Angus Reid Strategies – BCL 44, NDP 42
Posted May 7, 2009 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Polls
Comments (9)
(Poll data can be found here.)
This is going to be good – pollsters having conflicting results – who’s going to win the war of the pollsters? According to the Globe and Mail, who commissioned Angus Reid Strategies to do a poll, 1013 adults were surveyed between May 5 and 6 with the following voting intentions:
BC Liberals – 44%
NDP – 42%
Green – 10%
The STV referendum is at 45% support.
Suffice to say if this is the actual election day result, the BC Liberals would form a razor-thin majority – 44 seats to 41, according to the paper napkin model.
I will be exploring further the issue of “vote efficiency” in a future article.
Also, when Angus Reid Strategies releases their detailed data, I will analyze it further.
The CTV newscast that had this article showed some other interesting polling numbers too. I know the actual poll document will reveal this too, but its worth underlining some ahead of time.
On the island, the NDP leads 51% to 40%…this compares to 2005 where the NDP took the island as a region by 47% – 40%…this could topple all but one BC Liberal seat on the Island.
This is getting closer!
The anti-NDP, anti-minimum wage hysteria by the business special interests is helping Carole James.
Earlier in the campaign, she had the discomfort of environmentalists lining up against her.
Now its the usual suspects. This is consolidating the left of centre vote. Things are turning her way.
I still don’t believe the Angus Reid polls though.
It’s interesting that we now have a couple polls that put the BC Liberals ahead by 9 – 11, while this one puts them ahead by 2. Everyone seems to show a tightening race compared to their previous polls though. It seems that they are all capturing the trend, but one of them is going to be way off at predicting the result.
It’s also interesting that this is the first poll that puts the BCNDP at or above 40% (excluding Robbins, which is garbage). Last election, it looks like the NDP never polled above 40% within months of the election (excluding Robbins, which was garbage then and is garbage now. They actually predicted an NDP win in 2005.) The NDP ended up winning 41.5%. I think that there are 2 main reasons for this: 1) A greater percent of NDP supporter showed up than Liberals or especially Greens, and 2) Many Green supporters voted strategically for the NDP.
If BC Liberal supporters weren’t worried last time, they might be this time. The NDP might be more motivated because they think victory is within reach. Fickle Green party supporters might not bleed to the NDP this time. They might stay home or stick with the Greens. I don’t imagine many would vote BC Liberal, but some might decide at the last second to give the carbon tax a chance. The BC Conservatives might cost Bill Bennett his riding, but I doubt they’ll play spoiler anywhere else.
We’ll just have to wait and see for election day. Or at least wait for the next poll. ;-)
here is the link for the poll
http://www.angusreidstrategies.com/uploads/pages/pdfs/2009.05.08_BCProv.pdf
One thing I’ll observe is that Mustel and ARS are within each others margin of error for the Liberal and Green vote. I still think that ARS is off base for the “Other” vote. In Nelson-Creston the Conservative candidate while still on the ballot has been virtually invisible.
There is clearly some cross voting going on in that I know long time Green supporters going NDP, long time NDP voters going Green, Liberals going NDP and vice versa.
The statistical significance of the switches I cannot tell, but the issues driving people in both directions are carbon tax, IPPs, single gender nomination races and personal attacks by parties and leaders.
Finally I disagree with Peter Sacha on low turnout if the Advance Poll turnouts are high. Again it will be important to track whether this is a consistent pattern or only occurring where both sides expect a tight race.
As always this election will come down to who has the best machine to get the vote out and in this field it is advantage NDP.
Andy, you said: “Finally I disagree with Peter Sacha on low turnout if the Advance Poll turnouts are high. Again it will be important to track whether this is a consistent pattern or only occurring where both sides expect a tight race.”
I never said this. I just said I am interested in seeing all four days’ of advanced voting before trying to dredge some conclusions out of it.
I’m fascinated by the low support of the referendum, which suggests a drop of almost 15% over the past four years. There was a lot of support for reform when the two preceding elections demonstrated the biggest failings of FPTP: a majority government that came second in the popular vote and a near-total landslide by one party. But I suspect that both NDP and Liberal supporters sense that they prefer their own party in a majority position than sharing power with the Greens for the indefinite future. There’s also probably a momentum issue: after the near miss of the 2005 referendum, PEI and Ontario rejected MMP, which I’ve always felt should be easier to pass due to its simplicity and its true proportionality (instead of what I call “proportionality by accident” in STV).
I question the accuracy of a polling methodology that uses only online for the North and Interior rural seats.
These are the latest poll results for the North, with 2005 results in brackets:
Liberal 44% (48.8%)
NDP 38% (38.7%)
Green 10% (7.1%)
Other 7% (5.4%)
When compared to the last ARS poll released just 9 days ago whereby the Green vote has doubled from 5%, the Liberals have gained 3% and the NDP have lost 7% support, switching who is in the lead in the North quite dramatically.
With only one Conservative running and only 6 other candidates running, as compared to 13 in 2005, I continue to question how the other vote can increase by this much as compared to the last election.
ARS claims to have had the most accurate polling in the 2008 federal election:
Conservative 37% as compared to 37.6% achieved
Liberals 27% as compared to 26.2%
NDP 20% as compared to 18.2%
Bloc 9% as compared to 10%
Green 7% as compared to 6.8%
A 1.8% inaccuracy in this BC election is a huge gap and will be the difference between the Liberals winning by a squeaker and having a comfortable majority.
I also note that it is not only Mustel that has a difference of opinion with ARS, but that Decima-Harris also thinks the number of undecideds is higher than ARS’s 2%.
Beyond that I find the vitriol that exists between Liberal and NDP supporters on this site and elsewhere the most compelling argument to vote for BC-STV.
Just because the Liberals lack the social compassion of the NDP does not mean that every idea they have is bad, and likewise I agree with a former Mayor from the East Kootenays who chided Liberal Cabinet Ministers at the Union of BC Municipalities AGM for cutting taxes so low that we could not now maintain our statutory obligations – hence the deficit in the 2009 budget.
In every European country the Green Party, at 10% to 8%, would end up in the legislature, as they do in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the European Parliament from England. Likewise The Conservatives would most likely have a seat or two in the Interior.
That is a much more healthy democracy than what we have now, whereby some people of dissimilar views feel forced to band together to keep “the enemy out”.
Any society that sees 40% of its registered electors not showing up to vote needs to question the effectiveness and legitimacy of that voting system. The politics of “winner takes all” does not work and as Albert Einstein stated:
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Kelvin, I think why there is a drop in support for BC-STV is because those of us in the Interior and the North saw what the ridings will look like and are shocked at how we can potentially lose representation.
Living in a large interior riding dominated by one urban centre 3 hours away is giving rural voters pause for thought.
If the Interior ridings were smaller, I could get behind it, but not as it stands now.