Ontario byelections come at difficult time for Kathleen Wynne's Liberals

Two Ontario provincial byelections on Thursday come at a difficult time for Premier Kathleen Wynne's Liberal government. Her party is at its lowest point in the polls in years and the premier's approval ratings are even worse than her predecessor's, Dalton McGuinty.

And when his ratings were plumbing new depths, McGuinty announced he would resign.

Byelections are being held in the ridings of Ottawa–Vanier and Niagara West–Glanbrook, the former a solid stronghold for the Liberals and the latter a bastion of the Progressive Conservatives.

You can read the rest of this article here.

Federal byelection has good signs for Conservatives and Liberals, but not NDP

Byelections rarely hold any wider political significance — one held in the reliably Conservative stronghold of southern Alberta doubly so. But Monday night's results in the Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner federal byelection do provide some signals as to the states of the federal parties: resilience for the Conservatives, popularity for the Liberals, and deep malaise for the NDP.

The byelection, called to replace a vacancy following the death of Conservative MP Jim Hillyer earlier this year, was easily won by the incumbent party. And the Conservatives rightly deserve recognition for their creditable win.

You can read the rest of this article here.

The Pollcast: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May on electoral reform

On the latest episode of The Pollcast, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May notes that a lot of the focus of the electoral reform debate has been on what impact it will have on parties.

But her support for changing the way elections are run in Canada is not about how it might benefit the Greens — rather, she says it is a matter of rights. And that makes a referendum, according to May, inappropriate.

In this latest installment in the podcast series on electoral reform, I also chat with Bloc MP Gabriel Ste-Marie about the Bloc Québécois's position on the issue.

You can listen to the podcast here and subscribe to the podcast here.

NDP's Halifax Needham byelection victory a warning to Stephen McNeil's Liberals

If Premier Stephen McNeil was still thinking about sending Nova Scotians to the polls this fall, Tuesday's results in the Halifax Needham byelection should give him pause.

On the face of it, the New Democrats' win in a riding they have held since 1998 might come as no surprise. After all, Halifax Needham is a riding that elected Maureen MacDonald six times. In four of those occasions, MacDonald won with a majority of ballots cast.

But it was a close contest in 2013. In that election, MacDonald took 44 per cent of the vote. The Liberals' Chris Poole came up 277 votes short with 40.4 per cent.

You can read the rest of this article here.

Liberals hold post-election gains in summer polling

A year after the Liberals began the 2015 federal election campaign in third place, support for the party is holding firm — maintaining the gains the Liberals made in the immediate aftermath of last fall's vote.

Over the last three months, the Liberals have averaged 47.3 per cent support in federal polls, representing a gain of 7.8 points since the October election. Compared to the previous quarter, however, the Liberals are up just 0.6 points. This suggests that the party's support has leveled off and that —10 months after being sworn into power — the initial Liberal "honeymoon" has settled into a new normal.

You can read the rest of this article here.

Upcoming Alberta byelections pose stiff challenge for Liberals

Just hours after Stephen Harper announced he was resigning his Calgary Heritage seat, the Liberal Party sent out an email blast to its supporters. Looking for donations, the party said it was hoping to kick-start its efforts to elect a Liberal MP in Harper's vacated riding.

It's an ambitious appeal. The Liberals were beaten in Calgary Heritage last fall by almost 38 percentage points and more than 22,000 votes.

Byelections will need to be held soon in four ridings. The fundraising request from the Liberals mentioned two of them: Harper's and Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner. That seat was left vacant this spring when Conservative MP Jim Hillyer died of a heart attack. A byelection campaign needs to be called for that riding within a few weeks.

You can read the rest of this article here.

Warning signals for all three big Quebec parties in four by-elections

As expected, the Quebec Liberals held their three ridings and the Parti Québécois its one in the four by-elections that occurred across the province yesterday. But the results were mixed for both parties, with the Liberals putting up big drops in support in two of their three wins while making a big gain in their one loss, while the Parti Québécois had its own drop in support where it was the incumbent and respectable increases in two of the ridings in which it came up short.

Moral and actual victories for both parties, then, if they want to look for them. But nothing for the Coalition Avenir Québec, except a new logo.

