Liberals favoured in closer PEI race

Prince Edward Island is holding its provincial election on May 4, a day before the vote occurs in Alberta. The PEI campaign has been over-shadowed by the dramatics in the West in polling as well.

The most recent poll (and if the 2011 campaign is any indication, perhaps the last poll) was commissioned by The Guardian and published on Saturday. It comes from the Corporate Research Associates, and shows Wade MacLauchlan's Liberals in a good position to be re-elected.

But at 44%, the Liberals' margin over the Progressive Conservatives has been reduced. The party has fallen 14 points since CRA last polled between February 9-28, though that was before Rob Lantz was named the Tories' new leader.

The PCs were up nine points to 35%, followed by the New Democrats at 15% (+3) and the Greens at 6% (+2).

Of the total sample, 13% was undecided (another 6% refused to answer or said they would not vote).

That 44% is the lowest the PEI Liberals have managed since August 2013, and it is just the third poll since the 2011 election to put the party below 45%. They captured 51% of the vote in October 2011.

For the PCs, this is their best poll since that election, when they took 40%.

The New Democrats appear to have halted their decline, after dropping over six consecutive quarterly polls from 32% in August 2013.

Is MacLauchlan the problem? Probably not. With 38% saying he would make the best premier, that puts him better or equal to where Robert Ghiz stood between June 2012 and February 2014.

It is instead the performance of Lantz, who with 28% jumped 18 points over interim leader Steven Myers's numbers, and is the highest any leader of the PCs has managed since before the 2011 election.

By contrast, the 10% that Mike Redmond scored as leader of the NDP was his worst.

Another poll emerged out of Prince Edward Island recently, coming from Abingdon Research. A B.C.-based firm that works mostly with conservative parties (but says it has no clients in PEI), the poll was passed over by the media. The results are broadly similar to what CRA found.

It put the Liberals at 43%, followed by the Tories at 27%, the NDP at 18%, and the Greens at 12%. The combined score for the parties that were not represented in the legislature (30%) is extraordinarily high.

One big asterisk for this poll is that it was conducted online. PEI is a small province, and building a representative panel for it has got to be tricky.

I have not developed a complete model for the PEI election, due to the province's history of having very little polling. But a generic swing model, taking into account each of the two polls' margin of error (hypothetical, in the case of Abingdon), gives us an idea of what to expect.

It gives us a Liberal majority, though one that could potentially be won by the skin of MacLauchlan's teeth. But that is at the extreme of CRA's margin of error, which puts the two parties virtually in a tie.

With CRA's poll, the Liberals would win between 14 and 24 seats, enough to secure another majority government. The Tories would win between three and 13 seats, setting them up for a slightly better performance than they had in 2011.

Abingdon gives the Liberals a more comfortable edge, with the closest seat count being 19 for the Liberals and eight for the PCs.

Neither poll shows the NDP or Greens with enough strength to win a seat, on paper at least. If the NDP does end up near 18%, I imagine Redmond could secure his seat. The same goes for Peter Bevan-Baker of the Greens, particularly if they take 12% of the vote. New Brunswickers recently showed that a Green leader can be elected even if the party finishes in fourth place, so PEI could do the same.

Barring a dramatic turn in fortunes brought on by the upcoming leaders debates, the Liberals look like they will be returned with a majority government. But there are not a lot of voters that need to be swung in PEI, so hold off on your bets.

Race narrows in Alberta, provincial NDP makes gains

Last week, the Edmonton Journal reported on a provincial political poll conducted by Abingdon Research for the Wildrose Alliance. Obviously, polls paid for and provided by political parties need to be taken with a grain of salt. We do not know how the questions were worded, in what order they were placed, and whether the Wildrose Alliance has kept more negative polls under wraps. But the results jive generally with the last polls we've seen from the province, so I think we can proceed with only a little bit of caution.

The poll is now almost a month old, but it showed the Progressive Conservatives leading the pack with 33.5% support, ahead of the Wildrose Alliance at 28.6%.

The Liberals trailed with 15.1%, tied with the New Democrats at 14.7%. The Alberta Party stands at 5.2%.

We don't really have a previous poll to compare this to, but if take the two polls that were released in January by Environics and Trend Research and average them out, we can see that the PCs have dropped almost six points since the beginning of the year. The Wildrose Alliance is down one point while the Liberals are down five.

The New Democrats are the ones who have gained, up almost six points since January. It could be a coincidence, but the party's success at the federal level may be trickling down.

The Alberta Party and others are up four points since those January polls.

With the results of this poll only, ThreeHundredEight projects a Progressive Conservative majority of 51 seats. The Wildrose Alliance forms the Official Opposition with 22 seats, while the Liberals and New Democrats take seven seats apiece.


This would be a bit of a breakthrough for the NDP, giving them their most seats since 1989 when they won 16 and formed the Official Opposition.

