New federal poll from Forum, Alberta poll from Insights West

Forum Research has a new federal poll out today, showing continuing strong numbers for the Liberals.

Insights West also has a new poll on the Alberta provincial scene, focusing on the 'unite-the-right' debate, and where supporters for each of the party think they are on the political spectrum.

Despite Donald Trump's wins, U.S. primaries far from over

The American presidential primaries have been playing out for six weeks — and they are not even close to being over.

That is because the outcome will remain uncertain for another three months — or even until July, when the Republican Party could have to hash things out on the convention floor in Cleveland, Ohio.

You can read the rest of this article on the U.S. primaries here.

Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party gains in 2 new polls

Two new polls suggest that the Saskatchewan Party's position is improving as the province's election campaign continues into its second week.

The CBC Saskatchewan Poll Tracker now pegs the Saskatchewan Party to hold the lead with 56.1 per cent support, a gain of just under three points since last week's update. The New Democrats have slipped about two points to 32.7 per cent, while the Liberals and Greens trail with 7.3 and 3.2 per cent support, respectively.

You can read the rest of this article on the Saskatchewan provincial election here.

The Pollcast: Breaking down the Manitoba election

Voters in Manitoba will be heading to the polls on April 19, as Premier Greg Selinger dissolved the legislature today.

But will he still be in the job on April 20?

You can listen to the podcast with guest Cameron MacIntosh, the CBC's senior report in Manitoba, here.

How embattled NDP Leader Tom Mulcair stacks up against his predecessors

The New Democrats' rise to Official Opposition status in 2011 was sudden and euphoric, its fall back to third-party status traumatic.

Nevertheless,Tom Mulcair's electoral performance in 2015 ranks positively against those of NDP leaders who preceded him.

However, the party's concentration of support in Quebec masks regional weaknesses that make Mulcair look much less impressive when stacked up against his predecessors.

You can read the rest of this article on Tom Mulcair's NDP leadership situation here.

Week in Polls: Manitoba PCs hold lead, NDP down nationally, margin narrows in Ontario

The latest poll out of Manitoba, which will vote on April 19, shows the Progressive Conservatives under Brian Pallister continuing to hold a wide lead over the governing New Democrats and surprising Liberals.

Mainstreet Manitoba poll

The new poll from Mainstreet Research put the PCs at 50%, down just one point from Mainstreet's previous poll of February 11. Rana Bokhari's Liberals were up three points to 23%, while Greg Selinger's New Democrats were unchanged at 21%. The Greens followed with 6% support, down one point.

These numbers have been holding steady for some time, as Mainstreet has pegged the three parties within a tight band of support over their last three polls: 50% to 52% for the Tories, 20% to 23% for the Liberals, and 20% to 21% for the NDP.

With half the vote and against a divided field, the PCs would win a big majority government with these numbers. And that should come as no surprise: in addition to their 27-point lead in the 'rest of Manitoba', they are also up 18 points in Winnipeg.

Seat and vote projections for the Manitoba election will be launching soon, likely after next week.

Liberals dominating in Forum national poll

New federal numbers from Forum Research show the Liberals with a big national lead as well as some impressive numbers at the regional level. The party suffering, though, is not the Conservatives, but rather the New Democrats.

Forum federal poll

The Liberals led with 49%, up three points from Forum's previous survey of December 6-8. The Conservatives were unchanged at 32%, which matches their election result, while the New Democrats were down three points to 10%.

That is half of the vote they took on October 19.

The Liberals put up some massive leads in this poll: 15 points in British Columbia, 16 points in Ontario, 37 points in Quebec, and 50 points in Atlantic Canada. The Conservatives were only ahead, though by 34 points, in Alberta, while the Prairies were a toss-up.

This is a very bad poll for the New Democrats, who ranked fourth in Quebec with just 11% (behind the Bloc, which was down to 13%). The best result for the NDP in this poll was in British Columbia, and there it only scored 14%.

Margin narrows in Ontario

Despite polls showing Kathleen Wynne being one of Canada's least popular premiers, her party is still running competitively with Patrick Brown's Progressive Conservatives in Ontario.

The new poll from Mainstreet Research (which quickly seems to be supplanting Forum as Canada's busiest pollster) puts the Tories at 36%, down four points from Mainstreet's previous poll of November 1. The Liberals were up five points to 33%, while the NDP was up one point to 26%.

These numbers match quite closely to a Forum poll from the end of December.

Regionally, the province is quite divided. Only in Southwestern Ontario, where the Tories are up by 10 points, and in Toronto, where the Liberals are up by six, does any party have a robust lead. Elsewhere, the margins are much closer: a four-point PC lead in Eastern Ontario, leads of two points for the Liberals in Northern Ontario and the Hamilton/Niagara region, and a lead of just one for the PCs in the 905 area code.

Lethbridge poll provides window on Alberta

Polling by Lethbridge College shows some interesting results in the city of Lethbridge, providing a bit of a glimpse on where things stand in the province today.

At the provincial level, the poll found the Progressive Conservatives leading in Lethbridge with 33% support, followed by the New Democrats at 26%, Wildrose at 22%, and the Liberals at 12%.

Compared with the provincial election results in the two ridings of Lethbridge East and Lethbridge West, this represents a slide of between 26 to 31 points for the NDP — a huge number. All the other parties have taken advantage, though primarily the PCs. They were up between nine and 12 points, the Liberals up between six and seven points, and Wildrose between three and five points.

The NDP also seems to be suffering at the federal level in Lethbridge. The poll put the Conservatives ahead with 50%, followed by the Liberals at 31% and the NDP at 8%.

The boundaries are not contiguous, but to put these numbers into perspective the Conservatives took 57% of the vote in the federal riding of Lethbridge in October. The Liberals took 19% and the NDP took 21%, suggesting that the federal NDP has also taken a tumble in the region.

Trump, Clinton heavily favoured in Super Tuesday

About a quarter of delegates for the Republican and Democratic primaries will be handed out over the next week, and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are poised to dominate.

Our go-to site, FiveThirtyEight, gives Trump some big leads in some of the states voting on Tuesday. According to their "polls-plus" forecast, Trump is up by 5.5 points in Virginia, 10 points in Georgia, 10.5 points in Alabama, and 25 points in Massachusetts. Oklahoma is a toss-up while Ted Cruz is up by 13 points in Texas.

On the Democratic side, Clinton is up by eight points in Massachusetts, nine points in Oklahoma, 32 points in Virginia, 33 points in Arkansas, 35 points in Tennessee, 36 points in Texas, and 49 points in Georgia. She is also ahead by 39 points in this weekend's primary in South Carolina.

Only in Vermont is Bernie Sanders forecast to win on Tuesday — by 74 points!

At the national level, there hasn't been much change in the last week. Trump leads with 35%, followed by Cruz at 19%, Marco Rubio at 16%, and Ben Carson and John Kasich at 8% apiece. For the Democrats, Clinton is ahead with 49% to 39% for Sanders.

My CBC articles this week

• The Pollcast: Super Tuesday could be decisive for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton - Joining me in this week's episode of the Pollcast is Keith Boag, the CBC's senior reporter in Washington. We discuss the state of the presidential race, and Keith has lots of fascinating things to say.
• Brad Wall retains wide but shrinking lead in new Saskatchewan poll - My analysis of the latest numbers from Mainstreet for the province. You can expect regular analyses from me on the provincial race at CBC Saskatchewan throughout the campaign.
• Justin Trudeau rates highly on economy and approval in new polls - I broke down the approval ratings data from the latest polls by the Angus Reid Institute and Forum Research. I also took a look at the 'Best PM' numbers from Nanos Research and Forum. You can check out my hit with Power and Politics at this link, too.
• Donald Trump could hold off Marco Rubio, polls suggest - My look at how realistic it is to think that Rubio could ride the establishment wave to beat Trump in a winnowed feed. Spoiler: it isn't all that realistic.