Turnout was poor in the two Montreal-area ridings, at just 24% in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne and 23% in Fabre. It was more within the norm for by-elections in René-Lévesque on the Côte-Nord (40%) and Beauce-Sud (43%).

The Liberals increased their vote share in Beauce-Sud, and widened their margin of victory over the CAQ by almost 14 points. At 55.9% support, Paul Busque's score was the best performance for the Liberals in this riding in 18 years. Tom Redmond captured 29.9% of the vote, the lowest number for the CAQ or its predecessor ADQ since 1998. Of note is the performance of Quebec's Conservative Party, which at 3% of the vote finished in fourth place ahead of Québec Solidaire.

Monique Sauvé of the Liberals took 44% of the vote in Fabre, a significant drop since 2014 but better than the party's performance in the riding in 2012. The PQ's Jibril Akaaboune Le-François captured 28.6% of the vote, a big increase from 2014 and a little better than 2012, but well below the 36.8% score the party managed in Fabre in 2008.

In the riding of René-Lévesque, the PQ's Martin Ouellet took 49% of the vote, the worst showing for the PQ in the riding since 2003. The Liberals' Karine Otis surprised with 39% of the vote, the biggest increase any party experienced in any of these four ridings. The last time the PLQ did that well was in 1989. Otis was also the only candidate to have an increase in raw vote totals, as she picked up 848 votes over the party's performance here in 2014. Either Liberal voters turned out, or Otis took a lot of the vote away from the CAQ, which experienced its only double-digit drop in vote share here.

Dominique Anglade managed to hold on to Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne in what turned out to be the closest race of the night. At 38.6%, Anglade nearly matched the Liberals' performance here in 2012 — the last time the Liberals lost an election. The PQ's Gabrielle Lemieux jumped in support to 29.9%, though that was still below the party's performance here three years ago. The big surprise was Marie-Eve Rancourt of Québec Solidaire, who captured 20.7% of the vote, almost double the party's vote share in the last election. Nevertheless, her raw vote count was still down from 2014. The PQ will undoubtedly make some noise about the split of the vote in this riding, as it is the one in which the combined totals of the PQ and QS (two sovereigntist parties) would have been enough to defeat the Liberal candidate.

In my last analysis of these by-elections, I pointed out how these four ridings have, on average, tracked the province wide vote totals quite closely. If these four ridings are still bellwethers when combined, the results do not suggest that Philippe Couillard's Liberals are in much trouble. The party averaged 44.4% across these four ridings, compared to 28.6% for the PQ. That still means a Liberal majority government if those sorts of numbers were repeated on election night. The biggest change, then, would be in the CAQ's tremendous drop in support to just 13.8%.

The CAQ had the worst night, averaging a loss of 6.9 points across the four ridings. By-elections are often difficult for the CAQ, particularly in ridings where the party is not a factor. The ADQ also used to have this issue, so an argument could be made to shrug off their performances in three of these four ridings. But for the party to drop over eight points in Beauce-Sud, where the CAQ was the only other party with a chance to win the riding, is very problematic. And whereas the CAQ has been dropping support to the PQ at the provincial level, in this case it seems to have been primarily to the benefit of the Liberals. If the CAQ is not competitive in a riding like Beauce-Sud, they have few prospects for gains.

The drop in support for the Liberals in the two Montreal-area ridings was significant, and is perhaps something that could be a sign of a deeper problem for the Quebec Liberals in urban ridings. But in both cases the turnout was anemic, so it could have merely been the case that voters did not bother turning out to vote in by-elections that everyone considered a foregone conclusion.

The PQ's increase in both Fabre and Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but again the low turnout lessens the impact of the party's performance. More concerning for Pierre-Karl Péladeau should be the performance of the PQ in René-Lévesque, a riding the PQ routinely won with over 50% of the vote in bad elections. This is just the kind of riding that should be embracing the PQ if the party is heading in the right direction. Instead, the Liberals put up some big numbers in a riding that has traditionally not been friendly to them. There are some echoes of the federal Liberals' performance in Quebec in this: they took 29% of the vote and finished second in the riding of Manicouagan, of which René-Lévesque forms a part at the provincial level.

