B.C. post-mortem, polling methodologies, and where to go from here

Now that the dust has settled a little and those in the polling industry (along with myself) have had some time to reflect on Tuesday's results in British Columbia, it is time to take a look at how the projection model performed. But I'd also like to discuss the methodological debate in Canadian polling, how this site has approached it, and the future of this site within the context of a plummeting faith in polling.

The model did about as well as it could considering how different the election's results were to the final polls of the campaign. The model is not capable of second-guessing the polls to the extent that it could have predicted an eight-point NDP lead turning into a five-point Liberal win.

The forecast ranges were included to try to estimate how badly the polls could do if another Alberta-like scenario played out, and aside from the NDP falling two points below the forecasted low they were able to capture all of the vote and seat results at the provincial level. They were not, however, able to capture the performance of the Liberals and New Democrats in metropolitan Vancouver and in the Interior/North, demonstrating just how unbelievably well the Liberals did in these two parts of the province. Their vote came out in huge numbers here (and/or the NDP's stayed home), and the Liberals won the election.

Of course, the forecast ranges are somewhat absurdly wide. But that is more of a reflection of how unpredictable elections have become in Canada. They are absurdly wide, and yet still needed.

The parties did about as well as expected on Vancouver Island, however. If turnout was one of the factors in explaining why the polls missed the call, the Liberal ground game did its work in the rest of the province, while Vancouver Island was left to the NDP.

In all, the seat projection made the right call in 69 of 85 ridings for an accuracy rating of 81.2%, while the potential winner was correctly identified (by way of the projection ranges) in 73 of 85 ridings, for a rating of 85.9%.  This shows how the election was really won in just 12 ridings, as the projection ranges (which did not consider a Liberal victory likely) only missed those 12.

Metropolitan Vancouver was where the election was primarily won. The projection gave the NDP between 45% and 51% of the vote and the Liberals between 36% and 41%. Instead, the Liberals took 46.1% of the vote in the region (as this site defines it) to only 40.4% to the NDP. The Liberals won 24 of the 40 ridings, instead of the 14-16 they were expected to win.

The Interior/North was also a major factor in the Liberals' victory. They were expected to win the region with between 38% to 45% of the vote, narrowly beating the NDP out at between 37% and 45%. This gave the Liberals between 12 and 22 seats and the NDP between 9 and 16. Instead, the Liberals won 24 seats with 48.2% of the vote, while the NDP won only 7 seats with 35.4% of the vote.

On Vancouver Island, the NDP won 11 seats, the Liberals two, and the Greens one. The projection did not give the Greens any seats, but expected 11 to 14 for the NDP and 0-3 for the Liberals. The NDP was expected to take between 44% and 53% of the vote, the Liberals between 27% and 35%, and the Greens between 10% and 17%. The NDP actually took 43.9% to 34.2% for the Liberals and 17.2% for the Greens. It would seem that some of the Conservative vote (they took 4%) went to the Liberals and some of the NDP vote went to the Greens, but overall the island played out mostly as forecast.

As usual, the seat projection model was not at fault. If the polls had been accurate, the model would have projected 49 seats for the B.C. Liberals and 36 for the B.C. New Democrats, mirroring the result closely. The ranges would have been 37 to 57 seats for the Liberals and 27 to 46 for the NDP, while up to one Green would have been projected and two independents.

The right call would have been made in 76 of 85 ridings, for an accuracy rating of 89.4%, while the potential winner would have been correctly identified in 81 of 85 ridings, for a rating of 95.3%. The challenge remains getting the vote totals closer to the mark. Frustratingly, that is the one thing I have the least control over.

How the projection model would have been wrong in a few individual ridings is interesting, and reflects just how important local campaigning can be. Three of the incorrect nine ridings (with the actual regional vote results) included Delta South, Vancouver-Point Grey, and Oak Bay-Gordon Head. The model would never have been able to boost Andrew Weaver's support enough to give him the win without some improper fiddling with it on my end. In Delta South, Vicki Huntingdon's support was stronger than would have been expected. And most significantly, Christy Clark's rejection in her own riding is all the more starkly shown. She did not lose it because the overall race was close - the overall swing should have kept the riding in her hands.

Polling methodology and what went wrong

All eyes have turned to how the pollsters are doing their work. Some of the pollsters are looking at their methods and trying to figure out what went wrong and what can be done to avoid these issues in the future. Others are crowing that this or that poll they did a week before the election turned out to be prescient, and it appears that some lessons will not be learned.