First post-election poll is not bad for the Liberals

The first post-election poll is out, and it is a doozy.

Does a poll conducted four years before the next federal election mean a lot? No. Of course, it says nothing about the next election and, really, has no impact on where things stand today. But it is an indication of how Canadians are reacting to the new Liberal government. And before you say "It's only Forum", remember that Forum nailed the election results almost exactly.

Oh, and it marks the first salvo in what will undoubtedly be a barrage of Conservative leadership polling that we will see between now and the date that the next leader is actually chosen.

The poll gives the Liberals the support of 55% of Canadians, an enormous number that the Conservatives never managed in any poll throughout their tenure. My records only go back so far and are incomplete the earlier they go, but even back in the days of 2002 and 2003, when the Liberals faced a divided opposition and the coming Paul Martin juggernaut was poised to deliver Liberal rule for the rest of time, the party was only polling at around the 50% mark.

The Conservatives have dropped down by seven points to 25%, a number they were flirting with in the dark days of the Mike Duffy scandal. The New Democrats have also dropped by a similar amount, down to just 12%, a score that brings them back to the earliest days of Jack Layton.

The numbers in this poll are just astounding: 61% for the Liberals in British Columbia, 56% in Ontario, and 58% in Quebec (the Conservatives, remarkably, are holding firm in Alberta and the Prairies). The NDP takes the brunt of the hit in most parts of the country, down to just 11% in Quebec. All told, these numbers would likely deliver around 245 to 280 seats to the Liberals, with the Conservatives taking 55 to 90 and the NDP less than 10.

This poll does not look like a normal honeymoon poll, or at least not like one the Conservatives ever saw after their election victory. The two post-election polls in 2011 taken at about the same time after the vote as this Forum poll (by Abacus Data and Harris-Decima) gave the Conservatives between 38% and 40% support, identical to the 39.6% they managed on election night. Instead, the NDP was up a little to 33%, dropping the Liberals to 15% to 16% support. There was no honeymoon — just a confirmation of where people stood a few weeks earlier, with maybe a little NDP uptick at the expense of the Liberals.

Polling averages, 2009-2015

The significance of this new poll should not be exaggerated, as its significance is minimal. But there are some worrying signs in these numbers for the New Democrats. Thomas Mulcair's approval rating is now a net -5, after being a robust +17 even in the last week of the campaign. Justin Trudeau has gone from a +9 to a +40, with Canadians approving of him by a margin of 3 to 1.

More problematic for the NDP is that a lot of their supporters seem perfectly fine with the Liberal victory. Fully 53% of current NDP supporters approve of Trudeau, compared to 62% who approve of Mulcair. And 18% of NDP voters say they are very satisfied with the election's outcome. That increases to 72% when we include those who say they are somewhat satisfied.

Of course, much of this satisfaction could merely be with the defeat of Stephen Harper. And Trudeau is at a very high risk of losing much of this new support if he doesn't deliver entirely on his progressive rhetoric. Nevertheless, the NDP has some work to do to convince its traditional supporters that while Trudeau might sound good to them, Mulcair and the NDP remains the real deal.

MacKay leads the name-recognition primary

Perhaps more significant (and we're still talking low significance here) were Forum's numbers on the Conservative leadership race. As he has been in Conservative leadership polling for the entirety of Stephen Harper's time in the job, Peter MacKay was at the top of the list.

Among all Canadians, MacKay was the choice for Conservative leader of 29%, more than double the next most popular candidates.

These were John Baird and Rona Ambrose at 14% apiece, despite the fact that Baird has ruled himself out and Ambrose has been officially ruled out due to her becoming the interim leader.

Next, at 11% each, were two Alberta MPs: Jason Kenney and Michelle Rempel. Scoring below 10% was Kellie Leitch (9%), Tony Clement (7%), and Rob Nicholson (6%).

Among Conservative supporters, MacKay was still well ahead of the pack at 32%, followed by Baird at 18%, Kenney at 16%, and Ambrose at 12%.

Do these numbers mean much? Not really — as the former leader of the Progressive Conservatives and one of the Tories' most high-profile cabinet ministers he should be expected to have the most name recognition. In fact, it is somewhat impressive that Rempel and Leitch, who were both only elected for the first time in 2011, scored as well as they did, beating out such fixtures of Conservative politics over the last decade or more like Clement and Nicholson.

There was some regionalism in the numbers, with the former Nova Scotia MP MacKay scoring best in Atlantic Canada and Kenney and Rempel doing significantly better in Alberta than they did nationwide.

And in terms of gains or losses, if any can be determined, it does seem like Ambrose's rise to the interim leadership of the Conservative Party has helped her. The last Forum poll asking the question in May 2014, if we exclude those who were undecided in that survey (as that was not an option in this one), had Ambrose at 8% among all Canadians, compared to 14% today. MacKay dropped from 38% to 29%, while Kenney, Baird, and Clement (the only other names to be in both of these polls) had no movement of any significance. So, possibly MacKay has lost a little lustre in the eyes of Canadians, or there is just too much apples-to-oranges comparisons here to make anything of it. I'll lean towards the latter.

Alberta NDP maintaining lead

21h10 Update - Final (?) poll of the campaign confirms NDP lead, Notley advantage

What could be the last poll of the campaign was out this evening, from Insights West. Like the other polls, it gives the NDP a very comfortable lead over Wildrose and the PCs, though it does suggest the race in Calgary could be close enough to force some tight contests. But what is most revealing may be the leadership numbers.

Insights West was last in the field between March 27-30, so before the campaign began. That doesn't make it useful from a trends perspective.

The poll gave the NDP 42% support, with Wildrose trailing at 27% and the PCs at 23%. This falls well into line with the other polls we have seen (below).

the poll awarded 4% to the Liberals, 3% to the Alberta Party, and 2% to other parties. A total of 9% of the sample was undecided.

As the poll was conducted online, no margin of error applies. See the link above for full details on the questions asked.

The NDP led in all three regions of the province. In Edmonton, it had 58% support to 16% for both the PCs and Wildrose.

In Calgary, the NDP had 35% support, against 30% for Wildrose and 27% for the PCs. Of the three polls released since yesterday, this is the best one for both the Tories and Wildrose here.

In the rest of the province, the NDP had 35% with Wildrose at 32% and the PCs at 25%.

Fully 82% of respondents agreed it was time for a change of government, while just 35% agreed that they would be upset if the NDP won.

This makes the current climate very different from the 2012 Alberta or 2013 B.C. elections. Rachel Notley is much more popular than either Danielle Smith or Adrian Dix were in those campaigns.

Insights West found that Notley's approval rating was an astounding 62%, with just 21% of Albertans disapproving of her. Apart from Jim Prentice, she scored the lowest on the number of 'unsures'.

Prentice had an approval rating of just 25%, and he was the only leader with a majority disapproval rating (63%).

The other leaders had mixed ratings, with Brian Jean posting a 35% to 40% split, David Swann having an approval rating of 33% to 36% disapproval, and Greg Clark splitting the question 20% to 23%. A majority of Albertans did not have an opinion about the Alberta Party leader.

And just like other polls have shown, opinion has deeply soured on Prentice. Just 6% of Albertans said their opinion of him had improved during the campaign, compared to 52% who said it worsened. By contrast, 52% of Albertans said their opinion of Notley improved, while just 11% said it worsened. These are very consistent numbers with what we've seen from ThinkHQ and Léger last week.