This is why the results are a mixed bag for both parties. The Liberals can be happy to see that their vote share, overall, hardly budged from their big victory last year. And the strong performance in the two rural ridings is a sign that the party is doing well among francophones. But their losses in the Montreal area, where perhaps the politics of austerity resonate more, show some underlying weakness in a traditionally safe area.

For the PQ, modest increases in the Montreal area is a positive sign for the party, but losses in a stronghold region of their own, particularly under a new leader, also suggests some underlying weaknesses.

Though François Legault certainly has reason to be concerned, both Couillard and Péladeau can breathe a sigh of relief with these results. They held their ridings and can each point to some strong second-place showings. But Fabre and Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne indicate that Couillard can't get too comfortable, while René-Lévesque shows that Péladeau is far from following in the footsteps of that riding's namesake.

Four Quebec by-elections a mid-term test for Couillard and Péladeau

Quebecers in four ridings will be heading to the polls yet again on Monday, as four by-elections are being held in the province to fill vacancies in the National Assembly. And based on the history of these four ridings, the results may provide a telling glimpse of where voters stand in Quebec about 19 months into Philippe Couillard's mandate.

Two of the by-elections are being held in the Greater Montreal region, while the other two are being held in the eastern part of the province. They each have something for the four major parties in Quebec.

In Beauce-Sud, a riding hugging the border with the United States and anchored by the town of St-Georges, the Liberals are hoping Paul Busque can hold the seat after the departure of Robert Dutil, a cabinet minister during Jean Charest's government. They will face their biggest challenge from Tom Redmond, a municipal councilor for St-Georges and the Coalition Avenir Québec's candidate.

At the west end of Laval lies the riding of Fabre, vacated by the Liberals' Gilles Ouimet. Monique Sauvé will be looking to hold it for the party, which should not prove difficult.

At the other end of the province in the Côte-Nord, including the towns of Forestville and Baie-Comeau, is the riding of René-Léveseque. The Parti Québécois's Marjolain Dufour gave up the seat, and the PQ has put up Martin Ouellet to retain it. Though it is unlikely the PQ would lose this riding, the biggest challenge will likely come from Baie-Comeau municipal councilor Karine Otis of the Liberals.

The last riding, the working class Montreal riding of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, was left vacant by the departure of former cabinet minister Marguerite Blais of the Liberals. The only real 'star' candidate of these by-elections is Dominique Anglade, former president of the CAQ, who the Liberals are hoping can keep the riding for their party. The PQ's Gabrielle Lemieux will likely put up the biggest fight, though Québec Solidaire is gunning for a strong performance with their candidate Marie-Eve Rancourt, who ran for the party here in 2008.

These four ridings, individually, are not particularly interesting. The smallest margin of victory in these four in 2014 was 12.3 points in Beauce-Sud, while the other three were won by margins of 30 points or more. Only in Beauce-Sud is an upset a serious possibility, as the margin has averaged just 5.4 points in the riding over the last three elections. The average margin has been 15 points or more in the other ridings.

Together, however, these ridings are quite interesting. That is because they have actually managed to be ridings that, combined, matched the province-wide outcomes quite closely.

As you can see in the table above, the average result in these four ridings has never differed very greatly from the overall results in the province. They have been very close for the Parti Québécois in particular, which means these by-elections may serve as a good indication of how Pierre-Karl Péladeau is doing as the PQ's new leader.

The average result across these four ridings may be the most interesting number to look at on Monday night. But let's return to each of the four races.

Though attention has primarily been on the race in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, the by-election in Beauce-Sud could prove the closest. It was a very tight race between the Liberals and the CAQ (represented here by the ADQ's results in 2008) in 2008 and 2012, and was actually won by the ADQ in 2007. The CAQ's vote here has slipped a little over the last few elections, but it is nevertheless robust. 

The Liberals have dipped in the polls since the 2014 election, which may open up an opportunity for the CAQ here. But the CAQ has also dropped in support, primarily due to the arrival of Péladeau on the scene. That still gives the Liberals the best odds of holding on, but the CAQ's hopes are lying in Beauce-Sud.

