Tie Continues

CHECK BACK NEXT WEEK TO SEE IF TURKEY DELIBERATIONS HAVE BROKEN STALEMATE

[Ottawa – October 11, 2015] The statistical logjam continues as we enter the final week of the election campaign. The Liberal and Conservative parties continue to see-saw back and forth for the lead. Indeed, the only clear movement over the last few days has been a decline in NDP support.

Contrary to other polls, we continue to see a three-way deadlock in Quebec. Ontario, meanwhile, is now a very unpredictable two-way contest with the NDP finding itself in an increasingly distant third-place. However, the NDP continues to be a major force in both Quebec and British Columbia. The Green Party is a definite force is British Columbia; indeed, if you combine the party’s first and second choice standings, the Green Party enjoys a 32-point vote ceiling in the province and could pull off a few surprises on October 19th.

In terms of our prediction for Election Day, we are almost certainly looking at either a minority government led by either the Conservatives or Liberals. Very little else is clear in this campaign, as there are two major sources of uncertainty.

The first is engagement and turnout. The Conservatives retain a huge and stable lead with seniors, the only group where they enjoy a clear lead. Seniors are a very large and very reliable voting bloc and this will be a major advantage for the Conservatives in terms of turnout. Meanwhile, the university-educated are the leading source of Liberal renewal, which could be a response to the debate surrounding the niqab and cultural politics.

The second is the issue of cellphone-only households. While this may seem like an area of technical obscurantism, we believe this segment will be critical to the outcome of the election. In the last election, we were further off the final result for having included this segment that was less likely to vote and less likely to favour the Conservatives. Those two features are still very much in play this time with the notable differences that the cellphone-only is now roughly three times larger and tells us they are much more certain to vote than they told us last time. The cellphone-only population contains lots of the younger – less old and educated respondents who tell us they are extremely engaged and motivated by the values war that seems to underlie this election. If they show up, Harper loses; if they don’t, he wins.

Other internal polling suggests four things:

Canadians are far more engaged that they were in 2011. The election that was supposed to focus on the economy has instead become all about values. The election is not seen as “business as usual”; instead, it is seen a historic and stark choice. The public do not believe that either the Conservatives or the Liberals will win a majority, but Canadians will be apoplectic if Stephen Harper wins another majority.

Methodology:

This study involved a blended sample collected using two separate methodologies: Computer Assisted Live Interviews (CATI) and EKOS’ proprietary High Definition Interactive Voice Response (HD-IVR™) technology, which allows respondents to enter their preferences by punching the keypad on their phone, rather than telling them to an operator. In an effort to reduce the coverage bias of landline only RDD, we created a dual landline/cell phone RDD sampling frame for this research. As a result, we are able to reach those with a landline and cell phone, as well as cell phone only households and landline only households.

The figures in this report are based on a three-day rolling sample. Each day, a new day’s worth of interviewing is added and the oldest day is dropped. The field dates for this survey are October 8-10, 2015. In total, a random sample of 1,428 Canadian adults aged 18 and over responded to the survey (1,018 by HD-IVR, 410 by live interviewer). The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/- 2.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Please note that the margin of error increases when the results are sub-divided (i.e., error margins for sub-groups such as region, sex, age, education). All the data have been statistically weighted by age, gender, region, and educational attainment to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to Census data.

Click here for the full report: Full Report (October 11, 2015)

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