Notley beat Prentice by a wide margin on being the better leader on health care, the environment, education, crime, housing and poverty, and government accountability. She was narrowly ahead, 28% to 24%, on the economy and jobs, and narrowly behind, 23% to 27%, on energy and pipelines. This is a little asterisk to keep in mind tomorrow night.

But on who would make the best premier, Notley scored 37% to just 18% for Prentice and 13% for Jean. Christy Clark and Alison Redford did not trail so far, nor were their approval ratings as low as Prentice's, the day before their victories.

16h18 Update - EKOS poll still shows NDP in front, lead growing

EKOS, in the field as recently as yesterday, adds to the trend of the Alberta New Democrats holding their own and, seemingly, in little danger of a last minute slide.

EKOS's previous poll was last in the field between April 25 and 29.

Since that survey, the NDP has picked up 2.1 points to move further into the lead with 44.3% support. Wildrose was up 2.7 points to 24%, while the PCs were down 0.6 points to 22.5%.

All margin of error shifts, but certainly arguing against a softening of NDP support and a rebound by the Tories. They are almost 22 points behind the NDP. How plausible is it really to still consider this a three-way race? We wouldn't in any other election.

The Liberals were down 0.7 points to 5.6%, while the Alberta Party was down 2.4 points to 2.2%. Interestingly for them, their support dwindled to almost nothing everywhere but Calgary, where their leader Greg Clark does have a shot (the projection currently awards his party a seat).

In battleground Calgary (sarcasm), the New Democrats were up to 40.5%, followed by the PCs, down to 22.3%, and Wildrose, down to 22.2%.

The NDP slipped slightly in Edmonton to 58.6%, followed by the PCs at 18.8% and Wildrose, which jumped to 17.7%.

In the rest of the province, the NDP was up to 35.5%, followed by Wildrose at 31.1% and the PCs at 25.9%. Both parties were up slightly as well.

These regional numbers are very similar to what Forum found in its May 2 poll below.

09h53 Update - Alberta NDP maintaing lead

One of the biggest polling issues with the 2012 Alberta election campaign is that too many pollsters dropped out of the field too early. We'll never know if they would have captured anything different had firms like Léger, ThinkHQ, or Abacus Data stayed in the field over that final weekend.

Luckily, it seems that some pollsters are not going to make the same mistake this time. The last round of polls dropped out of the field on Wednesday, leaving Albertans almost week to mull things over. The new round of polls has continued in the field throughout the weekend, and might even include some interviews from today.

Two post-April 29 poll have already been published or are on their way. One, conducted by Forum Research and published yesterday on the Edmonton Journal website, was in the field on Saturday. The other is forthcoming from EKOS Research. Frank Graves hinted at his numbers yesterday on Twitter, and they showed the NDP's lead growing - not shrinking.

Forum was last in the field on April 23, when it was the first mainstream pollster to see the NDP moving into majority territory.

The NDP led in this new poll with 42%, up four points from the previous survey. Wildrose was down one point to 24%, while the Progressive Conservatives were up one point to 21%.

The Liberals were down two points to 5%, while the Alberta Party was down one, also to 5%.

Another 3% said they would vote for another party (down two points).

None of these shifts were outside the margin of error, though the results look a lot like the polls we saw last week.

The numbers argue forcefully that the NDP's lead is going nowhere. There was much speculation that the round of polls published on Thursday and Friday showing the NDP in majority territory would have an effect on people's voting intentions. Instead, it seems to have had no effect. If the PCs were going to stage a comeback, we'd see it somewhere in the trends. Trailing by 21 points is not something that can be overcome in a matter of days. Even Wildrose's lead in 2012 was just eight points, on average, in the final week.

The New Democrats led in the poll in Edmonton with 55%, followed by the Tories at 19% and the Wildrose at 13%. These numbers were mostly unchanged.

The NDP was also ahead in Calgary, moving up to 37%. They were followed by Wildrose at 26% and the PCs at 21%, both of which were stagnant. Even Calgary might not turn out to be the three-way race many people are expecting.

And the NDP also led in northern Alberta, with 38% to 30% for Wildrose and 24% for the PCs, and central Alberta, with 32% to 29% for Wildrose and 27% for the PCs.

Wildrose led only in southern Alberta, with 42% to 37% for the NDP and 16% for the PCs.

Again, we'll have to wait and see what happens on Tuesday. But a lot of the prognosticators saying that the NDP doesn't have the map to win a majority government are ignoring these sorts of numbers. In this poll (which admittedly has small regional samples, but which is in line with others) the NDP has at least 32% outside of the two main cities and is ahead by double-digits in Calgary. If those numbers hold, then they most certainly have the math to win a majority government. These things can happen - would anyone really have considered the NDP a lock to win all of conservative Quebec City's ridings in the last federal election? If the NDP can win Quebec City, it can win Calgary.

Post-debate polls suggest Wildrose slipping, but what about the NDP?

As debates go, the Alberta leaders debate last night seemed potentially consequential. Most debates tend to be dull affairs where each party leader lives up to their lowest expectations. But last night did not feel like that. What do the polls say?

One poll done just after the debate concluded, by Mainstreet Technologies, showed a big win for the NDP's Rachel Notley, with the Tories' Jim Prentice in second. That fit with the consensus view. But a voting intentions poll done by Mainstreet released this afternoon suggests that the NDP has not had a boost, though Wildrose has taken a hit.

A poll by Forum Research, done on April 22 and 23 (so before and after the debate), showed a similar slip for Wildrose. But the Tories dropped as well, and the NDP surged into first place. Is it an outlier, or a sign of things to come?

The projection, as always, takes the middle road. The NDP is now first in the vote projection with 35%, enough to give the party 26 to 45 seats. That flirts with a majority, but is mostly in minority territory.

Or Official Opposition territory, as with 32% Wildrose can win between 25 and 42 seats. That is down from the 35% the party had in the last update.

The position of the PCs has improved slightly, with 25% and five to 31 seats. That no longer puts them only in third place. They could still potentially finish in second, at least in regards to the likely averages.

At 5% and one to three seats, the Liberals can hope for the balance of power but nothing more.

Forum's poll, reported by the Edmonton Journal, put the NDP up 10 points from their previous survey of April 7-9. They led with 38%, followed by Wildrose at 25% (-5) and the Progressive Conservatives at 20% (-7).

Mainstreet's poll in the Calgary Herald showed Wildrose down three points since the poll of April 20, but still narrowly ahead with 32%. The NDP was unchanged at 31%, while the Tories were up one point to 26%.

These are opposing trends, though the margin of error in the Forum poll (+/- 3%, with Mainstreet's at +/- 1.5%) could explain much of the divergence.

The two agree on Wildrose being down, which is a believable result considering Brian Jean's middling performance last night. But they disagree on the trends for the NDP and the PCs. Mainstreet has the Tories still very much in the race. Forum has the NDP at almost double the PCs' support.

Part of that may be one of the oddities of the Forum poll. In total, Mainstreet gave the Liberals and Alberta Party 12% support. Adding the 'others' to that number, we get to 18% for Forum. Considering the slate of candidates these three categories include, that is just not plausible. The Liberal score may only be slightly inflated, but for the Alberta Party to have 4% to 6% support, they would need to average about 10% to 14% in each of the 36 ridings where they are running candidates. That just isn't very likely.

And what of the 5% Forum awarded to other parties? That will have to go somewhere, and is nowhere to be seen in Mainstreet's estimations (which do not include the option).