There is little doubt that Fabre is a riding the Liberals should have no trouble retaining. They have easily won the riding over the last three elections, and saw their vote increase significantly in Fabre in 2014. The PQ's share has dropped consistently here over the last few campaigns, while the CAQ's strong showing in 2012 was due in part to the candidacy of Anglade, who is no longer available to the party. The ADQ did come relatively close here in 2007, but even that was when the Liberals were in a much poorer state than they are currently.

Polls suggest the Liberals are doing very well in the Montreal region, so this riding should hold firm for them. The question may be to see whether the PQ's Jibril Akaaboune Le-François can make some inroads in order to demonstrate that Péladeau's PQ can woo voters around the island of Montreal.

If Fabre is safe territory for the Liberals, then René-Lévesque is a stronghold for the PQ. With the brief exception of an ADQ by-election victory in 2002, the PQ has held this riding without interruption since 1994. In the 1995 sovereignty referendum, almost three out of every four voters in the riding opted for independence.

Support for the PQ has been over 50% in each of the last four elections, including the 2007 and 2014 campaigns when the party had the worst provincial performances in its history. Even in 2014, Dufour won the riding by just over 33 points. Considering that the Liberals are not in a better position in the polls today than they were a year ago, it is extremely unlikely that they can overcome that gap. In fact, it will be a disappointment for the PQ and Péladeau if they do not improve upon the 55% that Dufour managed in 2014.

Since its creation in 1994, the riding of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne has only ever voted for the Quebec Liberals. Any change from that would be a tremendous upset.

The Liberals won this riding by just over 30 points in 2014, and still managed to win it by just over six points in 2012. Even under the best of circumstances, it is a stretch to imagine the PQ being able to wrest this riding away from the Liberals — particularly with Anglade on the ballot. 

But the riding does serve as a bit of a test for the PQ and QS. For the results to be good news for the Parti Québécois, they would like to see their numbers be back over 30%. More interesting might be the numbers for Québec Solidaire, which has managed double-digits in this riding over the last two elections. The party is also doing quite well in the polls, registering as high as 13% province-wide and nearly 20% in the Montreal region. A strong sign that QS is heading in the right direction would see its results top 20% in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, though that might be a high bar to meet.

The safe money in these four by-elections would be on the four incumbent parties holding on. The CAQ could potentially pull off a victory in Beauce-Sud, while if things go well for the PQ they could get the Liberals nervous in Fabre and Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne. On the whole, however, the defeat of any incumbent party would be big news.

So instead the interest in these four by-elections will be on the overall performance of the parties, and whether they can out-perform expectations. They will primarily serve as tests to Couillard and Péladeau. Is the Liberal government in trouble or on the right track? Has Péladeau's leadership of the PQ led to any real gains for the party? Real ballots, and not just polls, will give us a clue on Monday night.

Breaking down the Sudbury results

The provincial by-election in Sudbury culminated in a somewhat anti-climactic fashion, with Glenn Thibeault (the NDP MP turned Ontario Liberal) prevailing by a little more than six points over the NDP's Suzanne Shawbonquit. The wildcard in the race, Andrew Olivier (the Ontario Liberal turned independent), took less of the vote than expected. But was he really a spoiler?

Let's first take a look at the shift in vote share since the 2014 provincial election.

Thibeault captured 41.2% of the vote, increasing his party's share by 1.9 points. Shawbonquit finished with 34.9%, a drop of 7.3 points over the NDP's victorious performance in 2014.

Olivier took 12.3%, not a bad performance by an independent candidate, but well below expectations.

The Progressive Conservatives' Paula Peroni saw her vote share (she ran last time as well) fall 6.3 points to 7.5%, while the Greens' David Robinson was down 0.4 points to 3.2%.

On the face of it, it would seem that Olivier drew votes from the NDP and the PCs, suggesting he could have been a spoiler for the NDP. But the New Democrats would have had to hold virtually all of their vote to beat Thibeault, a tough assignment considering that many Sudburians used to voting for Thibeault the New Democrat might have been willing to vote for Thibeault the Liberal.

In terms of actual votes, no party made any gains. The total number of voters dropped by some 8,000, as turnout fell to around 34%.