A hypothesis does seem to be forming as to what happened. I'd identify a few factors:

Turnout - Turnout was only about 52% in this election, and that can throw off a pollster's numbers to a large degree. However, turnout was also very low in the 2009 election and the polls did a decent job that time. Turnout is not a silver bullet, then, but the effect turnout had in 2009 may not have been the same as in 2013.

Motivation - According to Ipsos-Reid's exit poll (which I will return to in the future), very few British Columbians thought the Liberals would win a majority government (only about one-in-ten), while one-half thought the New Democrats would win. This might have depressed turnout even more, with some New Democrats not bothering to vote since they felt they would win, and some Liberals turning out in greater numbers to ensure their local MLA would get re-elected, even if the party itself would be booted out of government. Conceivably, though, Liberals not bothering to vote for a lost cause should have cancelled things out. And in most cases, people tend to vote in greater numbers for a perceived winner.

Election Day Shift - Yes, it is unbelievable that the polls were right all along and a dramatic change of heart occurred in the final hours. But Ipsos-Reid's poll showed that 9% of Liberal voters made-up their minds in the voting booth. If all of those voters had instead voted for a different party, the Liberals would have been reduced to about 40%. That would have been closer to most polls, but still much higher than even the margin of error would have considered possible. And, of course, some of those 9% might have just been wavering Liberals who did not make up their mind until the last minute, but had told pollsters they were still intending to vote Liberal. While certainly part of the equation, it cannot be all of it.

Bad polling - This is probably the main reason why the polls missed out on the call. The other three factors may have been worth a few points each, but there does seem to have been a problem in building a representative sample. Pollsters will need to figure out why that is.

One of the problems that has been identified most often (especially by those pollsters who use other methods) is that most of the polls used online panels. These have had success in the past, including the 2009 B.C. election, but perhaps online panels are less able to consistent give good results - particularly in provincial campaigns where the panel may be smaller. But this cannot be the only reason, as Angus-Reid's online polling in Manitoba - a province with a quarter of the population of British Columbia - was stellar in its 2011 provincial election.

Nevertheless, the track record of online firms has taken a hit. Telephone polls using live-callers still seem to have the most success. Reaching people by telephone - including mobile phones - probably remains the best way to do quality polling. It is also a good way to do expensive polling.

Is the extra accuracy worth the extra cost? That might not be the case when it comes to market research. Whether it is 36% or 44% of people who say they have trust in your company's brand is not vital information, as long as it is in the ballpark. Even at their worst, online polls have been in the ballpark (the Liberals and NDP were not polled to win the election in Alberta, and nor were the Greens or Conservatives ever pegged to have more than marginal support). But in an election, the quality of a poll, and not the cost, should be the deciding factor in whether or not to report it.

The chart below reveals some information that I have up to now kept to myself. Pollsters are rated in my weighting system by their track record. That track record extends back over 10 years, with more recent elections being more heavily weighted. The difference between one firm and the next is usually not very large, and some of the difference is due to the elections in which these firms have decided to take part. Those that stayed out of Alberta and B.C. are inevitably going to have better ratings than those who didn't. I have considered overhauling the rating system to take into account these sorts of considerations, but I have not yet done so. Because I haven't, I am reluctant to actually rank the polling firms publicly by name.

But I am willing to rank them by methodology. These are the 10 firms in Canada I consider to be major firms, and the method they have used in their most recent election campaign. They are polling firms that release national, regional, or provincial polls on a regular basis. The chart shows each firm's average error per party in any election in which they were active, going back ten years.

As you can immediately see, the polling firms that conduct their surveys using live-callers occupy the top three ranks. The online and IVR polling firms have had less success. The difference is not huge, however - on average, the third best firm misses the call by fewer than 0.5 percentage points per party than the seventh best.

However, it is clear that polls conducted over the telephone with live-callers have had a better track record. That does not mean that they will always have a better result: in the 2011 federal election, Angus-Reid's online panel had the lowest per-party error. But it does suggest that the online panels still have some work to do.

Where to go from here

There were moments yesterday when I contemplated the end of ThreeHundredEight. Why run a site about polling when polling in Canada is so horrid?

But the polling is not always horrid, and even when it seems to be on the bad side there are some indications of something else at play. Alberta is an obvious example, but maybe British Columbia's errors have some mitigating factors as well.

Even if that is not the case - and I am not convinced that it is - polls are not going away and I still believe that they are a useful tool. The electorate deserves to know what the collective wisdom of the people is on various issues, including on the question of who should govern them. But the electorate deserves good, reliable information. Bad information is much worse than none at all, but polls are not going to disappear.

Though I could never claim to be impartial on the question of whether polls should be paid any attention at all (if they are ignored, I would need to find a new line of work), I can continue to be an impartial observer, analyst, and (when need be) critic of the industry. In its own tiny little way, ThreeHundredEight can be part of the solution.