These polls are in some serious disagreement, but that discord might not be as dramatic as it seems considering the margin of error. The broader trends are still relevant - the New Democrats doing historically well, Wildrose polling just under its 2012 support but high enough to win a large number of seats, and the PCs in third. We will need some more polling, and particularly some polls done once the debate can sink in a little more (and perhaps fade from memory) to get a better idea of the precise state of the race.

But we shouldn't be too shocked at these results. The electorate is extremely volatile in Alberta, and for the last two weeks we have only heard from Mainstreet. Sooner or later, another voice was going to get involved and muddle things.

Three-way race, but Prentice lagging rivals

A new poll by Forum Research shows Wildrose, the New Democrats, and the Progressive Conservatives locked in an improbable three-way race in Alberta. But the approval ratings of the leaders shows that Jim Prentice is in trouble.

The new projection reflects this three-way battle, with Wildrose narrowly ahead with 30% of the vote (or between 28% and 32%), enough to give them 35 seats (or between 22 and 44). The PCs trail with 28% of the vote (or between 26% and 30%) and 28 seats (or between 19 and 45), while the New Democrats stand at 26% (24% to 28%) and 18 seats (14 to 20).

Interestingly, the polls now point to a minority government. Though both Wildrose and the PCs do hit the majority mark of 44 seats at the very top of their ranges, the odds are far more in favour of either party falling short. The minimum/maximum ranges, however, show that things are close enough that almost any result for either of the two parties is plausible.

The poll by Forum is directly in line with what every other recent poll has shown. The last three polls, all taken in April, show a very tight cluster of results: 30% to 31% for Wildrose, 25% to 27% for the PCs, and 26% to 28% for the NDP. They also all give the Liberals 12%.

So it is a pretty clear picture. And this poll from Forum is a welcome change from its normal procedure, as the survey was taken over three days. Forum usually polls in one evening, as Mainstreet Technologies has been doing in this campaign. A sample drawn over a few days is going to get something a little more representative, as the kind of people at home on a typical Tuesday night might be different from those at home on Wednesday and Thursday (were the Flames playing, for instance?). The poll also has less potential of being skewed by a single day's events.

This survey gave Wildrose 30% against 28% for the NDP and 27% for the Tories. The Liberals trailed with 12% support, while the Alberta Party was at 2%.

Wildrose was ahead in Calgary by a comfortable margin, with 35% to 28% for the PCs and 20% for the NDP, and was ahead outside of the two main urban centres.

In southern Alberta, Wildrose had 40% to 23% apiece for the PCs and NDP. In central Alberta, the margin was narrower at 35% for Wildrose to 30% for the Tories and 22% for the NDP. And in northern Alberta, the race was closest at 33% for Wildrose and 29% for the PCs. The NDP was third with 19%.

The New Democrats had the lead in Edmonton, with 40% to 26% for the Tories and 18% for Wildrose.

The Liberals did best in Calgary with 14%, while the Alberta Party managed 3% in Calgary and southern and northern Alberta.

These regional results are broadly in line with what other polls have shown.

But what makes this poll stand out is that it included approval ratings for the five party leaders. And they look bad for the premier.

With an approval rating of just 22%, Prentice was less popular than his three chief rivals, and only put up a better score than Alberta Party leader Greg Clark. And even there, Prentice was benefiting from Clark's obscurity. If we remove the undecideds, Prentice's 26% approval rating is woefully behind everyone.

But those undecideds are very important. Most Albertans appear to have made up their mind about Prentice (his disapproval rating, at 63%, is horrible). But a large portion have not come to terms with who the other leaders are.

This is most significant for Brian Jean, the Wildrose leader and the leader who is the most unknown of the big four. Fully 47% said they don't have an opinion of him, and among those who do it was split: 29% approval to 24% disapproval. Jean has a lot of potential for growth, but also for decline. It all depends what Albertans make of him when they see more of him.

David Swann of the Liberals has a similar problem, with 44% still unsure of him. His disapproval was slightly higher than his approval rating, at 31% to 25%.

Rachel Notley has a lower unsure score, but at 38% it is still rather high. But the good news for her is that her approval rating is the best in the province at 42%, meaning that she would still have a strong score going into election day even if every undecided went over to the disapproval column. Among decideds, her approval rating is a glittering 67%. This suggests that her party's numbers may not be so shaky.

These leadership numbers tell us a lot. Prentice and the PCs are definitely in trouble, but only if Jean manages a decent campaign and voters stick with Notley. But there are still a lot of undecided Albertans - if Prentice can convince them that Jean is not up to be premier and that Notley, while likable, is also not up to the job, he can pull it off. But he is starting this campaign from a position of real weakness.

Forum tried to poll PC party members. What happened next was strange.

Polling for a party's leadership campaign is fraught with hazard. While it can reveal how the general population and party supporters feel about the leadership candidates - and that is useful information - they can't tell us anything specific about the actual outcome. Only a very small proportion of party supporters actually vote in a leadership race, and that proportion is even smaller when we are talking about the general population.

There are two ways to go about polling a party's membership. One way is to obtain a list of party members and call them, which has happened in the past. The less common route is to do a standard poll and ask people if they are party members.

That's what Forum did in its latest poll concerning the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership race. Good for them for trying, but logistically it should be a nightmare. According to the PCs, they have over 80,000 members, representing 0.6% of Ontario's adult population. You'd have to do a poll of 50,000 people to get a decent sample size of 300 party members, if the poll is done properly. With the response rates that IVR gets, you'd have to call about 2.5 million households.

Instead, Forum polled 881 Ontarians and found 65 paid-up party members. This is revealing, for several reasons.

Those 65 paid-up party members represent 7.4% of the sample, quite a bit more than what it should have been if the poll was completely random. Forum found 12 times as many PC party members in its poll than it should have.

This raises a few issues. First is the question of whether we can believe these 65 respondents. If the poll was done correctly, some of them would have been lying or misunderstood the question.

Second is the question of accuracy. If Forum could find 12 times as many PC members as it should have, what does that say about its sampling methods?

The third question is, perhaps, the most interesting one. What if active political partisans are just so much more likely to participate in a poll than the rest of the population, that being over-represented by a factor of 12 is actually not a sign of a problem with the poll, but a problem with the people who take part in a poll in the first place?

Response rates are tiny these days, and particularly with IVR polling. Nova Scotia's electoral laws require pollsters to report their response rates, and when Forum did in 2013 it showed that rate to be about 2% to 3%. That is a large proportion of potential voters not bothering to pick up the phone or complete the survey.

If that 2% to 3% is largely made up of people who are active partisans, does that skew the poll? Other polling has shown that poll-takers are more likely to be politically active and do volunteer work. The important question, then, is whether these people are politically different than the rest of the population. If they are, than the poll will be led astray. If they aren't, than the poll will be effective.

Putting aside these existential questions, the poll itself had a counter-intuitive result. PC party members broadly lined-up with the views of the general population and of PC supporters.

Of those 65 people who claimed to be party members, 51% said they preferred Christine Elliott. Another 13% said they preferred Monte McNaughton, while 10% opted for Patrick Brown. In the chart above, each box represents one of those 65 respondents.

Another 14% said none of these three contestants were their preference, while 11% were undecided.

Among PC supporters, a larger group, Elliott had 35% to 15% for McNaughton and 11% for Brown. Among all Ontarians, Elliott had 24% to 7% for McNaughton and 6% for Brown.

There are many caveats with these sorts of numbers, some of which were spelled out above. But the most important is, of course, sample size because the margin of error of a sample of 65 people is +/- 12.2%.

When we look at the poll with these margins of error, we get a much less clear picture.

(This is also a good example of how the margin of error applies differently depending on each candidate's support. Brown, at 10%, cannot be as low as -2%.)