Of the three major parties, Thibeault saw the smallest drop, of 2,670 votes. Peroni fell 2,730 votes while Shawbonquit saw the largest slide, from 14,274 votes to 8,985 (a drop of 5,289).

Overall, turnout had dropped to about 76% of what it was in 2014. That means Thibeault outperformed that baseline, retaining 80% of the votes that the Liberals took in 2014.

Robinson retained 68% of 2014 Green voters, while Peroni retained just 41%. The problem for the NDP was that Shawbonquit retained 63% of her voters, when she needed at least 74%. In other words, the NDP just needed to tread water in order to hold off Thibeault, but they disproportionately lost voters, and so the by-election.

Was Olivier the cause? Quite possibly. If the number of votes cast had dropped uniformly across the board due to falling turnout, Shawbonquit would have won with about 10,900 votes and a lead of 700 or so over Thibeault. Instead, she under-performed that mark by about 1,860 votes. Peroni also under-performed, by about 1,610 votes. In total, these two parties took about 3,470 fewer votes than they should have, all else being equal. Perhaps not coincidentally, Olivier captured 3,177.

Just looking at the math, it doesn't seem like many Liberals went over to Olivier's camp. Undoubtedly some did, but they were more than made up for by New Democrats and PCs who voted for Thibeault. It seems more likely that Olivier drew support from the NDP, reducing their chances of victory. Or, at the very least, he did not draw enough Liberals to make up for the number of New Democrats who followed Thibeault across the metaphorical aisle.

Mixed results for the by-election polls

Polling in by-elections is risky business. It becomes even riskier when word that the OPP believes the Liberals did something under-handed to try to get Olivier out of the race drops on election day.

It is impossible to know the effect that news might have had on the outcome. Many voters may not have heard the news when they cast a ballot - certainly those who voted in the advanced polls, and potentially most of the voters who cast a ballot on election day itself (not everyone checks the news as frequently as you or I may). And maybe even the news wouldn't have had much of an effect, merely confirming what people were already thinking. In the end, the OPP appears to be looking at some individuals within the Liberal Party, not Glenn Thibeault. Voters may have compartmentalized the two - something they probably would not have been able to do if Thibeault wasn't already a known quantity.

So that is one thing to keep in mind when looking at how the polls performed. Another thing to keep in mind is the effect of the polls themselves. All of the polls over-estimated Olivier's support. Might voters who were aware of the polls have decided to cast a ballot for one of the two front runners, rather than the all-but-guaranteed third place finisher? Lastly, even the most recent polls were out of the field on Monday, three days before election day in a topsy-turvy campaign. So, some mitigating factors.

Nevertheless, none of the three final polls published in the last stages of the campaign did particularly well. But two of the three did correctly identify the winner.

Mainstreet Technologies had the smallest amount of error, totaling 14.1 points for the five major candidates (or 2.8 per party). Mainstreet had the gap at five points, close to the 6.3-point gap that actually occurred. But the results for Thibeault, Olivier, and Peroni were all outside the margin of error for the sample of decided voters (and taking into account the estimated support of the each candidate). However, the story Mainstreet's poll told was closest to the truth.

Forum Research's poll had only a little more absolute error, but the story it told was false. Two of Forum's three polls throughout the campaign had Shawbonquit ahead of Thibeault, including the last one.

Total error for Forum was 17.3 points, or 3.5 points per party. Again, though, Thibeault's result was outside the margin of error, as was Peroni's and Robinson's. Forum was the only pollster to get Olivier's support within the margin of error.

Oraclepoll Research had the largest degree of total error at 20.1 points (or four points per party). But it has to be rated ahead of Forum for not having pushed the narrative of a very, very close race that the NDP had better than even odds to win. Oraclepoll always had Thibeault ahead, and he ended up winning.

Oraclepoll was the only firm to get Thibeault's score within the margin of error, as well as Peroni's. But the results for Shawbonquit were well off the mark, as were Olivier's. Note, however, that Oraclepoll was out of the field the earliest of the three. It finished polling on Saturday.