That means more of a focus on methodological and transparency issues, sweeping trends, uncertainties in the polling data, and wider questions about what the numbers mean, if anything at all. It means less focus on the horserace, more caution in reporting numbers, a forecasting model that emphasizes what we don't know, and more reserve in giving attention to questionable polls. And when a poll is questionable, drawing attention to the reasons why.

It might mean a drop in traffic and it will certainly require more work and effort on my end. And like all junkies, I might relapse. But I think it will be a worthwhile endeavour. I welcome your thoughts in the comments section.

Polling industry dealt major blow in B.C. election

Last night was a very bad one for Adrian Dix and the New Democrats, who expected victory as much as the pollsters did. And with good reason: a stabilizing, maybe even growing, lead over the B.C. Liberals with hours to go before the polls opened. Instead, British Columbians collectively woke up and changed their minds and swung about 13 points towards Christy Clark. Or, more likely, something disastrously wrong occurred in the polling industry.

I wrote about the implications for the four party leaders for The Huffington Post Canada, and took a look at why the polls went wrong for The Globe and Mail.

Why did they go wrong? I have no explanation this morning. In Alberta, there was the late swing. There was the novelty of the Wildrose Party. There was the relative lack of polling in the final days. There was the inexperience of the pollsters who were active. There was the immensely more well-oiled organization of the Progressive Conservatives.

In British Columbia, there was no indication of a late swing. If anything, there was a sign that Clark's momentum had reversed itself. The New Democrats were not an unknown quantity. There was polling being done as late as Monday. There was the experience of two pollsters with long and successful histories in British Columbia. There was the much-vaunted GOTV organization of the NDP. And yet all the polls said the New Democrats would win, and all the polls were wrong.

(Note: the chart below includes the average standard deviation between the polls from each pollster, meant as an attempt to determine whose numbers were fluctuating the most. It seems like a moot point now.)

Forum Research ended up doing the best, but they should not gloat. As in Alberta, they were the best of a bunch of bad polls. They were in the field six days before the election, when the Liberals appeared to be at their peak in polls by other firms, and in all likelihood were just lucky not to release any new numbers. And it was odd that they didn't, as Forum has released 11th hour polling in Quebec, Alberta, and even Labrador.

My vote projections did second-best, mostly because I had a mechanism for diluting the support of the Greens and Conservatives. On the Liberals and NDP, I was as wrong as anyone else.

The forecasted ranges captured every vote and seat result with the exception of the NDP. Those ranges are designed to account for an Alberta-level event, but even so they were unable to predict that the New Democrats would under-perform in the popular vote to such a great degree. The ranges, implying that the polls should always be considered potentially spectacularly wrong, were apparently a good idea, but if ranges of this size need to be included in every election the usefulness of the forecasting model is virtually zero. In even a modestly close election, they will always span almost the entire spectrum since most ridings come into play at that point.

I have not had the time to input the actual vote results into the seat projection model yet, as I need to calculate the regional vote totals. I will do so as soon as possible. I suspect that the projected results will end up being very close to the actual results, as they have been in almost all the 10 elections I have worked on in the past. I will write a fuller post-mortem in the coming days.

There is no question that seat projection models like mine work. They are an effective way to translate poll results into seats. This is not voodoo magic, it is a rather simple endeavour. The challenge is being the least possible amount of wrong, which is the best that forecasters can hope for. But the models are only as good as the available information.

I have to admit that my confidence in the quality of that information - polling - has been profoundly shaken. Alberta was an aberration, and there was some good reason as to why it occurred (which I now have doubts about). Quebec was only a minor flub, which can be attributed in part to superior Liberal organization (or can it?). But this is a complete disaster. There is no reason why this should have happened, which leads me to believe that the reason it happened is because the pollsters did a bad job.

It might not be their fault exactly. Perhaps it is no longer possible to consistently and repeatedly build a sample that is reflective of the population. Can online panels be reliably effective when they aren't national? Work will have to be done to determine why this is happening and how it can be avoided. I have no doubt that the pollsters will eventually tackle the new challenges that they face. The question is how long it will take and whether it can be done in a country like Canada.

It puts into question the validity of the work I do. I write about polls every day for this site, for The Globe and Mail, for The Huffington Post Canada, and for The Hill Times. I give radio and television interviews about them. It is my full-time job. I've always approached it as a professional and have tried to provide insightful analysis of polling, separately from my role as a forecaster. No one in Canada who doesn't work for a polling firm writes about polls as much as I do.

