Turning poll results into estimated election outcomes

I devised a means of taking public opinion surveys and calculating what they would mean if they accurately reflected election outcomes in 1993.  I have therefore had the opportunity to compare what I projected about an election outcome and the actual results over the course of many elections.

I can say with certainty that this is more an art than a science although an algorithm is the basis for the calculation. The polls I used at first were scientific in that they were random samples based on telephone surveys (many polls today don't qualify as truly random). However, there is no guarantee that the electorate will follow mathematical rules when they actually vote. For example, the seat forecasts (including mine) all underestimated how well the CAQ would do in the recent Quebec election. I have had some very accurate results and some with significant errors. Along the way I have learned enough to know who is good at this and who is not.

A host of younger (I am now a senior citizen) bloggers and political scientists have got into this game. The best known in Canada is Eric Grenier of threehundredeight.com but there are many others including Bryan Breguet, Kyle Hutton of Blunt Objects, Canadian Election Watch, Dan Arnold of Calgary Grit, Barry Kay of the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy (LISPOP for short) and Earl Washburn of Canadian Election Atlas. Overall, I would say the work of all of them is quite good.

Not so Forum research. Yes, they have had some good outcomes but others that are downright bizarre, including their current seat projection based on a poll that has the Ontario PCs ahead by five points in public opinion, but trailing the Liberals in expected seats.

I am not the first to notice there are problems with Forum's methods, but it is their polling methodology that typically is the focus of attention.

One good thing about Forum is that they typically put the results of their surveys on the internet. However, consider the following two poll results and seat projections from Forum:

Forum would have us believe that almost identical polls taken less than four months apart would produce two quite different outcomes for the Liberals and PCs even though their vote shares are identical. It simply isn't believable. A second and in my mind more serious issue is that even though the NDP in these polls has a vote share less than 1% different from its 2011 vote percentage in both cases, the seat projection suggests the NDP would lose 8 seats from its 2011 total. This would occur despite the fact that most of its competitive races are run against the Liberals, who are down significantly from their 36.5% vote share in 2011 in both Forum surveys. Again it isn't believable. Newspapers use Forum and that dominates secondary and social media coverage, but my recommendation would be to pay attention to the seat forecasts of 308 or LISPOP or any of the others before taking Forum seriously.

For what it is worth my own seat projection using Forum's latest numbers is PC 49 seats, Liberal 36 seats, NDP 22 seats (a majority is 54 seats). Almost never would a party trailing by five points finish ahead of its rival in an election. It is true that the Liberal vote is more efficient as Forum says, but there limits to vote efficiency.

TC thinks the campaign dynamics will be what matters in Ontario, how important the alleged scandals turn out to be, and how much fear Tim Hudak inspires in the centre and left. More on Ontario in the future.

The Supreme Court Senate decision: Was it a blow to Harper?

I have noted that many commentators have somehow managed to construe the federal government's loss on Senate reform in the Supreme Court as simply a crafty way for our clever prime minister to dispose of a long unwanted campaign promise. For example here is Campbell Clark in the Globe and Mail:

The Supreme Court said no to the Prime Minister’s Senate-reform plans, and his democratic-reform minister has backtracked, under fire, on his elections bill. All is proceeding according to plan for Stephen Harper.

More accurately, these two events on Friday were not body blows to the Prime Minister. They were tactical manoeuvres executed without suffering political damage.

I read various other commentaries in this vein. One honourable exception was Andrew Coyne who said the following, which TC thinks is dead on:

After the wreck of the Harper government’s Senate reform ambitions, it was patiently explained in various media that this was not the debacle it seemed. Yes, eight years of legislative effort had come to a crashing halt, and yes, the whole thing was eminently foreseeable, and yes, the government was made to look awfully foolish, but if you glanced at it sideways and squinted a little you could see this was actually the best thing for Stephen Harper, a neat way of getting him off the hook for a promise he couldn’t possibly deliver and probably wasn’t all that interested in anyway and certainly he can’t have been surprised and maybe he’s even secretly delighted and possibly this was what he intended all along.

When it comes to Senate reform the analysis that Harper was just not that interested in Senate reform does not withstand scrutiny of the issue's history. The modern movement for Senate reform dates to the Triple E movement that came out of Alberta in the mid-1980s. Its most prominent proponent, Bert Brown, was appointed to the Senate in 2007 by Stephen Harper after an Alberta Senate "election" held in 2004.