So, not exactly a terrific performance by any pollster. At the same time, however, the polls were far better than what we have seen in some other by-elections. Mainstreet and Oraclepoll both said Thibeault would win, and he did. Forum said the race would be close, and it wasn't a landslide. I think, considering the drama of the campaign and the amount of time between the final polls and the results, we can give the polls a passing grade.

What are the polls really showing in Sudbury?

As by-elections go, the one in the provincial riding of Sudbury in Ontario has been pretty dramatic. Accusations of skulduggery, a Liberal-turned-independent candidate mixing it up, and a floor-crosser that managed to ford both the ideological gap between two parties as well as the federal/provincial line.

Some of the polls have been showing a close race between Liberal candidate Glenn Thibeault and the NDP's Suzanne Shawbonquit, with independent Andrew Olivier earning a big chunk of the vote. Other polls have shown Thibeault with a relatively comfortable lead. What gives?

At first glance, it is very puzzling that the polls by Forum Research and Oraclepoll Research can differ so much. Both firms have been in the field twice at exactly the same time. Oraclepoll was in for three to four days, with the Forum polls right in the middle of those sampling periods. So timing should have nothing to do with it.

Forum's first poll on January 13 put the gap at just two points, with Shawbonquit narrowly ahead. Olivier scored just 1%. Then on January 21, the gap was three points for Thibeault as he dropped seven points and Shawbonquit fell 12. Olivier made a miraculous 21-point gain, which Forum called a surge.

Meanwhile, Oraclepoll gave Thibeault a lead of 13 points on January 12-15 at 39% to 26% for Shawbonquit, with Olivier at 19%. On January 20-22, the gap was 16 points (42% to 26%), with Olivier at 20%. In other words, while Forum was showing a major shift, Oraclepoll was showing stability.

So who's right?

There are many reasons to trust Oraclepoll's numbers more than Forum's. Here's why.

Firstly, Forum is based out of Toronto and Oraclepoll is based out of Sudbury. Right out of the gate, the local firm has an advantage both in terms of local knowledge and a local area code showing up on the caller ID.

Secondly, and most importantly, Oraclepoll is conducting a superior survey. Forum is doing its polls via IVR, as it always does. It jumps into the field for a few hours on one evening, gathers its 500 to 800 responses, and reports the numbers a day or two later (response rates being what they are for Forum, it probably needs to call 25,000 to 80,000 households to get even those small samples).

Though it doesn't say explicitly, we can assume that Forum is not calling cell phones. This is because, unlike land lines, it is not possible to know for certain where a respondent on a cell phone is living. This is a problem in by-elections, as ridings do not entirely occupy an area code. This is not an issue in provincial or national polling. Cell phones can be included there without issue, and usually are.

Update: Commenter DL (see below) points out that targeting cell phones in a billing area is straight-forward, so Forum may indeed be calling cell phones. The inability to call cell phones pinpointed to a specific riding would be more of a problem in a city like Toronto where there are multiple ridings within one municipality.

Oraclepoll, on the other hand, is doing its polls with live-callers and it explicitly says that it is including cell phones in its sample (perhaps it has a list of local cell phones to call from). It is also in the field for several days, and according to its press release is calling back numbers where respondents did not answer up to five times before giving up. That is how a poll is supposed to be done.

Forum is getting responses from whoever is home between, say, 7 PM and 9 PM on January 13 and January 21 and is willing to answer a survey. Oraclepoll is doing everything that is reasonably possible to reach everyone it is calling. The potential for a biased sample is far lower.

Lastly, Forum's 1% result for Olivier on January 13 defies logic. At the time the poll was released, people were very surprised that Olivier, who had a relatively high profile, was scoring just 1%. That his number jumped from 1% to 22% in eight days makes little sense, particularly when Oraclepoll was showing his support levels to be steady at between 19% and 20% over the same period. While it is conceivable that the discrepancies in the results for the Liberals and NDP can be explained away by sampling issues and statistical probability, the discrepancy for Olivier's numbers are virtually impossible.

I don't know what happened in Forum's January 13th poll. But it simply doesn't make sense.

In that survey, Forum inquired as to whether Sudburians (Sudburites? Sudburers?) approved of the candidates on offer. The responses there just don't line up with the voting intentions numbers it recorded.