How can I credibly continue to do so when I myself doubt that the results are reliable? While I was shocked when I saw the results last night, a part of me was not surprised that I was shocked and that they got it wrong all over again. If I go into every election assuming that disaster is more likely than triumph, what is the point?

This site was meant to be a way to cut through the confusion in polling and give a good idea of what, as a whole, the polls are saying. The site can still do that, but if what the polls are saying is not reflective of reality, what use is it?

My projection was wrong because the polls were wrong. Again. I am sorry that it was so. I can blame the pollsters for providing me with unreliable information, but I am nevertheless responsible for what is posted here, for the defense of polling I have mounted for the last few years, and for whatever confidence I expressed when analyzing the numbers in an attempt to inform readers about the state of the race in British Columbia and elsewhere. I apologize for that. Where do we go from here?

Final projection: Dix's B.C. NDP heavily favoured to win

Election night update: The results will fall within the high and low forecasted outcomes, but they were considered to be an unlikely event. It seems, instead, that with the polling we have in Canada we can expect these sorts of surprises more often. It is very disappointing.

The B.C. New Democrats under Adrian Dix should win tonight's election in British Columbia, pushing Christy Clark's B.C. Liberal Party to the opposition benches and ending their 12-year tenure in government.

ThreeHundredEight.com's final projection for the B.C. election has the NDP winning a majority government with the Liberals forming the Official Opposition. They should also be joined on the opposite side of the legislature by at least one independent MLA.

As recently as yesterday, based on the polls that had been in the field up to May 10, there was some doubt as to what the likely outcome of the election would be. The B.C. Liberals appeared to be closing the gap, and there was enough volatility to believe that the last weekend of the campaign could prove decisive. But the polls released yesterday, two of which were actually in the field yesterday, show the parties' support to have stabilized, giving Dix's NDP a comfortable lead.

The likely outcome

The projection gives the New Democrats between 44.1% and 47.9% of the vote, with 46% considered the most likely outcome. They should win between 44 and 55 seats, while 49 is considered most likely. That puts the NDP safely in majority territory. Unless the polls are glaringly inaccurate, there is every indication that Dix will be the next premier of British Columbia.

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The Liberals are slated to take between 35.8% and 39.6% of the vote, or 37.7% more precisely. That should give them between 26 and 41 seats, while 35 is considered the most likely outcome. Clark's Liberals should then be able to form a robust opposition, and give the party some foundation upon which to rebuild. 

The B.C. Greens under Jane Sterk are projected to finish third with 7.8% of the vote, or between 6.8% and 8.8%. They are not expected to win a seat, though they should put up some very strong numbers in the Greater Victoria region. There is an outside chance for an upset - in particular the riding of Oak Bay-Gordon Head should be watched. The projection model is probably unable to fully reflect the potential strength of Andrew Weaver's campaign, due to the low level of support the party received in the riding in the 2009 election.

John Cummins's B.C. Conservatives are projected to finish fourth with 5.2% of the vote, or between 4.3% and 6.1%. They are also not considered to be in the running to win a seat.

Another 3.2% of British Columbians (or between 1.6% and 4.8%) are expected to vote for independent candidates and smaller parties. As many as four independents could be elected, but the projection model considers the re-election of one independent to be the most likely outcome.

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With only a matter hours between the time the final polls of the campaign were in the field and the beginning of voting in British Columbia, the Liberals are estimated to have only a 1.7% chance of making up the difference or proving the polls wrong. The New Democrats have a 98.3% chance of ending up with more votes tonight than the Liberals.

They also have an 83.3% chance of winning more seats, giving the Liberals a 16.7% chance of proving the polls and the projection ranges wrong enough to emerge as the victors. Those chances take into account the possibility that the Liberals could win more seats with fewer votes than the NDP, but the odds are not very high. Nevertheless, recent elections have rewarded an abundance of caution.

Being prepared for the unexpected

The forecasting model is designed to consider the possibility of an Alberta-level event, both in terms of the potential inaccuracies in the polls and a late swing in voting intentions. But there is little indication that something like Alberta is in the works, whereas my final projection for that election was soaked in uncertainty. I am far more confident in this final projection than I was with Alberta's, but the forecasting model does consider it possible for the Liberals to eke out a victory. With the volatility we have seen in the regional-level polling, the Liberals could win as many as 60 seats or be reduced to as few as five. The NDP could win as many as 78 or as few as 23. These are extremely unlikely outcomes. The polls would need to be disastrously wrong to cause such a surprise.