Many pundits have referred to Senate reform as a commitment that came from the Reform Party. What is less well known is that the person Preston Manning entrusted with putting together the first Reform election platform in 1988 was none other than Stephen Harper. He made sure that Senate reform was a Reform platform priority. The famously controlling Mr. Harper also ensured that the promise made its way into the 2006 Conservative Party election platform.

And while the Harper government took its time to act on many issues they proceeded quickly on Senate reform, introducing Bill S-4, which would have limited the terms of Senators to eight years, on May 30, 2006, less than four months after taking office.

Harper demonstrated the personal importance he attached to Senate reform when he appeared before the Senate Special Committee on Senate Reform on September 7, 2006. He started off saying the following:

Good afternoon everyone. First, I want to thank the honourable senators, for this opportunity to speak today on the issue of Senate reform. I understand that, as you just said, this is the first time that a sitting Prime Minister has appeared before a Senate committee. This underlines my interest in Senate reform. As we have little time and our subject matter is important, I will stick to the essentials.
As everyone in this room knows, it has become a right of passage for aspiring leaders and prime ministers to promise Senate reform on their way to the top. The promises are usually made in Western Canada. These statements of intent are usually warmly received by party activists, editorial writers and ordinary people but, once elected, Senate reform quickly falls to the bottom of the government's agenda, nothing ever gets done and the status quo goes on....
Honourable senators, years of delay on Senate reform must come to an end, and it will. The Senate must change and we intend to make it happen. The government is not looking for another report — it is seeking action that responds to the commitments we made to Canadians during the recent federal election.
As you all know, we made a commitment during last election campaign that, if we were elected, we would proceed with a Senate reform. I came here today to reiterate personally my commitment to reform this institution.

Harper described his approach as 'step-by-step' but later made it clear he hoped it would lead to comprehensive constitutional reform:

I can just say that my frank hope is that that process would force the provinces and others to, at some point in the future, seriously address other questions of Senate reform. There are questions such as the distribution of seats and the powers that we are all clear must be addressed through a general amending formula, constitutional amendment. I welcome the day when there is a public appetite for that discussion because I think the country needs it at some point.

These are not the words of someone paying lip service to Senate reform. They are the words of a true believer. However, this all came early in the government's hopeful, idealistic phase.

He hoped that he could get legislation on limits on Senate terms and "consultative" elections through Parliament quickly. He then hoped that he could repeat the American experience where individual states beginning with Oregon held direct elections to select their senators. The original U.S. Constitution required state legislatures to elect Senators. The state initiatives eventually led to the 17th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which requires all states to elect their senators.

So how did it unravel? While no doubt Harper kept his hopes alive for awhile, it was really the actions of Liberal Senator Serge Joyal that undermined the step-by-step strategy. Joyal was chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. He managed to get Bill S-4 before his committee in the spring of 2007. This allowed him to hold hearings where various experts cast doubt on the legislation's constitutionality. In the end he persuaded the Liberal Senate majority to suspend consideration of the bill until it had been referred to the Supreme Court for an opinion on its constitutionality. This was likely when Harper learned that the road ahead would be more difficult then he initially thought. He persisted but he would not get that Senate majority until the end of 2010.

Less than two years later Quebec would be on its way (after many threats and much delay) to initiating its own Senate reference. Harper held off a federal reference until it was clear that the issue was going to make it to the Supreme Court regardless of his wishes.

No doubt it was somewhere between 2008 and 2012 he figured out that he was likely to fail to accomplish a reform he had had his heart set on since the eighties. Only then did he begin to distance himself from the project by slowing down the legislative pace of his reforms. However, his early devotion to the cause as Prime Minister is clear and on the public record, including being the first PM since 1867 to appear before a Senate committee. I saw none of this in the media coverage. There are times when the inside the Queensway pundit class seems guilty of gross negligence in not telling us the full context of key political developments. This is one of those occasions.

Historical Irony
The modern push for Senate reform started in Alberta in the 1980s (as a response to Pierre Trudeau's National Energy Plan) and with the judgment from the Supreme Court on April 25th it has effectively been brought to an end.

