The only poll that counts is the one on election day.

But that doesn’t prevent candidates, parties and media organizations — including the Star — from relying upon research surveys to gauge how a campaign is going.

The recent Ontario election was no exception and in the aftermath of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s majority win, much is being made of the polling and the methodologies used by pollsters to track public opinion.

Research firms use different ways of asking people what they think about issues.

To test the varying accuracy of these methodologies, Campaign Research, a political polling firm, conducted three different polls exclusively for the Star in the final days before last Thursday’s election.

Campaign Research asked the same four questions about voting intentions on the same days using three different methods of surveying opinion: live interview phone calls; interactive voice response (IVR) calls; and an online panel.

Results differed depending on the methodology.

“The thing that we all have to remember about polling and marketing research of any type is that you’re measuring history. It’s hard to predict the future,” said Campaign Research principal Greg Dunlop.

Dunlop delivered the results of his polls to the Star at 5 p.m. Thursday — hours before Wynne’s Liberals won 39 per cent of the popular vote to 31 per cent for Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives, 24 per cent for Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats, and 5 per cent for Mike Schreiner’s Greens.

Campaign Research’s live interview phone poll of 1,087 people done last Monday through Wednesday found the Liberals with 37 per cent, the Tories with 34 per cent, the NDP with 20 per cent and the Greens with 6 per cent and a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The company’s IVR survey of 1,795 people conducted the same days also had the Liberals at 37 per cent, the Tories at 35 per cent, the NDP at 18 per cent and the Greens at 8 per cent with a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points.

Finally, its online poll — using a panel of 1,629 people contracted by Survey Sampling International (SSI) — had the Liberals at 34 per cent, the Tories at 30 per cent, the NDP at 29 per cent, and the Greens at 6 per cent.

When Campaign Research tallied the three polls — a sample of 4,511 people with a margin of 1.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 — the firm found 36 per cent for the Liberals, 33 per cent for the Tories, 22 per cent for the NDP, 7 per cent for the Greens.

“All of them underestimated the Liberal surge at the end and overestimated the PCs at the end. The phone tends to be more accurate. We’ve seen that before, but the IVR tends to be pretty accurate as well if weighted correctly,” said Dunlop, referring to the weighting formulas pollsters do, using census data and voting patterns, to ensure samples reflect the broader population.

“Online, for some reason, tends to overestimate the NDP vote. It must be a recruiting issue with these panels. We saw that in the (2013) B.C. election as well — the online polls had the NDP winning right up until the last day.”

Indeed, Ipsos Reid, which predicted B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix would win a landslide in that vote just before Liberal Premier Christy Clark was re-elected, had an Ontario poll last Wednesday that suggested a tight three-way race.

Ipsos found among “decided voters” the Liberals were at 33 per cent, the Tories 31 per cent, and the NDP at 30 per cent, with a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. (The Greens were not specifically cited in the online poll of ‎1,991 people conducted between June 6 and last Wednesday with a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.)

But among “likely voters” the firm had 36 per cent for the Tories, 30 per cent for the Liberals, and 30 per cent for the NDP.

On Twitter, Ipsos senior vice-president John Wright tweeted: “Easy explanation for our polling vs. election results? Our last poll scared the crap out of Libs so they went out and voted. You’re welcome.”

But Forum Research, the Star’s pollster, which uses IVR, found last Monday that the Liberals were at 42 per cent, the Conservatives at 35 per cent, the NDP at 19 per cent, and the Greens at 3 per cent.

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The survey of 739 people was considered accurate to within four percentage points, 19 times out of 20. That suggests Forum, like Campaign Research’s live call and IVR polls, was very close to coming within the margin of error for the parties when compared to the actual results.

Forum’s president Lorne Bozinoff extrapolated its results to project a Liberal majority of 61 seats in the 107-member legislature to 35 for the Tories and 11 for the NDP.

Voters sent 58 Liberals to Queen’s Park, 28 Tories, and 21 New Democrats pending any Elections Ontario recounts.

EKOS Research, which also uses automated IVR calls, had the Liberals at 37.3 per cent to 31.3 per cent for the Conservatives, 19.2 per cent for the NDP, and 8.2 per cent for the Greens. That poll of 1,311 people done last Tuesday and Wednesday had a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

But EKOS suggested that of “likely voters” the Grits had the support of 42.2 per cent, the Tories’ 35.9 per cent, the NDP 16.9 per cent, and the Greens’ 2.9 per cent.

Campaign Research principal Nick Kouvalis, a political strategist who worked on Clark’s B.C. campaign last year, ran Rob Ford’s 2010 Toronto mayoralty race, and is helping John Tory’s current municipal bid, frequently uses IVR.

Kouvalis polled for corporate clients and some Conservative candidates in this election — but not the central campaign, as his firm’s other principal is Richard Ciano, the PC Party president. Ciano was not involved in their polling or these Star polls.

While he likes the cost-effectiveness of IVR, Kouvalis said he prefers to use live interviews when possible.

“I like it the most — it’s just expensive. When we’re working for a client to run a campaign we do the IVRs for tracking, but when we’re setting strategy we do focus groups and then we do live polls,” he said.

Asked what he thought about the major parties’ nightly tracking, the veteran Conservative strategist doesn’t mince words.

“It’s obvious that the Ontario Liberal Party had very accurate polling and they were able to adjust their tactics so that on a daily basis they could focus on the ridings that they had a chance to move into their column,” said Kouvalis.

“That’s why we saw the premier campaigning in places like Barrie at the end of the campaign,” he said, referring to ridings Wynne wrested from the Conservatives.

All of which suggests that polls can count before election day, too.

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