I am excited to announce that I have launched a new Kickstarter Project for the funding of an eBook.
This eBook, tentatively and boringly titled "Political public opinion polling in Canada: 2013", will give a detailed and in-depth retrospective of the past political year in Canada through the lens of - what else - polls.
Divided into 14 chapters, the eBook will tell the story of the past year in federal and provincial politics within the context of polling, with the federal narrative divided into four chapters of three months apiece. In between those quarterly appraisals, 10 chapters focusing on each province in Canada will summarize a year in provincial political polling. But the eBook will not just be a recitation of numbers, it will be a tale of the year in politics and how polls can inform our understanding of what is going on. And yes, how they can also distort our understanding and mislead us.
The eBook will also contain charts of this site's aggregations for the year, as well as detailed tables of polls that have been released throughout 2013. This will make the eBook an invaluable resource for students of politics, those who work in and around the political world, as well as us hopeless political junkies. If the project is successfully funded, the plan is to make this an annual drive and publication. It will be a unique record of polling in Canada going forward.
The goal that I have set to have the eBook funded is $5,000, which must be reached within 30 days. It is an ambitious goal, but one that I think is realizable (if everyone who visits the site today pledged $1, the project would be funded in a matter of hours). It is also, I believe, a fair valuation of the work that I will need to put into the project to get it done by the end of February 2014.
Don't know what Kickstarter is all about? You can find out more here. TL;DR? It has been a very successful tool for funding creative projects. Pledges are made and only charged to the contributor if the goal is reached. If we fall short of the funding goal in 30 days, no money changes hands and the project does not go ahead. If we reach our goal before the 30 days are up, then we can brainstorm for some other projects to fund before the deadline! Say, a retrospective of 2012 as well or a blow-by-blow account of the 2011 election? Why not both!
You can make your pledge and track progress by visiting the project's Kickstarter page, which you can also reach by clicking on the banner at the top of this page.
So what do you get if you decide to pledge, in addition to helping to get the eBook published? Pledges of $10 or more will get you a copy of the eBook when it is completed, at least one month before the eBook is made available for sale to the general public. Pledges of $5 or more will get your name listed in one of the following supporter categories: Member of Parliament ($5), Official Party Status ($10), Third Party Status ($20), Official Opposition ($30), Minority Government ($50), Majority Government ($75), and the Natural Governing Party ($100).
A note to business owners: a pledge of $250 will get you listed in the "Governor General" supporter category as well as give you the rights to a banner ad on this site for two weeks (please get in touch with me first to ensure the ad meets this site's guidelines). A pledge of $500 will get you listed in the "The Crown" supporter category, the rights to a banner ad for four weeks, and the eternal gratitude of an adoring public.
Of course, individuals who want to pledge that much are free to do so as well, and I'd be happy to put a banner ad on this site for a charity of your choice (with their permission).
For those who don't have an eReader of any sort, the book will also be available to pledgers in PDF format.
I hope that potential pledgers might also consider the funding goal as an opportunity to contribute to the continued operation of this site, which is funded only through a minimal amount of advertising revenue.
Any and all pledges will be most appreciated, and in return you'll get what I believe will be both an enjoyable and interesting book to read, as well as a useful resource. If you do decide to pledge: thank you so much! If you can't afford to right now, please consider spreading the word! Let's get this project funded!
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
By-election post-mortem
The four federal by-elections last night played out as ThreeHundredEight forecast, with the Liberals retaining Bourassa and Toronto Centre, the Conservatives retaining Provencher, and Brandon-Souris being a toss-up riding that leaned slightly towards the incumbent Tories. So slightly, in fact, that the Liberals were less than 400 votes short of winning it.
This makes 22 by-elections without a wrong call by ThreeHundredEight, going back to June 2012. The Barometer will be put to the test again tonight in Carbonear-Harbour Grace in Newfoundland and Labrador. The model suggests the riding is leaning Liberal, though the PCs do have a slim chance of holding on to it. However, the forecast is for the Liberals under new leader Dwight Ball to take it by a narrow margin.
The results in Brandon-Souris, which were the most at-odds with the polls by Forum Research, showed the mettle of the By-Election Barometer. The forecast was that it was a toss-up between the Conservatives and Liberals, with the Tories considered to have a 52% chance of winning to 48% for the Liberals. In the end, the Tories won it by a single percentage point.
This was similar to the by-election this summer in Ottawa South, where the polls suggested the Tories were well-placed to steal former premier Dalton McGuinty's riding away from the Liberals. The model still considered it a toss-up that leaned slightly towards the Liberals, which turned out to be the case. It demonstrates the need to take into account the fundamentals in a riding, particularly when riding-specific polls are showing numbers that are wildly out of step with historical performances.