There is an irony here because just before the push for Senate reform got off the ground in 1983, Canada adopted a new constitutional amending formula as part of the Constitution Act, 1982. That amending formula originated in Alberta.

When the logjam was broken at the constitutional negotiations in Ottawa in 1981 the bargain effectively was Trudeau's Charter of Rights in exchange for the Alberta amending formula supported by the provincial coalition that was resisting Trudeau's initiative (Quebec was part of that coalition but its support was contingent on getting opting out with compensation, something dropped in the final negotiations). The English-speaking provinces that first pushed it forward including Alberta had as a principal concern that Quebec not have a veto in the amending formula. Alberta got what they wanted. Quebec does not have a special veto in the amending formula. However, the history of failed constitutional amendments post-1982 (the Aboriginal round, Meech, Charlottetown and now unilateral Senate reform) illustrates that one should be careful what one wishes for.

For Alberta during the 1980-81 constitutional negotiations nothing was more important than getting its preferred amending formula.  It is that formula in the context of our current politics that killed our Albertan Prime Minister's effort to alter the Canadian Senate's constitutional architecture.

An exceptional poll

TC does not ordinarily take note of just one poll unless there is something unusual or special about it.  Well there is a highly unusual result in the latest Angus Reid poll released on April 22.

Ordinarily, the numbers go up and down routinely, but the data within one poll is typically within shouting distance of the previous survey and is not worthy of note. Unless an election campaign is underway it is unusual for public opinion to depart sharply from previous patterns, particularly with regard to a single poll.

However, the regional data for Ontario in the Reid poll have produced a result that is quite different from the patterns in other regions in the same poll, and strikingly different from the Ontario data in other national polls from 2014. In particular, the Liberals have averaged a five point lead on the Conservatives in 2014 but in this poll they have a seventeen point deficit.

Another oddity: the poll comes close to replicating actual vote shares in Ontario in 2011.

When one turns the numbers from this survey into a national seat projection one gets another unusual result: the NDP is in second place in seats, a status they haven't enjoyed since the rise of Justin Trudeau (one reason for this is a relatively high poll share for the NDP in Quebec). The boost to Conservative fortunes in the survey from a very good result in Ontario is still not enough, however, to get them close to a majority.

For me to take this survey seriously, it would be necessary to see something like this result replicated in other polls. For the moment I would have to say this result doesn't look right. One should not forget like many other Canadian polls, this is an online survey, a methodology I continue to regard as experimental.

The Toronto Mayoralty Race: Does Ford have a chance to win?

Rob Ford kicked off his 2014 re-election campaign last night at the Toronto Congress Centre, which is located not far from Toronto's western boundary.  In the middle of Ford's speech according to this tweet, the hall looked like this from the back:

Rob Ford Campaign Launch April 17, 2014

According to the Toronto Star report on the event there was "no crowd estimate but about half of the 290 tables set up in the cavernous centre were empty." Another estimate I saw suggested a crowd of 2000. Regardless, if your campaign manager can only partly fill the venue for your campaign launch he should be fired. This may be difficult if the manager is also your brother Doug.

The media coverage of this fiasco was, in TC's view, generous to Ford to a fault, not at all what one might expect from the evil media elite. And inevitably there was another media story, this one from CBC.ca, suggesting Ford could win despite currently trailing in the polls. Anyone who has read this blog before will know that TC does not believe this will happen.

The new Forum poll released April 15 and alluded to above does have some interesting findings beyond the top line voter preference numbers all of which point clearly to a Ford defeat.

Let's look at them in turn.  Here is how Forum summarizes the race in their press release:

TORONTO APRIL 15th, 2014 ‐ In a random sampling of public opinion taken by the Forum Poll™ among 882 Toronto voters, one third would vote Olivia Chow for mayor if the municipal election were held today (34%), while a quarter or just more would vote either Rob Ford (27%) or John Tory (24%). Neither Karen Stintz (6%) nor David Soknacki (4%) are contenders. Very few have no opinion in the race (5%).

On the face of it Ford is in second place 7 percentage points behind leader Olivia Chow, apparently still well within range. However, there are other numbers and questions in the survey that help us understand the race. For example, one question simply asked respondents if they would vote for Ford in the municipal election in October or not.

