Author: tcnorris

Polls over the past year seeking the views of the Ontario electorate have found a split that seemingly favours a re-election of the Ford government with a majority. Going back to last June, a year prior to the upcoming election date of June 2, the PCs have averaged about 35%

Overall the results of the 2021 election were unremarkable. The result was acutely disappointing for the Liberal government, but their expections for a majority may have been misplaced. What follows are some observations about 2021. 1963 & 1965 The 2019 and 2021 elections bear a striking resemblance to the 1963

This election campaign has left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. It was unnecessary and has let loose a wave of anti-social behaviour, particularly on the part of PPC adherents and anti-vaxxers. It appears the Liberals will win the most seats, likely somewhere in the 140-150 range with the Conservatives

State of the Race In the last few days the Liberals have begun inching upward in various polls, in particular in the Nanos daily tracking poll for the Globe and Mail and CTV, the Mainstreet poll for iPolitics (you can see all the polls on Wikipedia). Both Nanos and Mainstreet had quite accurate

Election 2021 features quite a few polls including daily tracking polls from Nanos and Mainstreet, who were among the most accurate polling firms in 2019. The table below presents calculations of the difference between actual election results and the late campaign provincial & regional subsections of national polls in 2019.

1965 Liberal Campaign Button A federal election is coming and the widely mooted purpose for this campaign is a desire by the Trudeau government to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons. It brings immediately to mind a similar effort in 1965 when Walter Gordon and Keith

The Liberal government gives every signal that they intend to call an election in late summer or early autumn with the goal of converting their minority into a majority. One such sign was the announcement of federal money on July 9 for the extension of the Skytrain in BC in

Donald Trump lost the November 3, 2020 U.S. election but he gained 11 million more votes over his 2016 total. Trump was the issue on the ballot, and more Americans despised him than liked him, so his Democratic opponent Joe Biden won 15 million more votes than Hillary Clinton in

The most notable outcome of the 2020 U.S. election was that, as expected, Trump lost both the popular vote and the electoral college. However, the polls experienced significant errors, the nature of which is still being debated. Overall, it appears that polling understated support for Trump and the Republicans by

 Three Possible Outcomes The U.S. election is imminent. This post represents my final assessment. Recently anti-Trump Republican Bill Kristol laid out three election scenarios as alternate Wednesday, November 4th headlines: 1. “Trump loses presidency as Midwest flips; GOP holds Senate.” 2. “Trump defeated by big margin; election called early as Florida

Saskatchewan: A Long Term Shift to the Right? There will be provincial elections held imminently in two western provinces, British Columbia on Saturday October 24, followed by Saskatchewan on Monday October 26. Historically, the two jurisdictions have been of great importance to the New Democratic Party. Saskatchewan was home to

On July 1, 1945 – 75 years ago today – an event took place in Ottawa that was of critical importance to my family. Both my mother and father moved to Ottawa in the spring of 1945, unbeknownst to each other.   Clarence Barber   Barbara Patchet That spring my

For four years Donald Trump has maintained a level of support that, beyond being greater than someone so incompetent deserves, actually had left him competitive for re-election despite trailing. However, the last few months featuring COVID-19, the economic collapse and Black Lives Matter protests have now so reduced his support

Seventy years ago this week the Red River flood started. It had a huge impact on our family. Later my father was a part of the process that led to the building of the floodwayThe 1950 Flood: My Family’s Experience My parents, Clarence Barber and wife Babs, moved into a

A commonly held belief on ideology in politics is that it can be distinguished by its placement on a spectrum. This spectrum came originally from a seating arrangement in the French National Assembly at the time of the French Revolution when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of

NATIONAL POLLS Most analysts who made calculations on the accuracy of polling in the 2019 election published their data soon after the result was made known. All the tables I saw compared polling only to the national results. I made a similar calculation that can be seen in the first

On the March 21 edition of CBC radio’s The House Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said, “This is a moment when all Canadians should get down on their knees and thank the people who gave us our universal health care system….” Tommy Douglas Sixty years ago in the spring of

National political context emerging from 2019 election Polling during the 2019 election left many with the impression that the Liberal government was on the ropes. However, the distortions of the first past the post system disguised the fact the Liberals were actually comfortably ahead in most of the country. The

The first thing that needs to be said about the US system of choosing presidents is that it is absolutely insane. Apart from the unfairness of advantaging some states and not others in the sequential series of primaries and caucuses over time, from the perspective of the parties it makes

After I published my previous blogpost on December 9 I received a comment on Facebook asking what the results would have looked like using proportional representation.  Good question. I have now done just such a calculation, the results of which can be found below. In the post I emphasized that