Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW
He also offers his thoughtful perspective of Stephen Harper’s last 10 years in his recent eBook, The Harper Decade.

Categories: Blog Central, Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Prodigal sons and daughters

by Paul Wells on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 1:50pm - 45 Comments

From our friend Paul Adams, who seems to be everywhere this autumn and who is blogging on these Ekos robo-polls for — well, for his employer, Ekos, I’ve brazenly swiped this damned interesting chart. In return for my larceny, I ask you to follow the link to Paul’s explanation. My own explanation comes below, after the chart…

Voter Retention

	Reported Vote – 2006
Vote Intention – 2008	CPC	LPC	NDP	BQ	Green	Did not vote
Conservative	84	18	5	9	11	35
Liberal	6	62	13	5	13	18
NDP	5	11	74	11	6	30
Bloc Québécois	1	1	1	71	2	1
Green	4	8	7	4	68	16

This chart collates some of what pollsters call “cross-tabs” from the latest Ekos Cylon Terminator robo-poll. Stated party support from the 2006 election is cross-indexed with stated party preference in this election right here now. So if you look down from “CPC,” you see that 84% of people who seem to recall voting for the Harper Conservatives in 2006 are now planning to vote for the Harper Conservatives again. Similarly, the NDP seems likely to keep 74% of its 2006 voters, the Bloc 71% of their voters, the Greens 68%, and… the Dion Liberals are on track to keep 62% of those who voted for the Paul Martin Liberals.

Where are those leaking Liberals leaking to? One in five of them plan to vote for the Harper Conservatives. In contrast, only 6% of 2006 Harper Conservative voters are angry enough to plan to switch to the Liberals.

Anyway, Paul Adams has more.

Tags: crack pipe goood, Ekos, Election Watch, Paul Adams, Polls

More by Paul Wells

Wayne

Nick Nanos just out : Results of today’s CPAC-Nanos tracking poll show the Conservatives are still holding strong nationally at 38%, followed by the Liberals at 31%, the NDP at 17%, and the Green Party and the Bloc Québecois tied at 7%. On the CPAC-exclusive leadership index scorecard evaluating trust, competence and national vision, Stephen Harper leads with 108 points, followed by Jack Layton at 51 points, Stéphane Dion who has dropped to 32 points, Elizabeth May at 14 points and Gilles Duceppe at 13. Stephane Dion’s one day drop (from 48 to 32 points) coincided with Bob Rae’s intervention in the campaign yesterday attacking the Conservatives and the NDP. Even factoring the personal Dion drop, there was no impact on support for the Liberals.
hosertohoosier

“Even factoring the personal Dion drop, there was no impact on support for the Liberals.”

I think that is just the law of diminishing returns at play – there is virtually nobody who is voting Liberal because they like Dion, so they’re beating a dead horse.

“The most interesting number here to me was the fact that 35% of people who didn’t vote last time are going Tory.”

This was interesting given that the Tories are usually weaker among young voters (it does explain the NDP strength there). It may also be misleading – what percentage of the total fell into this category? If it is low, this subsample probably has a very high margin of error.
http://skinnydips.blogspot.com Skinny Dipper

Mike Moffat beat me to the UBC stats. I’ll do the provincial/territorial breakdown.

Party Cons. Lib. NDP Bloc Other

BC 24 4 8 0 0
AB 28 0 0 0 0
SK 13 1 0 0 0
MB 10 1 3 0 0
ON 71 20 15 0 0
QC 16 13 0 45 1
NB 9 0 1 0 0
NS 5 4 2 0 0
PE 3 1 0 0 0
NL 6 1 0 0 0
YT 0 1 0 0 0
NT 0 0 1 0 0
NU 1 0 0 0 0

TL 186 46 30 45 1

These predictions don’t take into account local events that may change the results. Check these results with DemocraticSpace’s 2008 predictions.
http://skinnydips.blogspot.com Skinny Dipper

http://www.democraticspace.com/canada2008/
http://tigerinexile.wordpress.com Ben

Mike — I get even more outlandish numbers for the UBC matrix:

CPC – 198 seats (39.7%)
BQ – 42 seats (8.3%)
LIB – 38 seats (24.7%)
NDP – 30 seats (20.9%)
Other (Greens) – 0 seats (6.4%)

Which puts Gilles Duceppe in again as Leader of Her Majesty’s Disloyal Opposition.