Now we see Elliott at between 39% and 63%, McNaughton between 5% and 21%, and Brown between 3% and 17%.

If we look at just the decided PC party members, the margin of error increases to +/- 14.1%, and Elliott's support ranges between 55% and 83%, compared to 7% to 29% for McNaughton and 4% to 24% for Brown.

By these numbers, we would consider Elliott a lock to win on the first ballot. McNaughton and Brown are fighting for second place. However, we also have a pretty good idea that this is not the actual contours of the race.

We won't know the final tally of each candidate's membership drive until the end of April, when the PCs release the numbers. But Brown has claimed about 40,000 members, with Elliott claiming 34,000 and McNaughton 20,000. One oft-quoted source puts McNaughton closer to 6,000, which is a more intuitive result. We just don't know for sure, though any misleading candidate will be embarrassed once the numbers are announced.

So the numbers are probably not too far off, particularly if McNaughton is at 6,000 instead of 20,000 (the three claims add up to 94,000, but 80,000 if the source is correct).

At those rates, Brown should be somewhere between 43% and 50% of newly signed-up members, compared to 36% to 43% for Elliott and 8% to 21% for McNaughton.

This ignores the voters that were already with the party when the race started (some 10,000) and those signed up by Vic Fedeli and Lisa MacLeod (both of whom endorsed Elliott).

So now we get to the question of accuracy. Considering the limitations of Forum's poll, their Elliott numbers are, perhaps, plausible. Those undecideds could be from the ranks of the original party members, who should represent some 13% of the total. But to have Brown and McNaughton within the same error bands with at most half of Elliott's support, and McNaughton narrowly favoured among the two, does not quite align with what we know about the race.

This really puts the poll in question, and highlights the limitations of this attempt at getting at the voting intentions of party members. Does Elliott really have the kind of advantage that Forum gave her? It doesn't seem so, but we won't know for sure until the votes are counted in May.

Liberal recovery or blip?

The projection was updated yesterday, reversing the first instance of the Conservatives leading in both the vote and seat projection. The Liberals are now back on top in the polling average, and have closed the gap in the seat count to just five. Does this mean the Liberal slide has come to a halt, or is it just a blip?

The Liberals lead again with 34.2%, up a point from the last update incorporating polls done to Feb. 3. The Conservatives dropped 0.6 points to 32.9%, while the NDP was down 0.7 points to 19.3%.

In terms of seats, the Conservatives have dropped three to 140, and their range has gone from 128-162 to 125-158. The Liberals have increased their seat tally by 13 to 135, and their range from 106-140 to 114-152.

The New Democrats have dropped 12 in the seat count, and their range has fallen from 53-81 to 43-77. This was due primarily to a drop in Quebec, where the party is down seven seats from the Feb. 3 update.

The bulk of the Liberals' gain, however, came in Ontario, where the gap between them and the Conservatives widened from 0.5 points to 2.9.

Let's look at the two polls that prompted the update. They were by EKOS Research for iPolitics and Forum Research for the Toronto Star. Both left the field on Feb. 10, but the EKOS poll had a longer tail.

Forum was last in the field from Jan. 27-28, and recorded a relatively large shift in voting intentions since then. The Liberals were up five points to 39%, re-taking the lead from the Conservatives, who were down three points to 32%. The NDP was down three points as well to just 17%.

The increase in Liberal support is outside the margin of error, whereas the drop for the Conservatives and NDP is not. But before Liberals get too excited, consider their recent trend in Forum polling: 36% - 41% - 37% - 34% - 39%. On average, Forum has had the Liberals wobbling by about four points from one poll to the next. This would suggest to me that this bump in Liberal support is more house effect than anything real.

That is, at least in terms of its size. EKOS also recorded a modest rebound by the Liberals, which argues that perhaps the party is indeed recovering from their recent slide.

EKOS was last in the field Jan. 28-Feb. 3, and put the Liberals up 1.6 points to 33.8%. The Conservatives were down three points to 32%, while the NDP was up one point to 18.9%.

Only the Conservative drop was outside the margin of error, but both Forum and EKOS recorded similar trends for the Tories and Liberals. For EKOS, this poll halts a series of surveys showing Liberal/NDP decline and Conservative growth.

Can we reconcile the two polls? One wonders whether we should bother, considering Forum's history of volatility. But if we extend the polls' results to their respective margins of error, we get the following:

As you can see, the ranges for the Conservatives and NDP overlap quite comfortably. The ranges for the Greens do not, and the Liberals only meet at 36%. I do not think that this is coincidental. The Greens are generally higher in EKOS's polls than in any others, while the Liberals are generally higher in Forum's.

The two polls suggest that the shift in voting intentions may have occurred among men. Forum recorded a jump of six points for the Liberals among men, outside the margin of error, while EKOS also showed a statistically significant jump of 4.6 points for the party. Both showed the Conservatives sliding by four to six points. Together, it puts the Liberals at either 34% or 40% and the Conservatives between 34% and 35% among this demographic. There was no similarly consistent shift among female voters.

One anomaly of the Forum poll was in British Columbia, where the Liberals were up 15 points to 47%, the Conservatives were down 11 points to 24%, the NDP was up six to 23%, and the Greens were down nine to 5%. That is a lot of movement, particularly in the context of EKOS finding no party shifting by more than a handful of points. EKOS put the parties at 31%, 29%, 21%, and 16%, respectively.

In Quebec, the province everyone is keeping an eye on, both Forum and EKOS showed a bit of a reversal for the Conservatives. Forum had the party down to 21% and EKOS had them down to 23%, though both of those shifts were inside the margin of error. They are both still, however, relatively high numbers for the party in Quebec. The Liberals appeared to take advantage in both polls, Forum recording a significant jump of eight points (but EKOS just two).

The Liberals increase nationwide coincided with a drop in Justin Trudeau's disapproval rating, from 44% to 38%. His approval rating was up slightly to 48%.

The Conservatives' decrease, meanwhile, coincided with worsening numbers for Stephen Harper. His approval rating was down four points to 36%, while his disapproval rating was up five points to 56%, the worst numbers EKOS has recorded since November. This may not be too worrying for the Prime Minister, though, as his approval rating was up in Ontario and down in the West, where he is at little risk.

Thomas Mulcair's numbers were fairly steady, at 51% approval to 36% disapproval. Regionally, his numbers improved west of Quebec and worsened east of Ontario.

It would be helpful to have a third (and fourth?) poll weigh-in on this, preferably one which uses a different mode of contact. Has the Liberal slide been reversed? Is the Conservatives' momentum coming to a halt? Or will this prove to be just a pause in the trends that have been building for the last few months? We'll see.

Breaking down the Sudbury results

The provincial by-election in Sudbury culminated in a somewhat anti-climactic fashion, with Glenn Thibeault (the NDP MP turned Ontario Liberal) prevailing by a little more than six points over the NDP's Suzanne Shawbonquit. The wildcard in the race, Andrew Olivier (the Ontario Liberal turned independent), took less of the vote than expected. But was he really a spoiler?

Let's first take a look at the shift in vote share since the 2014 provincial election.

Thibeault captured 41.2% of the vote, increasing his party's share by 1.9 points. Shawbonquit finished with 34.9%, a drop of 7.3 points over the NDP's victorious performance in 2014.

Olivier took 12.3%, not a bad performance by an independent candidate, but well below expectations.

The Progressive Conservatives' Paula Peroni saw her vote share (she ran last time as well) fall 6.3 points to 7.5%, while the Greens' David Robinson was down 0.4 points to 3.2%.

