I've done two exercises that try to bridge the gap between that last day of polling and the day of the vote. The first takes the trend from the beginning of the campaign to September 19th, and applies it to the last eight non-polled days of the campaign. The second takes the trend over the final week of polling and applies that to the last eight days.
Is this how the vote will turn out on September 27th? It's impossible to know. As far as I am concerned my popular vote projection will be the result on Monday. But this is an interesting look at how the campaign could turn out, based on what has already happened.
We'll start with the campaign-long trend. The Progressive Conservatives started the campaign at 42%, and was last polling at 44%. That is a level of growth of 0.08 points per day. For the Liberals, they started at 41% and ended at 37%, a loss of 0.16 points per day.
The New Democrats went from 10% to 11%, for a growth of 0.04 points per day. The Greens grew at a rate of 0.08 points per day, going from 4% to 6%, while the People's Alliance went from 1% to 1.5%, or an increase of 0.02 points per day.
Obviously, these changes are hardly outside of the margin of error, and most are actually within the margin of error. But this is all the data we have.
That is a wide lead for the PCs, and as you will see below it creates a large David Alward majority government.
The trends over the last seven days of polling, however, were quite different. On September 13th, the Progressive Conservatives were polling at 47.9%, the Liberals at 37.3%, the New Democrats at 9.7%, the Greens at 4.7%, and the People's Alliance at 0.4%. On September 19th, they were polling at 44%, 37%, 11%, 6%, and 1.5%, respectively. That is a rate of growth of 0.19 points per day for the NDP and the Greens and 0.16 points per day for the People's Alliance. The Liberals declined at a rate of 0.04 points per day and the Progressive Conservatives at a rate of 0.56 points per day.
This demonstrates pretty well how the campaign has played out. Overall, it has been about PC growth and Liberal decline, but the second-half of the campaign has seen the Progressive Conservatives slipping. Which of these two narratives proves to be true will be discovered on September 27th.
With the trend of the last week, the Progressive Conservatives would still win 31 seats and form a majority government. The Liberals would win 22 seats and the New Democrats would win two.
Either way you slice it, the trends are positive for David Alward. While his vote seems to have been dropping of late, Shawn Graham has not been able to capitalize, and has been slowing sinking since the start of the campaign. Unless something radical has happened in this last week, or if the polls have been completely wrong, we should see a Progressive Conservative majority government elected on Monday night.
Hard to say how much of an impact last nights debate would have had, but it was a pretty clear victory for Graham.
ReplyDeleteAlward's performance in a CBC interview with Forestall was also less than stellar.
I wish their was polling data, but I get the feeling things are tightening up. I think it'll come down to the what happens in Saint John.
I don't think anything Graham does now-whether it is debates, signage or whatever-NO ONE BELIEVES OR TRUSTS HIM NOW OR WANTS HIM NOW. As far as Alward-it does not matter either-no one wants Graham and they'll go wherever but not a liberal government-NO ONE EVER WINS AN ELECTION-SOMEONE LOSES IT.GUESS WHO!
ReplyDeleteEric, when you make an estimate of 2.8% for the PANB - do you take into consideration the fact that they only have candidates in 14 out of 55 ridings?
ReplyDelete