Will vote for Rob Ford               29%
Will not vote for Rob Ford         63%
Don't know                                  8%

Another question asks "Which candidate would you never vote for?"  This is an interesting question because of its declarative emphasis. It is a good question for eliciting strong feelings. Of those expressing an opinion (I am excluding the "Don't Know" here) 56% say they would never vote for Rob Ford; the only other candidate who evokes negative feelings to any degree is Olivia Chow who comes in at 29%. The winner here is John Tory as only 3% say they would never vote for him.

These two responses illustrate what should be obvious: Ford is a highly polarizing figure. A large part of the electorate is clearly going to do whatever seems necessary to defeat him.

I have seen many news stories which report that Ford still has a reasonably strong approval rate. This survey includes approval numbers for all candidates so we can directly compare Ford's approval numbers to his opponents.  Here are the results:

	Ford	Stintz	Tory	Chow	Soknacki
Approve	46	46	65	60	47
Disapprove	54	54	35	40	53

Seen from this perspective both Tory and Chow have much higher approval ratings than the mayor. They are the two strong candidates in this race. Unless Karen Stintz and David Soknacki can start moving their numbers up soon they are likely going to be forced from the race by September.

It appears highly likely that there will be an Ontario election this summer, which will put the mayor's race on hold and, depending on the outcome, could have an impact of the results. Restarting the race in the dog days of August is not likely to work well for the minor candidates.

My view is that come fall there will be a competitive race for mayor between John Tory and Olivia Chow with Ford trailing. Depending on campaign dynamics either Tory or Chow could win although Chow has the edge now. Ford Nation is, compared to supporters for other candidates, generally lower income and less well-educated. My view is that poll results in the autumn will discourage turnout among an already low turnout group, meaning Ford's actual vote is likely to trail his share in the polls.

Quebec election: "You don't need a weatherman....

... to know which way the wind blows", goes the old Bob Dylan song. It applies well to this Quebec election, which has had plenty of twists, turns and surprises but whose outcome now seems clear.

The final polls on the Quebec election will come out this weekend but the verdict can be discerned without looking at the polls. By the way the polling numbers can all be found on this Wikipedia page.

Consider this: Pauline Marois promised tax cuts on April 3rd (after the budget is balanced). An appealing campaign promise in Quebec with its allegedly high taxes, right? Except it comes much too late in the campaign to do any good. Nearly 18% of Quebec voters had already voted in advance polls prior to yesterday, about 24% of the total vote we will see come April 7, if we use the 2012 turnout as a benchmark. If tax cuts are an important way to win votes perhaps it would have been be more beneficial to make the promise before any voters got to the polls. When parties begin to behave in an erratic and desperate pattern, you know they are in trouble.

There are good reasons to be cautious about polls in Quebec. Most of them are online surveys, a method TC thinks should be regarded as experimental. Given that we haven't seen a reliable poll yet there is some uncertainty, but all the non-poll indicators suggest the Liberals will easily win a majority.

It appears that the PQ coalition among francophones is fracturing - movement to the right to the CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec) and movement to the left in the form of the Québec solidaire and some to Option Nationale (a party formed by dissidents from the PQ). The movements have been complicated. It seems that mid-campaign there was movement from the CAQ to the Liberals based on antipathy to a referendum. More recently the CAQ has been doing better based on leader François Legault`s performance in the second TV debate.

The PQ campaign has been an amazing display of incompetence. They let themselves be dazzled by the Pierre-Karl Péledeau (or PKP as he is known) recruitment, not recognizing the downside to his candidacy. By highlighting the prospect of a referendum during the announcement PKP and the PQ aroused all the latent hostility to holding a referendum. The PQ also ignored the potential for having a notorious strike-breaker in their midst to drive traditional left of centre PQ voters to Québec solidaire. There could be a post-election bloodbath in the PQ ranks.

There was an excellent report by Terence McKenna on the April 3rd edition of the CBC National that is well worth watching.  http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV%20Shows/The%20National/ID/2446229148/

One of the extraordinary items in the report is about the Liberal leader Philippe Couillard's defence of his assertion in a TV debate that learning in English can be helpful to Quebeckers in the workplace. In spite of attacks on him from nationalists a couple of days after the debate he said:

"We absolutely want to protect our identity, our language... But it has nothing to do with the fact that we want to give our children the chance to learn another language. Is there a parent in Quebec that doesn’t want their child to learn another language? No."