On the face of it, it would seem that Olivier drew votes from the NDP and the PCs, suggesting he could have been a spoiler for the NDP. But the New Democrats would have had to hold virtually all of their vote to beat Thibeault, a tough assignment considering that many Sudburians used to voting for Thibeault the New Democrat might have been willing to vote for Thibeault the Liberal.

In terms of actual votes, no party made any gains. The total number of voters dropped by some 8,000, as turnout fell to around 34%.

Of the three major parties, Thibeault saw the smallest drop, of 2,670 votes. Peroni fell 2,730 votes while Shawbonquit saw the largest slide, from 14,274 votes to 8,985 (a drop of 5,289).

Overall, turnout had dropped to about 76% of what it was in 2014. That means Thibeault outperformed that baseline, retaining 80% of the votes that the Liberals took in 2014.

Robinson retained 68% of 2014 Green voters, while Peroni retained just 41%. The problem for the NDP was that Shawbonquit retained 63% of her voters, when she needed at least 74%. In other words, the NDP just needed to tread water in order to hold off Thibeault, but they disproportionately lost voters, and so the by-election.

Was Olivier the cause? Quite possibly. If the number of votes cast had dropped uniformly across the board due to falling turnout, Shawbonquit would have won with about 10,900 votes and a lead of 700 or so over Thibeault. Instead, she under-performed that mark by about 1,860 votes. Peroni also under-performed, by about 1,610 votes. In total, these two parties took about 3,470 fewer votes than they should have, all else being equal. Perhaps not coincidentally, Olivier captured 3,177.

Just looking at the math, it doesn't seem like many Liberals went over to Olivier's camp. Undoubtedly some did, but they were more than made up for by New Democrats and PCs who voted for Thibeault. It seems more likely that Olivier drew support from the NDP, reducing their chances of victory. Or, at the very least, he did not draw enough Liberals to make up for the number of New Democrats who followed Thibeault across the metaphorical aisle.

Mixed results for the by-election polls

Polling in by-elections is risky business. It becomes even riskier when word that the OPP believes the Liberals did something under-handed to try to get Olivier out of the race drops on election day.

It is impossible to know the effect that news might have had on the outcome. Many voters may not have heard the news when they cast a ballot - certainly those who voted in the advanced polls, and potentially most of the voters who cast a ballot on election day itself (not everyone checks the news as frequently as you or I may). And maybe even the news wouldn't have had much of an effect, merely confirming what people were already thinking. In the end, the OPP appears to be looking at some individuals within the Liberal Party, not Glenn Thibeault. Voters may have compartmentalized the two - something they probably would not have been able to do if Thibeault wasn't already a known quantity.

So that is one thing to keep in mind when looking at how the polls performed. Another thing to keep in mind is the effect of the polls themselves. All of the polls over-estimated Olivier's support. Might voters who were aware of the polls have decided to cast a ballot for one of the two front runners, rather than the all-but-guaranteed third place finisher? Lastly, even the most recent polls were out of the field on Monday, three days before election day in a topsy-turvy campaign. So, some mitigating factors.

Nevertheless, none of the three final polls published in the last stages of the campaign did particularly well. But two of the three did correctly identify the winner.

Mainstreet Technologies had the smallest amount of error, totaling 14.1 points for the five major candidates (or 2.8 per party). Mainstreet had the gap at five points, close to the 6.3-point gap that actually occurred. But the results for Thibeault, Olivier, and Peroni were all outside the margin of error for the sample of decided voters (and taking into account the estimated support of the each candidate). However, the story Mainstreet's poll told was closest to the truth.

Forum Research's poll had only a little more absolute error, but the story it told was false. Two of Forum's three polls throughout the campaign had Shawbonquit ahead of Thibeault, including the last one.

Total error for Forum was 17.3 points, or 3.5 points per party. Again, though, Thibeault's result was outside the margin of error, as was Peroni's and Robinson's. Forum was the only pollster to get Olivier's support within the margin of error.

Oraclepoll Research had the largest degree of total error at 20.1 points (or four points per party). But it has to be rated ahead of Forum for not having pushed the narrative of a very, very close race that the NDP had better than even odds to win. Oraclepoll always had Thibeault ahead, and he ended up winning.

Oraclepoll was the only firm to get Thibeault's score within the margin of error, as well as Peroni's. But the results for Shawbonquit were well off the mark, as were Olivier's. Note, however, that Oraclepoll was out of the field the earliest of the three. It finished polling on Saturday.

So, not exactly a terrific performance by any pollster. At the same time, however, the polls were far better than what we have seen in some other by-elections. Mainstreet and Oraclepoll both said Thibeault would win, and he did. Forum said the race would be close, and it wasn't a landslide. I think, considering the drama of the campaign and the amount of time between the final polls and the results, we can give the polls a passing grade.

Conservatives and Liberals effectively tied

Two new polls, both showing the Conservatives and Liberals only one point apart (and to the advantage of the Tories), have nudged the vote projection into a virtual tie. That means the Conservative seat lead, which stood at 10 on Jan. 13, has now increased to 17. Nevertheless, the Conservatives are no closer to majority territory, and in fact still overlap a great deal with the Liberals.

The Liberals are still narrowly ahead in the aggregate, with 33.4% support to 33.2% for the Conservatives. That is a small drop of 0.3 points for the Liberals since the last update, and a gain of 0.8 for the Conservatives. The New Democrats are up 0.7 points to 21.3%.

In terms of seats, the Conservatives still lead with 139 (up three), or a range of between 122 and 155. Interestingly, the high range for the Tories has not moved at all. Instead, only the lower range has increased, from 117. It means the odds that the Conservatives would win fewer seats than the Liberals on current polling levels have lessened, but the Tories are no closer to the magic number of 170.

The Liberals have dropped four seats and their high range has fallen from 144 to 138. Their low range of 107 seats, however, is steady.

The NDP is up two seats to 74, but its low and high ranges have narrowed from 54 to 87 seats on Jan. 13 to 60 to 84 seats now.

The Bloc's high range has slipped from nine to four seats.

Let's take a look at the two new polls added to the model.

The poll by Forum, published in the Toronto Star on the weekend, put the Conservatives up two points (since Forum's last poll of Jan. 5-6) to 35% and the Liberals down three points to 34%.

The NDP was unchanged at 20%, while the Greens and Bloc were each up one point to 6% and 5%, respectively.

None of these shifts were outside the margin of error.

Abacus showed similar stability, with the Conservatives and Liberals each down one point to 33% and 32%, respectively, since Abacus's last poll of Dec. 18-20. The NDP was up two points to 24%, while the Greens were down one to 5% and the Bloc was unchanged at 4%.

All of these shifts were also within the margin of error (of a probabilistic sample of similar size), but it is clear from both Forum's and Abacus's trend lines that the Liberals are drooping to the benefit of the Conservatives (if not in absolute terms, at least in relative terms).

This is also the first time since Justin Trudeau became Liberal leader that two consecutive polls by two different pollsters have shown a Conservative edge.

Forum does have a regional oddity in its numbers, though. In Quebec, Forum gave the Conservatives 26% support, putting them in second place ahead of the NDP (25%) and behind the Liberals (27%). That is absurdly high for the Conservatives (you need to go back to before the 2008 election to find the Conservatives routinely polling at that level), but Forum has often had higher numbers than usual for the Conservatives in Quebec. And broadly speaking, the Tories have been experiencing an uptick in the province, so perhaps this is a product of that.

Both Forum and Abacus showed a close race in Ontario, the Conservatives ahead in B.C., Alberta, and the Prairies, and the Liberals in front in Atlantic Canada. Quebec was the bone of contention.