The Progressive Conservatives win 16 seats in Edmonton, with the NDP taking seven and the Liberals two. In Calgary, the Wildrose Alliance dominates with 15 seats, with nine going to the PCs and four to the Liberals.

In the rest of the province, the Wildrose Alliance wins seven seats, the Progressive Conservatives 26 seats, and the Liberals one.

The successor to Ed Stelmach, who should be officially gone in the fall, will hold the advantage against Danielle Smith. But with a very small gap between the two parties, the Wildrose Alliance is in a good position to make some serious gains. Swap the two parties and the Wildrose Alliance could form government. But being a relatively new phenomenom, the Wildrose Alliance would really need to pile up the votes in order to win a majority. The PCs should be more effective in turning votes into seats.

The next leader of the Progressive Conservatives will be faced with a serious challenge, and with the potential renewed strength of the New Democrats and the wildcard of the Alberta Party, the next election in this province should be exceedingly interesting.

BC NDP and Liberals tied prior to Clark win

Shortly before the vote was held on who would become the next leader of the BC Liberal Party, two polls were leaked to the Vancouver Sun. One was by Abingdon Research and the other was done by Léger Marketing. As they were conducted for the losing Kevin Falcon camp, their focus was on the danger posed by choosing eventual winner Christy Clark. But the polls still did have some interesting numbers for the provincial and federal campaigns in British Columbia.

In the Léger poll, the BC New Democrats led with 41%, followed by the BC Liberals at 37% and the BC Greens at 15%. The BC Conservatives stood at 5%. Interestingly, both pollsters did not prompt for the "BC Conservatives", only "Other". If respondents chose "Other", they were then prompted with the BC Conservatives, independents, and the Libertarian Party.

The BC New Democrats have their strength concentrated on Vancouver Island, as well as in Vancouver itself and in the northern suburbs. The BC Liberals, on the other hand, a stronger in the Interior, in the Valley, and in the southern suburbs of Vancouver. The Greens are stronger away from Vancouver, while the Conservatives had their best result in the Valley - Metro South region.

Abingdon Research had very similar results. While Léger had the two parties statistically tied, Abingdon put the BC Liberals and BC NDP at 38% each. The Greens followed with 14%, and the BC Conservatives stood at 6%.

Note that Abingdon Research's Chief Research Officer has a history with Angus-Reid and also did polling for the federal Conservatives in 2008, according to their website. I had not heard of Abingdon before this poll appeared, but as their results were within the MOE of Léger Marketing's I have no reason to consider these poll results anything other than reliable.

Like the Léger poll, Abingdon found the NDP performing best on Vancouver Island and in the Vancouver - Metro North region. They were tied with the BC Liberals in the Interior, while the Liberals hold a big lead in the Valley - Metro South region. The Greens were strongest on Vancouver Island while the Conservatives had their best result in the Interior.

Rather than do projections for each of these polls, I averaged them out and got 46 seats for the BC New Democrats, 38 for the BC Liberals, and one independent. That makes for a majority government for the BC New Democrats, though at this point they have no leader.

And that makes these polls little more than a look at what the situation was before the two leadership races. The BC Liberals have chosen Ms. Clark, while the BC New Democrats will make their choice in April. Ms. Clark has promised not to call a snap election at least until her chief opponent is chosen.

Abingdon also included some federal numbers in their poll. Not surprisingly, the Conservatives are well ahead at 44%, unchanged from their 2008 result.

The New Democrats stand at 24%, while the Liberals are at 17%. Both of these results are also very close to the last election.

Perhaps the most interesting result in these two polls was the breakdown of BC Liberal voters. According to Abingdon, 67% of BC Liberal voters support the federal Conservatives. Another 22% support the Liberals while 4% support the NDP and the Greens each.

Provincially, that would give 25% to the Conservatives, 8% to the Liberals, and about 2% apiece to the Greens and New Democrats. In other words, half of federal Conservative and Liberal support in British Columbia is found in the BC Liberal Party, while the BC New Democrats are shedding about 2/5ths of their support to parties other than the federal NDP. 

UPDATE: I neglected to add Angus-Reid's latest BC provincial poll to the pile. It was taken between February 15 and 17, and included 811 panellists. 

The result was 41% for the BC Liberals, 38% for the BC New Democrats, 11% for the BC Greens, and 4% for the BC Conservatives. Considering the standard margin of error, this is yet another poll showing the exact same close race around 40%.

Note that Angus-Reid also polled supporters of each party for who they thought would make a good choice as party leader. Among BC Liberal voters, Ms. Clark got 67%, predicting her leadership win. Among BC NDP voters, the leader is Mike Farnworth at 59%, followed by Adrian Dix at 45%, a gap similar to the one Angus-Reid found between Clark and Falcon.

UPDATE (II): A commenter pointed out a poll from Forum Research, asking respondents how they would vote with Clark or Abbott as leader. Check it out here.