On the face of it this should have been fatal in a Quebec election campaign given the anxiety of many francophones about the future of the French language in Quebec. However, it is Pauline Marois who has resorted to desperate late promises about taxes, not Couillard. She has also tried to kickstart her campaign by promoting the so-called "Charter of Values", but as I noted in my previous post it ranks low among the considerations of voters who might be expected to support it, and it continues to cause deep divisions in the ranks of those who favour Quebec independence.

The Current State of Canadian Politics: Can the federal Liberals win a majority in 2015?

Recently NDP Leader Tom Mulcair discussed his willingness to join a coalition with the Liberals after the next election:

“We’ve always said we’re ready to work with other parties. We’re a progressive party. We want to get results,” NDP leader Thomas Mulcair told reporters when asked if he would be willing to form a coalition with Mr. Trudeau after the election. However, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau rejected the idea suggesting the Liberals would focus on a "winning" strategy.

This incident tells us that the NDP thinks there is a strong possibility that the NDP and the Liberals together can form a majority in the House of Commons after the next election, while the Liberals perceive that they have a chance to form a majority government on their own. With everyone's attention on the Quebec election, perhaps this is as good a time as any to ask whether or not the federal Liberal Party can realistically expect to win a majority in the 2015 federal election.

Based on my tracking of the polls and my seat projections TCNorris has reached some conclusions about this. Based on the trend line of the past year a Liberal majority is unlikely (there is one posssible scenario I will discuss below). Equally a Conservative majority is unlikely, but a plurality is possible. The most likely outcome would see the NDP plus the Liberals holding a majority of the seats in the House of Commons. There would be no way for the Conservatives to construct a majority through the support of other parties. Quickly now, when did this situation last appear in Canadian politics?  The answer is 1972.  In other words it has been over forty years since we have seen a situation at the national level where there is a potential for governance based on Liberal-NDP cooperation (this is what happened in the 1972-74 parliament). This could include either a coalition or an accord.

The chart below summarizes the numbers (they date back to June 2013) that form the trend line referred to above:

It is the percentage of seats won that matters. To help clarify I have expressed what it would mean both in the House as it will be in 2015 and what it would mean for today's House if it was still in place. A majority in the current 308 seat house is 155, in the 338 seat House it is 170.

The two parties do have some experience with working together. The NDP supported the Trudeau Liberals in exchange for various concessions in the 1972 to 1974 parliament. The Liberals and NDP attempted to form a coalition after the 2008 election, but needed the support of the Bloc to make it a possibility. The two parties did coalesce in Saskatchewan when the NDP failed to win a working majority in the 1999 election. The NDP was a very dominant partner in that arrangement. In Ontario the two parties negotiated an accord in 1985 that ousted the Ontario PCs from power after 43 years in office. The agreement permitted the Liberals to form a government for two years in exchange for implementing some NDP priorities.

Some such as former Harper advisor Tom Flanagan believe that the public would oppose such a coalition in 2015, as they did in 2008. This strikes me as mistaken. Given the growing antipathy to Harper on the centre and left it seems likely that the public attitude welcoming change that prevailed in Ontario 1985 is the more likely outcome. The public will judge a coalition based on the context, not on some preconceived notion of whether it is a good or bad idea.

If we look more closely at the messages the polls are sending about the state of politics in Canada right now in the various regions it helps us understand our current situation.

Atlantic Canada
In Atlantic Canada, the Liberals have taken a big lead.  Their average support in the polls is at 50%, an astronomically high number putting them 27 percentage points ahead of their nearest competitor, the Conservatives. Were this repeated elsewhere a majority would be in sight. Why are the Liberals so high?

