Tag: The Signal

CuriosityCat: Election 2015: The Dramatic Tale of the Debates

Just a note for future elections: Debates count. A lot! Far more than most people realize.
And the most recent poll by Signal / Toronto Star shows that even debates designed to avoid having millions of Canadians watch them, as our recent series were, count.
Here’s a snapshot of voting preferences for the period August 30 until yesterday, with the time of each debate shown by a vertical line. In each and every area of the country, the debates moved the needle, but not to the same extent.
Let’s start with the national polls – note the takeoff of Justin and the start of the downward trend of Mulcair:

Now let’s see what happened in Ontario – note the significance of Justin’s performance in the foreign policy and second French debates – these are the points when Harper lost Ontario

And in Quebec – the significant trend here is the Dog that did not bark in the night (that is, for those not familiar with Sherlock Holmes, the absence of any uptick in the steady downward trend of the Mulcair/NDP support since before August 30 – it’s as if the debates just did not take place):

And the Liberal bastion of the Atlantic provinces:

And in the prairies – Justin takes off after the foreign policy debate, when he showed he was ready to govern over foreign events:

And in Battleground BC – the foreign policy debate kickstarted a steep rise in Justin’s fortunes:

And the needle even moved in Tory Fortress Alberta – Justin moved ahead of Mulcair with the first debate, and kept increasing the gap:

So the lesson for party leaders in future elections is this: Treat the debates as life and death events.
Because they are.
Just ask Thomas Mulcair. And Stephen Harper.
They know. Now.
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CuriosityCat: The Signal for Oct 3: Non-Tory seats 202, Tory seats 134 Result? New government


If you have not bookmarked The Signal for your daily fix of the poll of polls, then do so immediately, and tell your friends to do so as well.
As of today, October 3, a change of government on October 19 is even more certain than yesterday, because the LPC and NDP together will have 202 MPs versus Harper’s Swan Song Singers 134.
That’s a whopping 68 more MPs than Harper will have, and Harper will be far short of the magical 170 seats he needs for a majority, and to survive as prime minister:
And the Ontario results are good, too:
Plus the BC results:
Spread the word about The Signal!
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CuriosityCat: What will happen on election day? The Signal points the way: a change of government


Say welcome to a new poll of polls aggregator service named The Signal. It is one pollster that you will be checking on a daily basis in the 17 days left before our election on October 19.
The Signal is a creation of Vox Pop Labs. This is how the Toronto Star describes it:
To gain a more precise picture of the voting landscape across the country, the Star has teamed with Vox Pop Labs, an independent research organization, to utilize their election forecasting tool, named The Signal.

Faith in pollsters’ findings has been tested in recent years, both home and abroad. After failed efforts to predict the Liberals win in the B.C. election of 2013, the Star asked “Why do pollsters keep getting it wrong?” Across the pond, British outlets pondered the same question only this year, when forecasters’ projections for the general election woefully undervalued support for David Cameron’s Conservative Party. 

So what signal is The Signal sending us about the election?
That we are headed for a change of government. The national results Vox translates into the following seats:

And the forecasted votes are:

The important thing to note is this: The total of Liberal and NDP seats is 199, a huge margin over the projected seats of 137 for Harper’s ‘new’ Conservatives.


This means that the Tories are not going to win a majority (they need 170 seats for that, and are far from that magical number). And, given the outright rejection by both Mulcair and Trudeau of any chance that their parties will prop up a minority Conservative government after the election, Harper will fall from power on October 20 or soon thereafter.
The Liberals, with more seats than the NDP, will then be given the chance by the Governor General to try to form a minority government that will enjoy the confidence of the House.
And within 18 months – by April 2017 – we will have a new electoral system, replacing the current archaic FPTP system.
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