Friday, May 20, 2016

Provincial poll aggregations to be added


You may have noticed last week that I added a poll aggregation page for the upcoming provincial election in British Columbia. It is at the top of the right-hand column of the site.

Today, I have also added one for Nova Scotia and one for Ontario (they are a little further down the right-hand column).

My intention is to continue adding these pages until I have one for all 10 provinces. Links to them will be in the right-hand column, and they will be ordered from top to bottom according to the electoral calendar.

Though there are not always a lot of polls for every province, I've set these up so that they can be an easy reference for the latest polls. Each page features an aggregation (including a regional aggregation, if regional breakdowns exist), the monthly poll averages chart for the province, and links to all recent polls so that you can read them yourselves.

As time allows, I will add seat projections to these pages.

As I'm sure long-time readers have noticed, I have cut down drastically on original content here on ThreeHundredEight.com. The reason is simple — because I now work for the CBC, I do not have the time or energy to dedicate to original content here. I hope that these provincial poll reference pages (in addition to a federal one eventually) will give you reason to still come to the site frequently.

I will also continue to post snippets and links to my articles and podcasts for the CBC. That's the analysis you can expect to find here on a daily basis, whereas the provincial poll averages will be updated on a weekly basis as new polls are published.

I've also changed the font used at ThreeHundredEight.com to update the look of the site, which was getting very dated. A small tweak that I hope makes the site a little more readable. Obviously a complete overhaul of the design would be better, but that is not in the cards for the time being.

Comments on these changes are welcome!

The Pollcast: The state of the Conservative leadership race


With Michael Chong launching his leadership campaign this week, the race to replace Stephen Harper now has three contestants. What are their chances?

With a year to go before members of the Conservative Party cast ballots, Chong has joined fellow Ontario MP Kellie Leitch and Quebec MP Maxime Bernier in the marathon race. None of them, however, are seen as front runners — which is why they have launched their campaigns early in order to build up their profile and organization.

Can they use the time ahead of them to build a constituency large enough within the party to prevail? What impact might the upcoming party convention have on the race? And who will be the next Conservative to throw his or her hat into the ring?

Joining me to break down the race are Conservative insiders Tim Powers of Summa Strategies and Chad Rogers of Crestview Strategy.

You can listen to the latest episode of the Pollcast here.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: not a coin toss yet


Last week, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had drawn almost even in a general election match-up. The gap between the two candidates had dropped to just one point.

Headlines blared that the race for the White House was a toss-up. Clinton and Trump were neck-and-neck. Much ink was spilled.

The next day, Reuters/Ipsos was back in the field with their five-day rolling poll. This time, the gap between the two candidates had widened again to four points, a more conventional margin. The poll went mostly unnoticed.

Welcome to the fevered coverage of public opinion polling in the U.S. presidential election, which will culminate a mere 173 days from now. Expect polls which show a competitive race to get outsized attention compared to their duller counterparts.

You can read the rest of this analysis of the U.S. election here.