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The forecast ranges for the Greens and Conservatives are perhaps a little more realistic. Polling for these small parties can be more difficult, particularly when it comes to trying to capture individually strong local campaigns. The Greens have been polling surprisingly well in the Interior and North despite an incomplete slate, and the forecasting model thus gives them the potential to pull off an upset there. More likely, however, is that the polls and the seat projection model could be unable to accurately record what is going on in some of the ridings in the Victoria region. For these reasons, the forecasting model considers as many as eight seats a possibility for the Greens, though anything about two should be considered very implausible.

For the Conservatives, pulling off a surprise somewhere in the Interior should not be ruled out. However, the numbers have not been heading in the right direction for them.

But for all these forecasts, we're merely looking at the plausible rather than the probable. The tighter projection ranges are the most likely outcomes, especially considering the stability of the final polls of the campaign as well as the track records of the firms who were in the field yesterday (both Angus-Reid and Ipsos-Reid have long and successful histories in British Columbia).

Regional breakdowns

The New Democrats are very well positioned in the southwestern corner of the province, with a strong lead in metropolitan Vancouver and a very wide one on Vancouver Island.

In and around Vancouver, the New Democrats are projected to take between 45% and 50.6% of the vote, giving them 24 or 25 seats. The Liberals should take between 35.8% and 41.2% support and between 14 and 16 seats. The Greens are expected to capture between 5.1% and 7.9% support, while the Conservatives are strongly considered likely to finish fourth with between 3% and 5.2% of the vote. One independent is expected to be elected as well.

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On Vancouver Island, the New Democrats should take between 43.9% and 52.9% of the vote and win between 11 and 14 seats. The Liberals are projected at between 27% and 35.2% of the vote and as many as three seats. The Greens should finish third with between 10.4% and 16.6% of the vote, while the Conservatives should take between 3.7% and 7.9%. Though the Greens are not projected to win any seats, the forecast puts them in the running for as many as three.

In the B.C. Interior and North, the race is far more competitive. Either the NDP or Liberals could win the most support, with the slight edge being given to the Liberals. They should take between 37.8% and 45% of the vote, while the NDP stands at between 37.3% and 44.5% support. That gives the Liberals between 12 and 22 seats and the NDP between nine and 16. The Conservatives or Greens will finish third, with the Conservatives favoured at between 5.2% and 9% support. The Greens should captured between 4.5% and 8.1% of the vote. As many as three independents could be elected in the region, with between 2.2% and 6.5% support.

What the polls have shown

There is no doubt that the Liberals were able to close the gap due to an energetic campaign and a decent debate performance by Clark, aided by a very safe NDP campaign that allowed the Liberals to dominate the agenda. But after taking an initial hit, the NDP vote stabilized and the Liberals were unable to make enough ground to turn things around in the final weeks.

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The projection adjusts the polls slightly in order to take into account the over-estimation of support that polls have traditionally been guilty of in the case of Green parties throughout Canada, and more generally of small parties without a seat in the legislature (in this case, the Conservatives). The model also estimates the support of independents and other parties independently of the polls. 

Without these adjustments, the numbers change slightly. The weighted, unadjusted poll average would then give the NDP 44.2% of the vote to 36.2% for the Liberals, 9.8% for the Greens, 6.9% for the Conservatives, and 2.9% for the others. Conservative support in the Interior and North would sit at 9.2%, while the Greens would be at 16.6% on Vancouver Island. Without these adjustments, the Greens and Conservatives might be considered more likely to win a seat. But there would be no more consequential differences in the projected winner overall.

How the leaders have fared

Campaigns clearly matter. Prior to the campaign, Adrian Dix had a double-digit lead over Christy Clark on the question of who would make the best premier. The latest polls suggest that the gap has closed to only three points. The last three surveys have averaged 30.7% for Dix on this question, with Clark at 27.7%. The campaign had a significant effect on Clark's ratings on this score, and for a brief moment she was even polling better than the NDP leader.

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Clark's approval rating also improved during the course of the race, but still averaged only 34.7% at the campaign's end. Dix's approval rating was 41.7%, putting him in a tie with Jane Sterk. Her approval soared during the campaign, but she had already surpassed Clark by the end of March. Cummins's approval rating held more or less steady, and finished at 21%.

In terms of their chances of election, only Adrian Dix is favoured to be in the legislature after the dust settles. Too much should not be made of the individual riding projections (the overall numbers are more important), but probability calculations make their forecasts more interesting.

Riding projections

Dix is a lock to win Vancouver-Kingsway, with the model estimating his re-election odds to be 94%. Clark's re-election chances are not nearly as good, however. The NDP is actually favoured to win her riding, with an estimated 62% chance of winning, but that is not much better than a coin flip. Sterk is expected to put up some strong numbers in Victoria-Beacon Hill, but the NDP's Carole James is given an 87% chance of being re-elected. And the Liberals are given a 62% chance of holding on to Langley, where Cummins is running. The NDP is considered more likely to win it than Cummins, though the model is almost certainly under-estimating the party leader's drawing power.