The projection model is showing some interesting regional fluctuations as well. In British Columbia, the Liberals have now fallen to second place, though they are unchanged at 31%. The Conservatives are up 3.1 points to 31% as well, and are narrowly ahead of the Liberals. Their seat range has improved from 13-18 to 15-22. The NDP has dropped by 2.2 points to 24%, and their range from 10-13 to 6-11.

The Liberals are sliding in the Prairies. They are now at 29%, and have been consistently dropping since mid-December, when they were at 34%. The NDP has benefited, improving from 17% in mid-December to 23% now.

Vote projection in Quebec

In Quebec, the Liberals dropped 1.2 points (and from 20-30 seats to 19-26 seats) to 28%, putting them narrowly behind the NDP, which was up 1.6 points to 28% (and from 29-47 seats to 34-46). The Liberals have been sliding here as well, having had 34% support in mid-October.

But it is the Conservatives who have taken advantage, up from 13% in early November to 20% now. They have pushed the Bloc into fourth place, and are now estimated to be in play in 11-16 seats.

A couple regions to keep an eye on, then. Overall, things remain quite close. The Conservatives are inching up in the national tally, but have actually dropped a little in Ontario. That is what is keeping them from pulling ahead more decisively in the seat projection.

What are the polls really showing in Sudbury?

As by-elections go, the one in the provincial riding of Sudbury in Ontario has been pretty dramatic. Accusations of skulduggery, a Liberal-turned-independent candidate mixing it up, and a floor-crosser that managed to ford both the ideological gap between two parties as well as the federal/provincial line.

Some of the polls have been showing a close race between Liberal candidate Glenn Thibeault and the NDP's Suzanne Shawbonquit, with independent Andrew Olivier earning a big chunk of the vote. Other polls have shown Thibeault with a relatively comfortable lead. What gives?

At first glance, it is very puzzling that the polls by Forum Research and Oraclepoll Research can differ so much. Both firms have been in the field twice at exactly the same time. Oraclepoll was in for three to four days, with the Forum polls right in the middle of those sampling periods. So timing should have nothing to do with it.

Forum's first poll on January 13 put the gap at just two points, with Shawbonquit narrowly ahead. Olivier scored just 1%. Then on January 21, the gap was three points for Thibeault as he dropped seven points and Shawbonquit fell 12. Olivier made a miraculous 21-point gain, which Forum called a surge.

Meanwhile, Oraclepoll gave Thibeault a lead of 13 points on January 12-15 at 39% to 26% for Shawbonquit, with Olivier at 19%. On January 20-22, the gap was 16 points (42% to 26%), with Olivier at 20%. In other words, while Forum was showing a major shift, Oraclepoll was showing stability.

So who's right?

There are many reasons to trust Oraclepoll's numbers more than Forum's. Here's why.

Firstly, Forum is based out of Toronto and Oraclepoll is based out of Sudbury. Right out of the gate, the local firm has an advantage both in terms of local knowledge and a local area code showing up on the caller ID.

Secondly, and most importantly, Oraclepoll is conducting a superior survey. Forum is doing its polls via IVR, as it always does. It jumps into the field for a few hours on one evening, gathers its 500 to 800 responses, and reports the numbers a day or two later (response rates being what they are for Forum, it probably needs to call 25,000 to 80,000 households to get even those small samples).

Though it doesn't say explicitly, we can assume that Forum is not calling cell phones. This is because, unlike land lines, it is not possible to know for certain where a respondent on a cell phone is living. This is a problem in by-elections, as ridings do not entirely occupy an area code. This is not an issue in provincial or national polling. Cell phones can be included there without issue, and usually are.

Update: Commenter DL (see below) points out that targeting cell phones in a billing area is straight-forward, so Forum may indeed be calling cell phones. The inability to call cell phones pinpointed to a specific riding would be more of a problem in a city like Toronto where there are multiple ridings within one municipality.

Oraclepoll, on the other hand, is doing its polls with live-callers and it explicitly says that it is including cell phones in its sample (perhaps it has a list of local cell phones to call from). It is also in the field for several days, and according to its press release is calling back numbers where respondents did not answer up to five times before giving up. That is how a poll is supposed to be done.

Forum is getting responses from whoever is home between, say, 7 PM and 9 PM on January 13 and January 21 and is willing to answer a survey. Oraclepoll is doing everything that is reasonably possible to reach everyone it is calling. The potential for a biased sample is far lower.

Lastly, Forum's 1% result for Olivier on January 13 defies logic. At the time the poll was released, people were very surprised that Olivier, who had a relatively high profile, was scoring just 1%. That his number jumped from 1% to 22% in eight days makes little sense, particularly when Oraclepoll was showing his support levels to be steady at between 19% and 20% over the same period. While it is conceivable that the discrepancies in the results for the Liberals and NDP can be explained away by sampling issues and statistical probability, the discrepancy for Olivier's numbers are virtually impossible.

I don't know what happened in Forum's January 13th poll. But it simply doesn't make sense.

In that survey, Forum inquired as to whether Sudburians (Sudburites? Sudburers?) approved of the candidates on offer. The responses there just don't line up with the voting intentions numbers it recorded.

At the time, the poll found that 95% of respondents were aware or had an opinion of Thibeault, compared to 75% for PC candidate Paula Peroni and just 61% for Shawbonquit. But Olivier, who had just 1% support in the same poll, had 88% recognition - better than either the NDP or PC candidates.

That poll also suggested that 48% of all respondents (including undecideds and those who did not know him) approved of Thibeault, indicating that he was converting about 80% of sympathizers into supporters. Shawbonquit, with 41% approval, was converting an incredible 99% of sympathizers.

Peroni's approval was just 28%, as she was unknown to many respondents, but she was converting just 45% of sympathizers into supporters.

Olivier, though, had an approval rating of 60% of all of those sampled - and this is including those who did not have an opinion or did not know him. That was higher than any other candidate. According to the poll, we are thus supposed to believe that Olivier was converting just 2% of his sympathizers into supporters. If you can believe that, I have a bridge that spans the width of Lake Huron to sell you.

I think we can reasonably conclude that the January 13 poll by Forum can be tossed aside and discarded. Forum's January 21 poll has no similar problems, and support levels for Olivier and Peroni are similar to those recorded by Oraclepoll. Considering the sample sizes, Shawbonquit's support is also within the margin of error of these two polls, and Thibeault's is only slightly outside of it.

Due to the advantages that Oraclepoll's survey has over Forum's (not to mention the poor record Forum has in by-elections outside of Toronto), the benefit of the doubt should probably go to Oraclepoll. And that's even with the smaller sample size (the margin of error of decided voters would be just under +/- 6%).

If we use that margin of error to estimate support ranges, we'd get Thibeault at between 36% and 47%, Shawbonquit at between 21% and 31%, Olivier between 16% and 25%, and Peroni between 5% and 11%. That is probably as close as we can get to the truth at this stage of the campaign, which will come to a merciful end on Thursday.

Polls show Liberals still leading, but by how much?

Two polls published over the last two days show the Liberals still leading in national voting intentions. But the surveys by Léger and EKOS Research differ significantly over the size of that lead - as well as whether it is shrinking or growing.

First, the numbers themselves.

Léger, in the field between December 8 and 11 and reporting for Le Devoir, found the Liberals to have 38% support, up two points from where the party stood in Léger's previous survey of November 3-6.

The Conservatives were down one point to 32%, while the New Democrats were unchanged at 19%.

Support for the Greens was down one point to 6%, the Bloc Québécois was up one point to 4%, and support for other parties was unchanged at 1%.

None of these shifts would be outside the margin of error of similarly sized probabilistic samples.

EKOS, in the field between December 4 and 12 for their new poll published by iPolitics, gave the Liberals 31.8% support, down 1.7 points from the previous survey of November 4-6.