At the time, the poll found that 95% of respondents were aware or had an opinion of Thibeault, compared to 75% for PC candidate Paula Peroni and just 61% for Shawbonquit. But Olivier, who had just 1% support in the same poll, had 88% recognition - better than either the NDP or PC candidates.

That poll also suggested that 48% of all respondents (including undecideds and those who did not know him) approved of Thibeault, indicating that he was converting about 80% of sympathizers into supporters. Shawbonquit, with 41% approval, was converting an incredible 99% of sympathizers.

Peroni's approval was just 28%, as she was unknown to many respondents, but she was converting just 45% of sympathizers into supporters.

Olivier, though, had an approval rating of 60% of all of those sampled - and this is including those who did not have an opinion or did not know him. That was higher than any other candidate. According to the poll, we are thus supposed to believe that Olivier was converting just 2% of his sympathizers into supporters. If you can believe that, I have a bridge that spans the width of Lake Huron to sell you.

I think we can reasonably conclude that the January 13 poll by Forum can be tossed aside and discarded. Forum's January 21 poll has no similar problems, and support levels for Olivier and Peroni are similar to those recorded by Oraclepoll. Considering the sample sizes, Shawbonquit's support is also within the margin of error of these two polls, and Thibeault's is only slightly outside of it.

Due to the advantages that Oraclepoll's survey has over Forum's (not to mention the poor record Forum has in by-elections outside of Toronto), the benefit of the doubt should probably go to Oraclepoll. And that's even with the smaller sample size (the margin of error of decided voters would be just under +/- 6%).

If we use that margin of error to estimate support ranges, we'd get Thibeault at between 36% and 47%, Shawbonquit at between 21% and 31%, Olivier between 16% and 25%, and Peroni between 5% and 11%. That is probably as close as we can get to the truth at this stage of the campaign, which will come to a merciful end on Thursday.

From bad to worse for the NL PCs

A quick follow-up on yesterday's post on the two by-elections held last night in Newfoundland and Labrador. By-elections over the last three years have been rough for the governing Progressive Conservatives. These last two were catastrophic.

The Liberals won both of these ridings by very comfortable margins after benefiting from gigantic swings from both the NDP and the PCs to their party.

In Trinity-Bay de Verde, Liberal Steve Crocker took 65.5% of the vote, with the Tories dropping to 29.1% and the NDP to 5.4%.

In Humber East, Stelman Flynn of the Liberals took 56.1% of the vote, with the Tories plummeting to 36.1% and the NDP falling to 7.8%.

The swing that occurred in Humber East is absolutely extraordinary. The Liberals gained 47.6 points and the PCs fell 42.1 points, for a total swing of 89.7 points. This has to be one of the largest swings in Canadian electoral history, if not the largest. To recall, just three years ago the PCs took 78.2% of the vote here and the Liberals only 8.5%. The PC vote share fell by more than half. The Liberal share increased almost seven fold.

In Trinity-Bay de Verde, the Liberals picked up 41.6 points and the PCs fell 32.8 points. The NDP vote fell by almost two-thirds.

These were horrific results for the PCs. The seven by-elections that have been held since the last provincial election have all been bad for the Tories, but these swings of 74.4 and 89.7 points are the largest to have occurred. In every previous by-election, the Tories had at least maintained half of their vote share. Here, they lost a majority of it. Before last night, the Tories had shed an average of 22.8 points per by-election. Last night, they dropped an average of 37.5 points.

A shocker? In terms of the scale of the Liberal victory in Humber East, most certainly. But after the extraordinary results the Liberals had put up in other by-elections, no one was counting the party out. I said so myself in yesterday's post, and the By-Election Barometer's subjective analysis for this riding said so as well (no model could plausibly predict such a historic swing). The Liberals appear unbeatable in Newfoundland and Labrador.

But these are by-elections, and the next provincial election may not be so easy. Regardless, there is no way to look at these results and consider the Tories' chances next year anything but slim.

Will Conservatives drop, Liberals gain in Monday's by-elections?

