Impolitical: A new poll

“Federal Liberals gain on NDP, Conservatives, poll finds.” Let’s fight the “it doesn’t mean anything” meme before it starts, shall we? I will venture to say it means something. It’s a psychological boost, let’s not kid ourselves amidst all the Liberal party is dead doom and gloom. It’s also a

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Scott's DiaTribes: Polls aplenty in Ontario

To recap in the last day, Ekos, Nanos and Ipsos all indicate the Liberals are close to or will get a majority (Ipsos even went so far as to say in an interview that it’s over – the Liberals will win), while Abacus is showing a tighter Liberal lead that could go either way, and now Angus Reid has released a poll this AM saying they have a slight PC lead.

I’m not sure if that’s it for polls – Harris Decima is the only major pollster I haven’t seen release anything of late – but it appears it will again come down to who can get their […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: The closing days of the Ontario campaign

Only a few days left until Ontario voters get out to vote for their next provincial government, and the polls that came out on the weekend still had a neck and neck race. Ekos released a new poll this AM which seemed to indicate the Liberals were pulling away just a tad, but it still is close.

It will be interesting from my standpoint to see a) which polls were closest (online, IVR or traditional phone) and also the similarities/differences to the Ontario vote from the federal election in May, and what can be learned from that.

Also, with regards to a rumour of Harper coming to Toronto to […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: Ontario leaders debate tonight is big

We enter the Ontario leaders debate tonight with a new poll from Ekos released today showing the Liberals with a 4 point lead over the PC’s and the NDP in the mid-20′s. According to threehundredeight.com, combined with the findings of another poll release last night by Abacus (with their new polling methodology), that would lead to a bare Liberal majority.

Therefore, I would submit the pressure is on the opposition parties’ leaders to perform well. Hudak needs to do so to salvage what has been a fairly miserable campaign for him (losing a massive lead in less then 3 months to now possibly losing the election outright). Horwath on […]

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Scott's DiaTribes: If younger voters had bothered to vote in Ontario, Harper would have lost.

There was some conventional wisdom out there in pundit land that in the last few days of the May election, the Conservatives and Harper bit of fear-mongering that the NDP might be elected to government caused right-leaning Liberals to turn and vote Conservative in order to stop this, thus causing the vote splits in Toronto and such that ensured a Harper majority.

According to a study by Ekos, however, that was not the case:

In his post-election analysis, which he presented to a polling conference in Ottawa last week, Mr. Graves says that his sample of 1,000 voters in Ontario did not find a respondent who shifted to the […]

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