The Conservatives were up 0.6 points to 30.8% and the New Democrats were down 0.5 points to 20%.

The Greens were down 1.9 points to 7.8%, the Bloc was up 1.5 points to 5%, and support for other parties was up two points to 4.6%.

Only the shifts for the Greens and others would be outside the margin of error.

The differences between these two polls are well within the margin of error for the Conservatives, New Democrats, and Bloc, and just about within the margin of error for the Greens. So those discrepancies can be easily explained away by standard sampling error.

But the differences between the Liberals and support for other parties is harder to explain. About three points of the discrepancy between EKOS and Léger for the Liberals cannot be explained by the margin of error, and about 2.6 points for 'other' parties. That those numbers are very close may not be coincidental, as EKOS routinely has support for other parties to be significantly higher than other firms. Throughout 2014, for example, 'others' have averaged 3.3% support in EKOS's IVR polling, compared to 1.1% for everyone else.

Discrepancies like these, however, can often be chalked up to methodological differences. EKOS is conducting its poll via interactive voice response, whereas Léger did its poll online. The two modes of contact may inherently produce slightly different results. The focus, then, should be on the trends instead.

Here there is a little more clarity. Over the last three Léger polls, all three major parties have been very steady. The Liberals went from 37% in October to 36% in November, before ending up at 38% here. That is a statistically insignificant wobble. The Conservative numbers have been 32%, 33%, and 32% - very stable. And the NDP has registered 21%, 19%, and 19% support over that time.

It is a little more complicated with EKOS. In the time span that Léger did those three polls, EKOS has done four. Three of them were on virtually the same dates, but the first was done online. The last three were done via IVR. It wouldn't be appropriate to look at the trends by mashing together those two very different modes of contact.

So if we just look at the IVR polls by EKOS conducted since the end of October, we see similar stability to Léger: 33%, 34%, and 32% for the Liberals, 28%, 30%, and 31% for the Conservatives, and 21%, 21%, and 20% for the NDP. Trend-wise, at least, Léger and EKOS are not in complete disagreement.

But Léger is showing a very different sort of margin between the Conservatives and Liberals, growing from three points to six points in this poll. Considering the stability in the numbers, we could say that the margin is simply moving back and forth with the wobble. But EKOS's trend is more towards convergence, with the gap being about five points at the end of October, four points at the beginning of November, and now one point. If those trends continue, the Liberals will be overtaken. On the other hand, if Léger's trend continues the Liberals will continue to lead comfortably.

Adding to the confusion this morning is a new poll by Forum Research, which I only noticed after I had updated the averages (it will be added tomorrow). The poll gives the Liberals 41% to 33% for the Conservatives and just 17% for the NDP. This would suggest Conservative stability, a Liberal uptick, and consistent NDP decrease. But Forum's one-day flash polls are perhaps more vulnerable to showing wonky results.

Returning to Léger and EKOS, however, the two polls do tell us something. The parties' support appears to be relatively stable, solidifying the newer, more competitive race that has taken shape since the summer. And the NDP remains stuck in third place without any sort of momentum.

But the differences in the numbers themselves have enormous consequences. If these were the final polls of an election campaign, we'd have a long night ahead of us.

With EKOS, the Conservatives would manage to win a plurality of seats, taking 138 to 125 for the Liberals. The NDP would be reduced to 60 seats, while the Bloc would benefit from vote splits to take 13 seats in Quebec and obtain official party status again.

With Léger, however, the Liberals would win the plurality of seats with 146, the Conservatives taking 134 and the NDP just 55. The Bloc was not high enough in Léger's poll to be in a position to win more than a seat.

These seat numbers tell different stories. In the EKOS scenario, Stephen Harper might try to stay in office and govern with a minority. The opposition might then topple the government, but would need to work together to convince the Governor-General to give them a chance to govern rather than sending Canadians back to the polls (which could be the other outcome). The role of the Bloc would be marginal, but the party would be 'back' and regain much-needed funds and staff.

In the Léger scenario, convention would allow Justin Trudeau to head-up a minority Liberal government that would likely rely on the NDP to survive. Unlike the EKOS scenario, the Liberals and NDP would not necessarily have to formalize any sort of agreement, which might be more palatable to their bases. Harper likely steps down and a leadership race ensues, delaying any threat of an election, while the Bloc is marginalized further and might just cease to exist.

And all of this is with a few percentage points of difference, showing just how significant minor shifts can be when the race gets close. If things continue this way, particularly if the NDP can regain some ground, 2015 is setting up to be one of the most exciting elections in recent memory.

Will Conservatives drop, Liberals gain in Monday's by-elections?

Update on Election Night: Answer? Yes. The Conservatives took a hit in their vote share more or less in line with how they have performed in past by-elections, but nevertheless put up some decent and respectable results with (at time of writing, with still some votes to be counted) 63% in Yellowhead and 49% in Whitby-Oshawa. They also won both ridings, which in first-past-the-post is all that matters.

The Liberals had a good night in terms of vote share increase, jumping to 41% in Whitby-Oshawa (almost tripling their share) and 20% in Yellowhead (increasing it more than sixfold). But they still came up short. The Liberals will do well in 2015 if they can replicate these kinds of swings, but will not go very far if they just replicate these close losses instead.

The New Democrats had a bad night in Whitby-Oshawa, dropping to just 8%. They held their own in Yellowhead, however, with 10%. But the party's future prosperity lies not in rural Alberta, but in seat-rich Ontario. The drop of more than half of their vote share in Whitby-Oshawa is not a promising sign. But these are still just by-elections, when a two-horse race can have a stronger influence on strategic voting than might be the case in a general election. Nevertheless, little silver lining to be had for the NDP. 

In terms of the polls, Forum should have quit when it was ahead. The polls of November 11 that I wrote about below were quite close, but their election eve polling of November 16 was worse. And in the case of Yellowhead, much worse.

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The Conservatives have put up poor results in byelections since winning a majority government in 2011, and will again be put to the test in two contests in Ontario and Alberta on Monday. Will they be able to hold on to their two seats?

You can read the rest of the piece on CBC.ca. It goes over some of the regional-level polling Alberta and Ontario, the by-election record of the major parties since 2011, and how the Conservative government's record stacks up.

Let's briefly here go over the by-election polls that were out this morning. They were conducted by Forum Research, and we all know how hit or miss their by-election polling has been in the past. One thing to take into consideration, however, is that Forum's by-election record is actually not too bad in the GTA, where the Whitby-Oshawa by-election is being held. Their notable misses took place in Alberta, Manitoba, and elsewhere in Ontario. We'll see if that trend continues on Monday.

Forum now has it as a close race in Whitby-Oshawa, with Pat Perkins of the Conservatives at 44% and Celina Caesar-Chavannes at 40%. That represents a narrowing of the gap, as Perkins does pick up three points while Caesar-Chavannes picks up eight compared to Forum's poll of October 27. The NDP's Trish McAulife is down three points to 12%.

That it has become a close race is a little bit of a surprise. The Flaherty legacy is strong in the riding. So, we should take these results with a little caution. When Forum has been off in the past, often it was an over-estimation of the challenger's support. So that would suggest Perkins has more of an edge than the poll indicates.

In Yellowhead, we get our first poll of the campaign. Jim Eglinski of the Conservatives was well ahead with 62%, followed by 16% for the Liberals and 12% for the NDP. These are intuitive numbers at the very least.

Unless Whitby-Oshawa flips, the thing I will be looking for on Monday is whether the Conservatives continue to take a significant hit in these by-elections to the benefit of the Liberals, continuing to corroborate what the polls are showing to be the case at a wider level.