The importance of a campaign

Considering just how long the New Democrats under Adrian Dix have been leading in the polls in British Columbia, and the dozen years the Liberals have been in power, an NDP victory should not come as too much of a surprise. At the campaign's outset, the New Democrats were leading by 18 points. That Clark's Liberals were able to reduce that lead to only eight points and put themselves in a position where the foregone conclusion became a potentially historic comeback is a testament to the importance of an election campaign. 

In the end, however, the result is what counts. The New Democrats have been favoured to win this election for many months. That they will probably win it with a smaller margin than they had enjoyed for the 12 months or so prior to the campaign's start does not invalidate those expectations. Enough British Columbians changed their minds during the last four weeks to change the tone of the race, but the numbers do not lie. It was always going to take a pitch-perfect campaign, and a lot of luck, for Clark's Liberals to overcome the huge hill that had formed in front of them. They put up a strong fight, but it may have been too much.

The polls were getting a little uncertain of themselves in the last week of the campaign, but they are now clear and consistent. Reasons for doubt existed in Alberta, and plausible excuses were made for that debacle. There will be no such excuse this time. Unless the polling industry is on the verge of an even more humiliating and unlikely collapse, Adrian Dix will become the next Premier of British Columbia.

B.C. NDP on track for win, but doubts remain

The penultimate update to the projection and forecast for tomorrow night's election in British Columbia shows the gap in popular support widening between the B.C. New Democrats and the B.C. Liberals, but the  margin in the seat projection tightening up. Adrian Dix and the NDP retain the advantage across every poll, but disagreement in some of the last surveys of the campaign leave the question of how it will all turn out unanswered.

The NDP is projected to have between 43.6% and 47.4% support, while the Liberals stand at between 35.6% and 39.4%. The precise projection puts the NDP at 45.5% and the Liberals at 37.5%, a gain of 2.5 points for the NDP compared to the last projection and an uptick of 0.7 points for the Liberals. The model estimates that the odds the Liberals can overcome this eight point margin in the four days between the most recent polls and election day to be just 2.8%.

The New Democrats are now projected to win between 45 and 56 seats, putting them in majority territory, while the Liberals stand at between 26 and 40 seats. The most likely outcome, at 48 seats for the NDP and 36 for the Liberals, represents a swing of four seats from the NDP to the Liberals since the last projection. A margin of eight seats is not very much, and the model estimates the odds of the Liberals being able to win the most seats with these numbers to be 21.4% (this takes into account both polling error and seat modelling error).

The gain in seats for the B.C. Liberals occurred primarily in the Interior and North, as the party narrowed the margin in the region and is now projected to win the majority of seats there.

But on the face of it, the New Democrats seem to be in a strong position. Their projected vote and seat haul does not overlap with the Liberals, at least based on current polling information. But what about how things might change between the last last poll and the actual vote?

This is difficult to judge, as the polls have not been very consistent. I have certainly seen more disagreement, but things are getting close enough where the variations start to make a difference. Accordingly, the forecasting model is unable to make a very precise estimate of likely outcomes tomorrow night: 20 to 77 seats for the NDP and 6 to 63 for the Liberals. This should take care of any Alberta-esque situation, but apart from that there is not much to glean from the forecasts.

More polls are expected to be released today, so hopefully this will make things more clear. Unless these final polls start to show some major shifts in the final hours of the campaign, I will have the final projection up on the site before midnight (ET) tonight to incorporate whatever polls emerge by the end of the evening. If these final polls are not clear as to what is going on, I may wait until the morning to see if any other surveys are released before midnight Pacific time to post the final projection. This is not my preferred option, however, as I much rather have my final projection numbers on the site before election day, if only to follow the spirit of the polling blackout laws in British Columbia.

Update: With all the late night polls I am expecting, I don't think I'll be able to get any numbers up before midnight Pacific time. As I am writing from Ottawa, trying to get the final numbers and an analysis posted within, at most, 90 minutes by 3 AM and also have it be coherent seems impossible. If the goal was to get something up before midnight and stay true to the spirit of the province's election laws, it does not make much difference if I post at 12:30 AM or 6:00 AM Pacific time. So, check for the final projection tomorrow morning.

Friday afternoon was a polling smorgasbord, as surveys from four different firms were released in a matter of hours. Though they do show some broadly similar numbers, the polls were suggesting conflicting trends and had some of their own methodological issues to note. Let's go through them one-by-one.