***

Not happening (the model has Goodale losing Wascana!), but it’s fun to look at…
Paul Wells

WRT Quebec, what we seem to be seeing is that, unless the Bloc vote falls to some “tipping point” (defined as “a magic thing we make up to make the results more interesting”), the Bloc shouldn’t be expected to fall much below 40 seats. They got 37, if I recall correctly, in 2000. They’d have to do really badly, by their standard across the last four elections, to fall below that.
http://tigerinexile.wordpress.com Ben

Oh, I see — I read down, you guys read across.
http://tigerinexile.wordpress.com Ben

(The matrix is about how you distribute 2006 votes, not where 2008 votes come from.)

http://esm.ubc.ca/CA08/forecast.php
http://skinnydips.blogspot.com Skinny Dipper

I notice a few things. The Conservatives are keeping 84% of their voters while the Liberals only keeping 62%. The other parties are somewhere in between.

There is very little transpostiton of votes between the NDP and Greens. Someone who voted Green in the last election is more likely to vote Conservative than NDP.

The Conservatives have largely keep their supporters while the other parties are fighting for each others.
Brian

Goodale may indeed lose Wascana.
http://tigerinexile.wordpress.com Ben

And Ignatieff losing Etobicoke-Lakeshore.

These are possible outcomes — just not plausible.
http://www.gauntlet.ca Jason Morris

I’d be interested to see the missing row at the bottom. “Not voting this time.” Not very helpful for predictions, but useful for the parties to know. People who are disillusioned, but unwilling to move elsewhere are a good target to pull back into the fold.
http://skinnydips.blogspot.com Skinny Dipper

Based on the UBC Election Forecaster, here are the voting predictions for each party:

Conservative 38.3%
Liberal 24.4%
NDP 19.6%
Bloc 8.4%
Other 9.0%

For those of you who comment about there being no Green category or transfer of votes from Non-Voters, the UBC Election Forecaster does not have categories for these.

The results above seem pretty close to the latest polls.
finalspin

Guys, you’re not being fair to Paul Adams. This discussion should take place beneath his blog post, not the other Paul Well’s. Damn good thread though, I have to admit.

How about a joint Paul & Paul election blog? Paul A brings the tables, Paul W brings the friends. Sounds like a party.

JK – sure we can still have a minority. This is a snapshot of the situation as of earlier this week. Still lots of time to go, unless people think election campaigns don’t change the way people vote anymore. And seeing the enthousiasm here, few people seem to believe that.
Pingback: 2006-2008 voting shifts explained « Final Spin
finalspin

Paul Adams also posted is data here: http://election08.cusjc.ca/?p=318. The blog takes comments…
Jack Mitchell

I’m most surprised by the 68% retention rate of the Greens – at a season when their support is so high. Wasn’t aware that the voters perceived this year’s Green Party as so different from last election’s. I mean, I know there’s been a makeover, May has arrived, etc. but I’m surprised they’ve got 32% revolving door support (to coin a phrase).
madeyoulook

PW: the Bloc has consistently had difficulty translating vote intentions into votes.

MYL: Paul, if I am not mistaken, responsible pollsters have, years ago, developed a “separatist in public to save face, not so separatist facing the secret ballot” fudge factor for Quebec politics, no?
Paul Wells

Well, a lot of pollsters allocate undecideds asymmetrically in Quebec, according to assorted formulas. But in most (but not all!) elections since I’ve been covering politics in or near Quebec, there’s still a ballot-box bonus for federalists even after the pollsters thought they had accounted for it.
madeyoulook

I recall a Québécois comedian who had a routine about voting in a referendum — not sure if it was numéro un or deux. He comedically agonized over the choice he would make. He selected OUI. The crowd roared in approval. Then he nervously stated how proud he was of his selection, so proud he put the oui ballot in his pocket and walked away. The crowd offered a very understanding laugh.