Let me suggest a few factors. One is simply the fact that the Liberal brand in Atlantic Canada has been relatively strong over time. The current state of provincial politics also helps (there are good provincial poll numbers available in Atlantic Canada from Corporate Research Associates). There is a newly-elected Liberal government in Nova Scotia still enjoying its honeymoon. As Nova Scotia is about 40% of Atlantic Canada this alone has a big impact. In addition there are unpopular PC governments in both Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick, both likely to lose the next provincial elections there to the Liberals. The incumbent Liberal government in PEI remains popular. In polling there is a spillover between the federal and provincial realms. Some respondents become confused about which level of government is being asked about. Given its strong brand this helps the Liberals in Atlantic Canada, and likely hurts the NDP, which still suffers from the unpopularity of the former Dexter government in Nova Scotia. Finally, it is clear that the Harper government is quite unpopular here.

Quebec
Quebec dislikes the Harper government more than any other province or region so the Conservatives are not going to increase their representation but opposition is split among the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québecois with the latter two parties doing disproportionately well among francophones, while the Liberals are the dominant force among Quebec anglophones and allophones. Liberal strength has grown here but they still trail among francophones.

Ontario
Ontario is the biggest province and also where the federal Liberals have gained the least since 2011. The troubles of the provincial Liberals are a factor here. Ironically the situation in Ontario suggests one possible federal Liberal majority government scenario. For it to occur the Wynne Liberals would need to lose the expected spring election to the Hudak PCs. For maximum effect a PC majority would likely be necessary. My suspicion is that Tim Hudak would make the Conservative brand name quite toxic within a year in Ontario. Both the federal Liberals and NDP could benefit. If the federal Liberals could increase their Ontario support significantly at the expense of the Conservatives (with NDP gains held to a bare minimum) a majority might come in sight.

All this depends on a set of events that have not yet begun to take place. And Ontario alone would not be enough. The Liberals would still need to finish a strong first in Quebec and must do exceptionally well elsewhere including B.C. I cannot stress enough that this is an unlikely scenario, but one cannot completely rule it out. It is also possible but not likely that the NDP will find a way to get ahead of the Liberals. This could happen if the public acquires a stronger sense of Justin Trudeau's weaknesses.

The Prairie Provinces
The Liberals are poised to make significant gains in Manitoba in part because of unpopularity on the part of the NDP provincial government. Something close to the status quo prevails in Saskatchewan, although the NDP seem likely to gain a few seats here as a result of the redrawn boundaries.

Remarkably, the Conservatives are experiencing significant losses in Alberta. On average the party is down about 14 points since 2011. It is enough to give the Liberals a few seats if it holds through an election. I do think it is slightly overstated. The "Other" category is high in some surveys and I suspect that these are respondents who confuse federal with provincial politics, and volunteer the Wild Rose Party as their preference.

British Columbia
This is where the popularity of the Harper government has declined the most. It is the Liberals who have gained the most from it although their 13.4% share of the popular vote in B.C. in 2011 was quite low by historical standards. For example, their current poll average of 30.6% is close to the 28.6% share the Liberals achieved in B.C. in 2004. NDP support is down a little since 2011.

One possible liability for the Liberals here is a difficult term for the BC Liberal provincial government. Although it is a coalition of federal Liberals and Conservatives, the government is led by Christie Clark, a federal Liberal. Based on recent history it does seems likely that the B.C. government will get into political trouble between now and 2015, with the NDP the beneficiary.

Conclusion
TCNorris does not think that a Liberal majority in 2015 is a realistic expectation. Justin Trudeau and company should keep their minds open to other governing possibilities. Thomas Mulcair to his credit just gave us a preview of what conversation we should expect after the next election: what form should Liberal-NDP cooperation take.

The enigma of Quebec politics

As we head once more into a Quebec electoral campaign I am reminded of when I went door to door with a federal Liberal candidate in the 1988 election in one of those mixed anglo/allo/francophone constituencies that dot the island of Montreal. We came upon a group of francophone men standing in an open garage facing the street and chatting on a gray rainy afternoon.

Their response to the vote-seeking politician was guarded and non-committal. The candidate observed as we walked away that he found that francophones were generally reluctant to give their political views. He explained it was because of the division within Quebec between those who believed in Canada and those who supported independence. A wide gulf between the two visions is found within francophone Quebec families and this often makes politics a sensitive topic best avoided.

I think this partly explains why Quebec has so frequently been the source of so many political surprises, including the defeat of the Lesage regime in 1966, the first victory of the Parti Québecois in 1976, and most recently the unexpectedly strong showing of the Quebec Liberals in 2012. It also accounts for why, after the divisions of the 1995 referendum, so many francophone Quebeckers were allergic to the prospect of another referendum campaign.