Forum's poll for the National Post is the oldest of the lot, having been conducted on May 8. Just as they did with their previous survey, Forum suggests a much closer race: 43% for the NDP and 41% for the Liberals.

Compared to their last poll of Apr. 30, the NDP had picked up four points and the Liberals had gained six, as support for the Greens and Conservatives fell by four and three points, respectively.

The lower support for the Conservatives and Greens is not too surprising, as more British Columbians become aware of a lack of a candidate in their own ridings and as voters decide that this may not be the election for a protest vote. The narrow gap between the NDP and Liberals appears to be somewhat out-of-step, but sampling error could easily push the margin further apart without making the poll explicitly wrong.

But Forum did have the same issue that they had in their previous survey, under-sampling people who said they voted for the NDP in 2009. By Forum's numbers, 50% of people who said they could remember who they voted for in 2009 had voted for the Liberals, while only 32% had voted for the NDP (actual result: 45% to 42%). Granted, four years is a long time and memories of the federal election could be mucking things up a little, but this is likely why Forum is showing a narrower gap than the other firms. This should lead us to believe that the wider margins that the other polls have recorded are probably more realistic.

The gap of 14 points registered by Justason Market Intelligence may be too much on the wide side, however. The firm pegs NDP support at 45% and the Liberals at 31%, a drop of four points for the NDP since their last survey of Apr. 15-23, and a gain of four points for the Liberals. The trends are not very informative, however, as Justason seems to have used only their online panel for this survey, whereas their last poll used a hybrid telephone-online methodology. And since Justason was last in the field at an earlier time than Forum, Ipsos-Reid, and Angus-Reid, comparing the trends from this poll to those others is also not very helpful. But it is interesting to note that Justason is nevertheless recording a narrowing margin, and lower support for the Conservatives. That is indeed an important trend, particularly in terms of Liberal fortunes.

Ipsos-Reid's poll for Global News also showed a narrowing gap, with the NDP falling two points from Ipsos's Apr. 30-May 2 poll to 43%, and the Liberals increasing by two points to 37%. That shrank the margin from 10 points to six, but those changes in support are not statistically significant. The Greens and Conservatives were unchanged at 10% and 7%, respectively.

The last poll of the day, and the most recent, was by Angus-Reid for the Globe and Mail and CTV. It, however, showed a widening margin: the NDP was up four points to 45% and the Liberals were up two points to 36%. But here again the trends are difficult to assess. Angus-Reid changed their methodology to present respondents with an accurate local ballot. That means that people in ridings without a Green or Conservative candidate were not given that option.

Accordingly, the Greens fell three points to 9% and the Conservatives dropped four points to 6%. Was the gain that Angus-Reid recorded for the Liberals and NDP due to shifting support or the accurate ballot? We don't know, but this methodology should provide better results, which may lead us to believe that a margin of this size is more realistic than the one recorded by Forum.

It should be noted that these polls are not particularly contradictory. Having the NDP at either 43% or 45% and the Conservatives between 6% and 8% puts these firms well within each other's margin of error (assuming a probability sample, etc.). The Greens are a little less consistent, with between 8% and 14%, but somewhere around 9% is probably about right. The Liberal numbers are more problematic. With Justason's poll, the difference is 10 points among these four surveys. Even without it, the difference is five points. That is stretching the MOE.

Putting aside the province-wide numbers for a moment, are there any other under-lying trends across the Forum, Ipsos, and Angus-Reid polls (as noted, Justason's previous poll was not in the field at the same time as the last poll of these three firms)?

Regionally, they all show generally stable numbers in metropolitan Vancouver. All three put the NDP at either 44% or 46% and no different than one or two points from their last poll. The Liberals were at either 38% or 41%, with Forum showing the bigger uptick. All three polls showed the NDP with a good lead over the Liberals on Vancouver Island (the Liberals were tightly grouped at either 29% or 32%), and all three showed a drop in Green support (two points for Ipsos, four for Forum, and six for Angus, though all are ostensibly within the MOE). Ipsos and Angus put the NDP and Liberals about even in the Interior and North, but Forum put the Liberals way ahead. What is going on there is less clear.

What about demographically? All three showed a gender gap, but of different magnitudes. Angus-Reid had the NDP up by three points among men, Ipsos-Reid had the Liberals up by four, and Forum had them up by 11. Among women, though, all three had the NDP at either 14 or 15 points over the Liberals. By age group, both Ipsos and Angus had the New Democrats ahead among the oldest (and most enthusiastic) voters, but Forum gave the edge to the Liberals.

