Wednesday, October 29, 2008

New CROP and Léger Polls


The two latest polls from CROP and Léger Marketing have been added. The seat projections have not changed, though the statistical projections have improved for both the PLQ and PQ.

In terms of popular vote, these two polls have moved the PLQ projection up to 0.44 points to 38.83%. The PQ has also inched upwards by 0.1 points to 32.78%. The ADQ is the big loser of the day, dropping 0.8 points to 17.96%. The PVQ has dropped 0.84 points to go to 4.38% and QS has risen from 3.99% to 4.09%.

The PLQ has risen to 60.36 seats in the statistical projection while the ADQ is down to 13.48. The PQ has remained stable. Nevertheless, this movement is not enough to change the seat projections.

If you're wondering why the ADQ is rounded up to 14 seats, it is because their portion of a seat is more than the other parties.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Weighting System

Polling and electoral results are weighted according to the age of the poll, the amount of people polled, and the reliability of the polling firm.

The 2004, 2006, and 2008 federal elections are included because past voting behaviour tends to be a major predictor of future behaviour. Obviously, recent elections are weighted more heavily than older elections.

Older polls are dropped as newer ones are added.

Polling firms are weighted according to their accuracies in national and provincial elections since 2008. In the name of openness, here are the reliability factors of the various polling firms (updated as of the 2010 New Brunswick election) :

Angus-Reid Strategies - 1.11
Corporate Research Associates - 0.98
Léger Marketing - 0.84
Ipsos-Reid - 0.84
EKOS Research Associates - 0.79
Mustel Group - 0.72
Nanos Research - 0.70
Environics - 0.68
Harris-Decima - 0.67
Strategic Counsel - 0.52
Segma Unimarketing - 0.47
CROP - 0.12
Abacus Data - 0.08

Welcome to ThreeHundredEight.com!

The site is now launched!

As you can see, the site currently only has a Quebec electoral projection. The reason for that is pretty simple. The Canadian election just passed, and no new polls have come out. No projections can be made. When some polls do start to appear, ThreeHundredEight.com will project for the next Canadian election, and the Quebec projections will be moved to their own page. For now, the Quebec electoral projections are front and centre.

As time goes on, the Quebec electoral projections will be expanded to include individual ridings.

I'm very excited to take on this new endeavour, and I hope you'll keep reading!

Introduction to ThreeHundredEight.com

Updated: April 2017

From October 2008 to March 2017, ThreeHundredEight.com provided projections for Canadian federal and provincial elections, focusing primarily on the topic of political opinion polls.

The site was owned and run by me, Éric Grenier, a writer specializing in Canadian politics and history.

He is now a senior writer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

He wrote for The Globe and Mail from 2010 to 2014, The Hill Times from 2010 to 2015, and The Huffington Post Canada from 2011 to 2014. He also worked with Le Devoir during the 2011 federal election campaign and L'actualité during the 2012 and 2014 Quebec election campaigns, and has been published in several history magazines.

He has been working for the CBC since 2014.

ThreeHundredEight refers to the number of seats that were in the Canadian House of Commons when the site was launched. This site was inspired by the fantastic work of Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, an American data site that does electoral projections for congressional and presidential races, poll analysis, and more. My methods were inspired by but do not mimic his methods.