower than Nanos), but this time it’s huge.
If journalists could *really* explain to us what’s going on here, by probing the polling companies for where their methodologies differ, and telling us what research statisticians say about the differences, they’d be doing us all a big favour. If it’s something to do with the extrapolation to non-respondents, then we deserve better as voters than just being told there’s a sort of black box where the pollsters do some hocus pocus and pull numbers out of it. Section 326(3) of the Elections Act says journalists should be able to get all of this information, including the response rate to each survey and the method used to adjust the data.
Problems with survey methodology have had huge impacts on elections before, as when the left-wing vote in France in 2002 was split, allowing Le Pen to make it to the second round. It came out only *after* the election that pollsters had been multiplying his vote by a factor of 2 or 3 to account for the fact that people were usually too embarrassed to admit they’d be voting for him. Well, surprise, the correct factor turned out to be 4 or 5 in that election! Many people had been given a false sense of security by the polls, and probably wouldn’t have split their vote as much for the plethora of left-wing candidates had they known how much guesswork was involved in this step of the pollsters’ work. The dodgy-looking multiplication factor had never been discussed in the media. People felt they’d been misled.
What I’m trying to say with the France story is that people are going to be mad as hell if journalists don’t do an adequate job of explaining the guesswork involved in the pollsters’ models, and they end up being way off. They should come out with it. That’s what Section 326 of the Elections Act is there for.
April 26th, 2011 at 2:30 am
In the face of the Conservatives’ damning dossier on their own leader, PM Harper must know the end of his political career is in sight.
I will be glad to see the end of this madman’s control of Canada.
I trust Jack. I’m voting NDP.
April 26th, 2011 at 6:12 am
This is excellent news for those of us who are tired of flirting with war, injustice, bad social policies, bizarre right-wing policies (Planned Parenthood), unneeded jails and jets. But what was the writer of your press release thinking when s/he wrote this line:
“Perhaps the country was in some form of mood disorder based on too much Easter chocolate, but it is hard to overstate the improbability of the current results…”
April 26th, 2011 at 7:56 am
While it is certainly noteworthy that the combined liberal and NDP seat totals exceed conservatives, it won’t matter if Franky is correct on the extent of the NDP surge. If the NDP seat count exceeds the Liberals and they form official opposition, we will be stuck with another conservative minority. You can kiss goodbye any notion of an NDP-liberal government. Liberals will never support the NDP from behind - it is not within their long term political interests - even if it’s better for the country than another Harper led government.
They will have one shot at it - the first throne speech and budget. Unless Iggy is in the lead he’ll support the government. Then 8 months later (once they’re all back from their short summer break) it will be too late - GG will call another election rather than give old Jack a shot.
April 26th, 2011 at 8:19 am
well great looks like canadians not so dumm after all.You have had a hand full of crooks leading u guys around for too long, nice to see you canadians have got a back bone and stand up for yourselves by supporting the NDP and Mr. Layton. Go to the polls and vote NDP.!!!!!!!
April 26th, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Question about the analysis:
Are the seat projections based just off of nationally weighted vote intention? Because I don’t know of any reliable riding by riding polling.
Or do you have a proprietary model that somehow ends up with relatively accurate projections based on provincial trends?
If anyone from ekos monitors this, can you shoot me a line with the answer?
Thanks!
April 26th, 2011 at 1:05 pm
@Daniel-[April 26,12:04pm]
http://WWW.Ekospolitics.com- you can read the full report here.
Methodology PG.18- sample size 3004; moe- 1.8%
Includes I.V.R. - Interactive voice response; reaching landlines and cell phones, etc,etc….
After reading the report, I found it very difficult to ignore the results. I trust they are credible.
The final poll is on May 2nd, of course.
P.ost S.cript: My Point of View is posted @ #16. Best Regards Daniel.
Trust Jack. Vote NDP.
April 26th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
I’m voting conservative in the election. I’m hopeful that the liberal party is annihilated by the NDP, and that the Cons can get a majority.
Here’s the deal: The Cons have a vision, the NDP have a vision and the liberals haven’t a clue. I like the Conservative vision more than I like the NDP vision. This is not to say I’m enamoured by the Conservatives, simply, they are the party that is closest to my views.
Now here’s the kicker: I would probably vote NDP before voting liberal, simply because the Liberals represent vapid self delusion.
April 26th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
Just voted yesterday and happy to report that for the first time in my life (50 years old) I voted NDP in Quebec. The orange wave is real. We simply voted to teach Pauline Marois a lesson: NO MORE REFERENDUM! If this means ditching the BQ, then so be it!
By the way, I spoke to people in Gaspe, Sherbrooke and Varennes today. Everyone feels the wave and they want to ride it. Get ready for major upsets on May 2nd.
April 27th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Its never ceases to amaze how willing the Canadian electorate is to reject the fundementals which have made western civilization great. The left increasingly tries to appeal to the uneducated or completely disenfranchised, or blatantly delusional (or most honestly just the lazy). Their promises are idealistic, unacheivable and ultimately undesirable. The delusional individuals who chose to vote for Layton or Ignatieff are completely unable to iteratively compute the externalities that would result from “Smiling Jack’s” (or Ignatieffs) ridiculous programs. However, more importantly Layton and Ignatieff seek to destroy the competitive, darwinian, and entrepreneurial spirit which drives the upward march of the Canadian economy, through boom and bust.
April 28th, 2011 at 3:04 pm
The orange wave is truly frightening. Being from Ontario, I know what an NDP protest vote means. Bob Rae and the NDP brought this Province to it’s knees. If the NDP/Liberals join forces and I have to address Jack as PM Layton, we won’t have to worry about when the next recession is going to hit. I’ll be watching carefully to see if I have to sell my Canadian investments on Tuesday.
April 29th, 2011 at 10:59 am
It is the left leaning nations that have the lowest crime rates, the highest standards of living, the best environmental standards, the best overall health care and the lowest poverty. The NDP also poll higher among the highly educated… so much with the uneducated argument. I also question whether the Liberals will support an NDP led government because it may not be in their best interests. If the economy improves (a steady upswing cycle is likely no matter who wins) the NDP will gain at the Liberals’ expense. If there are problems, the backlash will be a Conservative majority. The safest POLITICAL move in such a situation might be for the Liberals to try and get some concessions from Harper and to support a minority Conservative government.