On the personal front, Ipsos had Christy Clark up three points on the Best Premier question, giving her 34% to Dix's 31% (-3). Angus-Reid had Dix ahead with 30% (+4) to Clark's 25% (+1). Forum and Angus-Reid had almost identical approval ratings for the two leaders, however. Angus-Reid had Dix at 42% approval to 47% disapproval, and Clark at 33% approval to 61% disapproval. Forum had the split at 41-48 for Dix and 35-57 for Clark. Those may be very important numbers come election day.

So, for all the new polling data we have it would appear that we are left with more questions. Is the margin between the Liberals and New Democrats narrowing, widening, or holding steady? Is the NDP poised for a landslide, or tight win, or a shock? Hopefully the polls to be released within the next 18 hours will clear things up. I have a hunch, though, that they may just confuse us more.

Gap continues to close, but time running out in B.C.

The newest projection for Tuesday's B.C. election shows the gap between the B.C. New Democrats and B.C. Liberals narrowing further, to 6.3 points. And for the first time, the high seat projection range for the Liberals puts them just over the bar of a majority government (43 seats). But with only a few days remaining, Christy Clark is still just a 10-to-1 shot of being re-elected.

The New Democrats are projected to take 43% of the vote based on current polling, or between 40.5% and 45.5%. The Liberals have increased to 36.8% (or between 34.4% and 39.2%), but there is still enough volatility in the polls to give the NDP as little as 37% by election day or as much as 49%. Suffice to say, at those extremes the Liberals are either decimated or re-elected. But they are extremes.

These numbers give the New Democrats 52 seats to 32 for the Liberals, but the projected high and low ranges now overlap: 40-65 for the NDP and 16-43 for the Liberals. Those are rather wide as the amount of polling data has thinned out (it should beef up again between now and Monday night) and the race is rather close in the Interior and North. But that 43 is the highest the Liberals have been in the projection ranges. The forecast ranges have tightened up a little as some older polls have dropped out of consideration, but they nevertheless still envision anything from an NDP landslide to a Liberal majority. We shall see if they will tighten up further, but with the changes that have occurred in the last two weeks it is perhaps wise to keep our expectations to a minimum.

However, the NDP is still the heavy favourite. A 20-seat edge in the projection will be right 91.7% of the time, so the odds that Clark's Liberals will prove the polls (and thus my projection) wrong are not very high. The odds that they can overcome the 6.3-point margin in six days (four remain before the vote, but the last bit of polling was out of the field on E-6) are slightly larger, at 9.5%, but we're still talking about an exceptional case. The NDP remains the easy favourite to win, but we will have to see what Angus-Reid and Ipsos-Reid have to say in the coming hours and days.

I have some mixed feelings about the two polls that were added to the projection, as they are both from firms dipping their toes into the B.C. campaign for the first time (publicly, at least).

We have already heard from Oraclepoll as they were commissioned to do riding surveys for local newspapers in Kamloops and Prince George. But they haven't put out a province-wide survey since November 2011.

They show a closer race than everyone but Forum has indicated, but we should consider that Oraclepoll is the only firm using live-callers to have put out a provincial poll out in this campaign. Perhaps that methodological difference means something.

If we look at their last poll from 2011, we see that it pegged the NDP at 44%, the Liberals at 25%, and the Greens at 16%. By comparison, the polls taken in the two months before and after that Oraclepoll averaged 41% for the NDP, 30% for the Liberals, and 10% for the Greens. If anything, Oracelpoll was showing lower numbers for the Liberals and higher ones for the Greens than other surveys at the time. That does not give us much reason to suggest that Oraclepoll's methodology is conditioned to over-estimate Liberal support, and thus show a narrower gap, but their methods may have changed in the last two years.

The amount of available information about this poll is disappointing, as we don't even have regional breakdowns. But their provincial results aren't out of step with other surveys to any significant degree.

The survey from Hill and Knowlton came out of the woodwork even more. The Victoria Times-Colonist commissioned the poll from Oraclepoll, but this one from H&K was put out in a press release. It was done with H&K's online panel, and did not show any odd results. Aside from a closer race in (small sample) Vancouver Island, their regional breakdowns fell well within the norm.

Though I don't consider Hill and Knowlton to be a polling firm (they do lobbying and public relations), it should come as no surprise that this important company would have its own public opinion research wing to help it advise clients. And considering they are putting their reputation at stake to some degree by releasing these numbers, it seems safe to conclude that they are reasonably confident in them. They have no particular reason not to be.

But as both Hill and Knowlton and Oraclepoll are publishing for the first time in this campaign, it is impossible to really say what these numbers represent in terms of a trend. Is the gap narrowing? Or if these two firms had been in the field earlier in the campaign, would they have shown a similar gap? We don't know, but other polls have been showing the same sort of trends. It should make Tuesday night interesting.