I assessed the performance of the polls for The Globe and Mail, and the results are not great for Forum Research. They missed Brandon-Souris by a wide margin and Provencher was off by a considerable degree as well. The polls were better in Toronto Centre and Bourassa, however. This record matches their performance in the Ontario by-elections this summer, where I gave them a score of 2.5 out of 5. Last night, they got 2.5 out of 4, for picking the right winner in Provencher but missing the respective levels of support for the Tories and Liberals.
Because of this very mixed record, I employed confidence intervals far wider than the reported margins of error of these polls. This turned out to be a good idea, but only captured some of the error. Of the 20 calls Forum Research made (one for each party + others in the four ridings), 60% fell within the 67% confidence interval and 85% fell within the 95% confidence interval. Clearly, these wide ranges will need to be stretched even further, but that is the usefulness of these extra data points.
The performance of the confidence intervals, based solely on Forum's polling, compared to the results can be seen in the chart above.
The misses at the 95% confidence interval were primarily in Brandon-Souris. The results for the Liberals and Conservatives were so off that a +/- 10-point confidence interval still did not capture the result. The Greens in Provencher also fell outside of the 95% confidence interval.
At the 67% confidence interval, only the Others in Toronto Centre and the Conservatives in Bourassa were wide of the mark. In Brandon-Souris, the Liberals and Conservatives fell outside the interval, while all parties fell outside of it in Provencher. In short, even compared to Forum's past errors in by-elections the ones in Brandon-Souris and Provencher were extraordinary.
Note: I inquired with Forum about their methods for Brandon-Souris in relation to the reports of multiple calls being received by some residents. I was told by Lorne Bozinoff that they used the same random dialing in all ridings, and that no panel of phone numbers was used to dial the same people over and over again. I was also told that if a number was called in consecutive nights, that person's results were dropped from the sample and that all three of their final polls (Forum also polled on Nov. 23, but did not publish the results which were similar to the poll of Nov. 24) were independent samples.
 |
| By-Election Barometer Record |
The results in Brandon-Souris, which were the most at-odds with the polls by Forum Research, showed the mettle of the By-Election Barometer. The forecast was that it was a toss-up between the Conservatives and Liberals, with the Tories considered to have a 52% chance of winning to 48% for the Liberals. In the end, the Tories won it by a single percentage point.
This was similar to the by-election this summer in Ottawa South, where the polls suggested the Tories were well-placed to steal former premier Dalton McGuinty's riding away from the Liberals. The model still considered it a toss-up that leaned slightly towards the Liberals, which turned out to be the case. It demonstrates the need to take into account the fundamentals in a riding, particularly when riding-specific polls are showing numbers that are wildly out of step with historical performances.
I assessed the performance of the polls for The Globe and Mail, and the results are not great for Forum Research. They missed Brandon-Souris by a wide margin and Provencher was off by a considerable degree as well. The polls were better in Toronto Centre and Bourassa, however. This record matches their performance in the Ontario by-elections this summer, where I gave them a score of 2.5 out of 5. Last night, they got 2.5 out of 4, for picking the right winner in Provencher but missing the respective levels of support for the Tories and Liberals.
Because of this very mixed record, I employed confidence intervals far wider than the reported margins of error of these polls. This turned out to be a good idea, but only captured some of the error. Of the 20 calls Forum Research made (one for each party + others in the four ridings), 60% fell within the 67% confidence interval and 85% fell within the 95% confidence interval. Clearly, these wide ranges will need to be stretched even further, but that is the usefulness of these extra data points.
The misses at the 95% confidence interval were primarily in Brandon-Souris. The results for the Liberals and Conservatives were so off that a +/- 10-point confidence interval still did not capture the result. The Greens in Provencher also fell outside of the 95% confidence interval.
At the 67% confidence interval, only the Others in Toronto Centre and the Conservatives in Bourassa were wide of the mark. In Brandon-Souris, the Liberals and Conservatives fell outside the interval, while all parties fell outside of it in Provencher. In short, even compared to Forum's past errors in by-elections the ones in Brandon-Souris and Provencher were extraordinary.
Note: I inquired with Forum about their methods for Brandon-Souris in relation to the reports of multiple calls being received by some residents. I was told by Lorne Bozinoff that they used the same random dialing in all ridings, and that no panel of phone numbers was used to dial the same people over and over again. I was also told that if a number was called in consecutive nights, that person's results were dropped from the sample and that all three of their final polls (Forum also polled on Nov. 23, but did not publish the results which were similar to the poll of Nov. 24) were independent samples.
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