When the votes were tallied in the 2012 election the outcome wound up being closer than anticipated, generally because the polls underestimated Liberal support (in a few cases PQ support was greatly over-estimated), a phenomenon that has appeared many times in the past. The final election survey by CROP, while understating the Liberals, accurately anticipated that the PQ would capture 32% of the popular vote.

When CROP, which has long enjoyed a good reputation as a Quebec pollster, released a poll in February giving the PQ 40% with the Quebec Liberals trailing behind at 34% and the CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec) a distant 16%, election fever began to warm up a cold Quebec winter.

When a political party forms a minority government, it is always looking for an opportunity to turn that into a majority. No doubt the PQ did some of their own polling to firm up their view that such an opportunity was at hand and has now called an election for April 7, 2014. However a poll released the same day the election was called by Léger Marketing gives the PQ just a two point lead over the Quebec Liberals. The PQ cannot be certain that it will win a majority. My own model that converts poll numbers into seats suggests the CROP February poll would have given the PQ a small majority, while the new Léger poll would leave them just one seat over a majority.

Here are my projections for the CROP February Poll and the just released Léger poll:

A key factor here is the CAQ vote, which has dropped over the past year and a half.  It is low enough now that the party would win just a handful of seats. This means the chances of either a PQ or Liberal majority are high unless the CAQ recovers substantial ground during the campaign. I estimate they need 23% to win at least 10 seats (they won 19 with 27% in 2012). Although they start off weak this time, the CAQ also started out in a similar position during the 2012 campaign averaging 21% in the opening surveys but improving their position significantly over the course of the campaign.

The two polls share one characteristic in common that should give rise to additional doubt about the what April 7th holds in store. This characteristic was not a feature of the CROP survey in 2012 that accurately predicted the PQ's 32% vote share. Most Quebec polling comes from Léger and CROP and in recent years they have relied extensively on online surveys, a methodology that I believe should still be regarded as experimental. As it turned out in 2012 so did CROP. If you read the methodological statement in its last election poll (at the bottom of the news story), one finds that CROP used traditional telephone polling methods for its final election poll. I hope we will see the firm do the same this year and that we will see more telephone polling generally.

Given that almost all the Quebec polling we have seen since the last election has been online and the results even there are close, there remains considerable uncertainty about what we will see come the evening of April 7.

Charter of Values and the Prospects for Quebec Independence
A key focus of debate will be the so-called proposed Quebec Charter of Values. While a majority say they support it, a Léger poll on the topic from January reports that it ranks fourth in a list of issues that respondents say will be the most important vote determinant in the next election, with health care and economic/fiscal issues ranking ahead of the Charter. It should be noted that this type of response in a poll can be misleading. For example, if the public is pessimistic and thinks that what will happen in health care or the economy won't be affected much regardless of who wins, a lesser consideration where the outcome will matter, such as the Charter of Values, could be more important.

A key finding for me was that among francophones in this survey only 30 per cent strongly favoured the Charter. Those who say they "somewhat" rather "strongly" support something are expressing uncertainty about how they feel. It is the "strongly"category that really matters when judging how the public feels about issues. Further, it is likely that those who strongly favour the Charter consist mainly of core PQ voters. It remains unclear how many of this group currently favour other parties and might therefore be tempted to switch by the Charter.

In the longer run the PQ would like to see the Charter overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada and thus hopefully, from their perspective, provide the political basis for a Quebec referendum on independence. Given that the Charter has seriously divided the pro-independence movement in Quebec, it seems highly unlikely that this could work even if the PQ achieved its hoped-for scenario. For example, former PQ Premier Jacques Parizeau is among those who have denounced the Charter of Values.

Support overall for independence is not only weak, running far below 50%, when you look at the demographics of support for independence (on page 9 of this January 2014 Léger poll) by age, it is clear that it is concentrated disproportionately among the baby boom, roughly those aged 45-65. Support is weaker among both younger voters and older voters.

The polls are close, the political significance of the Charter of Values is still unexplored territory, and support for sovereignty is weak. Quebec strikes me as in a transitional phase of its history and has not yet found a clear sense of itself going forward. It remains an enigma.