About EKOS Politics We launched this website in order to showcase our election research, and our suite of polling technologies including Probit and IVR . We will be updating this site frequently with new polls, analysis and insight into Canadian politics. EKOS's experience, knowledge and sophisticated research designs have contributed positively to many previous elections. Other EKOS Products In addition to current political analysis, EKOS also makes available to the public general research of interest, including research in evaluation general public domain research , as well as a full history of EKOS press releases Media Inquires For media inquires, please contact: Frank Graves President EKOS Research Associates t: 613.235-7215 [email protected]

Dramatically Tightened Race as Conservatives Crack 30-Barrier for First Time Since Late 2012: A Memo from Citizens of the Near Future to the Leaders of Today » Race Tightens as We See Security Shifts in a More Anxious Public? [Ottawa – October 31, 2014] The impacts of the tragic deaths of two Canadian soldiers appear to be affecting the political landscape in a highly significant fashion. While not entirely unexpected, the clarity and significance of the effects may be altering the political calculus around an early election. From our latest poll, the following points are clear: The race has tightened significantly with the Liberal lead now cut in half and the Conservative Party now clearly ahead of the NDP. While his approval rating remains mired below 30 points, Mr. Harper has seen some softening of his disapproval, suggesting that some of those sitting in the disapproval camp are moving to “not sure”. Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau, meanwhile, have seen modest declines in their approval numbers. Indicators of the relative salience of security over civil liberties show a clear rise in the security priority. It is not clear how stable this is and it is still well below levels registered after September 11th, but it does favour the Conservative Party. Regional and demographic patterns show a much more favourable outlook for Stephen Harper (who leads throughout the west) and a narrowing of the large gap in Ontario. He has also regained the lead with seniors who were critical to his 2011 victory. While too early to judge how stable these movements are, they alter the political calculus to make it somewhat more favourable to Stephen Harper. Whether these trends stabilize or strengthen will be extremely important to watch in coming weeks. Approval ratings and a note on mode effects In our latest poll, we’ve updated our tracking on approval of each of the three federal leaders and we’ve noticed some subtle but important differences between the results from our Probit surveys and our HD-IVR™ surveys. In short, approval ratings for the progressive leaders – Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair – are consistently lower under HD-IVR™, while Stephen Harper’s disapproval rating is also somewhat lower. In the coming days, we are going to be putting out a note on mode effects, which appear to be restricted to approval. Security vs. civil liberties Direction of country/government Methodology This study was conducted using 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 field dates for this survey are October 27-29, 2014. In total, a random sample of 1,628 Canadian adults aged 18 and over responded to the survey. The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/-2.4 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 31, 2014) Tweet Share this: Twitter

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