Update on Election Night: Answer? Yes. The Conservatives took a hit in their vote share more or less in line with how they have performed in past by-elections, but nevertheless put up some decent and respectable results with (at time of writing, with still some votes to be counted) 63% in Yellowhead and 49% in Whitby-Oshawa. They also won both ridings, which in first-past-the-post is all that matters.

The Liberals had a good night in terms of vote share increase, jumping to 41% in Whitby-Oshawa (almost tripling their share) and 20% in Yellowhead (increasing it more than sixfold). But they still came up short. The Liberals will do well in 2015 if they can replicate these kinds of swings, but will not go very far if they just replicate these close losses instead.

The New Democrats had a bad night in Whitby-Oshawa, dropping to just 8%. They held their own in Yellowhead, however, with 10%. But the party's future prosperity lies not in rural Alberta, but in seat-rich Ontario. The drop of more than half of their vote share in Whitby-Oshawa is not a promising sign. But these are still just by-elections, when a two-horse race can have a stronger influence on strategic voting than might be the case in a general election. Nevertheless, little silver lining to be had for the NDP. 

In terms of the polls, Forum should have quit when it was ahead. The polls of November 11 that I wrote about below were quite close, but their election eve polling of November 16 was worse. And in the case of Yellowhead, much worse.

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The Conservatives have put up poor results in byelections since winning a majority government in 2011, and will again be put to the test in two contests in Ontario and Alberta on Monday. Will they be able to hold on to their two seats?

You can read the rest of the piece on CBC.ca. It goes over some of the regional-level polling Alberta and Ontario, the by-election record of the major parties since 2011, and how the Conservative government's record stacks up.

Let's briefly here go over the by-election polls that were out this morning. They were conducted by Forum Research, and we all know how hit or miss their by-election polling has been in the past. One thing to take into consideration, however, is that Forum's by-election record is actually not too bad in the GTA, where the Whitby-Oshawa by-election is being held. Their notable misses took place in Alberta, Manitoba, and elsewhere in Ontario. We'll see if that trend continues on Monday.

Forum now has it as a close race in Whitby-Oshawa, with Pat Perkins of the Conservatives at 44% and Celina Caesar-Chavannes at 40%. That represents a narrowing of the gap, as Perkins does pick up three points while Caesar-Chavannes picks up eight compared to Forum's poll of October 27. The NDP's Trish McAulife is down three points to 12%.

That it has become a close race is a little bit of a surprise. The Flaherty legacy is strong in the riding. So, we should take these results with a little caution. When Forum has been off in the past, often it was an over-estimation of the challenger's support. So that would suggest Perkins has more of an edge than the poll indicates.

In Yellowhead, we get our first poll of the campaign. Jim Eglinski of the Conservatives was well ahead with 62%, followed by 16% for the Liberals and 12% for the NDP. These are intuitive numbers at the very least.

Unless Whitby-Oshawa flips, the thing I will be looking for on Monday is whether the Conservatives continue to take a significant hit in these by-elections to the benefit of the Liberals, continuing to corroborate what the polls are showing to be the case at a wider level.

Liberals big winner in by-elections

In the end, the by-elections on Monday went just about as expected, with the Liberals picking up Trinity-Spadina and making impressive gains in rural and northern Alberta. The turnout was low - in two cases setting new records - but the results were nevertheless in line with what the national and regional polls suggested should be the case.

This would seem to validate the results, despite the low turnout. It also seems to validate the national polls that have been giving the Liberals the lead in voting intentions. In every case since Justin Trudeau took over the party, the Liberals have made important gains in by-elections, just as the party has done in national polls. Yes, after 2011 the Liberals had nowhere to go but up, but in many cases the numbers the Liberals have been putting up in these ridings were similar to the vote shares the party managed in the days of Jean Chrétien. In other words, the Liberal surge is real and not just a rebound from historical lows.

Let's go through the by-election results, riding by riding. The following charts show the change in vote share and actual votes compared to the 2011 federal election.

Amazingly, the race in northern Alberta was the closest of the four.

The Conservative David Yurdiga prevailed in the end, with 47% support against 35% for Kyle Harrietha of the Liberals (the party's best performance since 1968). The New Democrats took 11% of the vote, while the Greens took 4%.

That was a big swing between the Tories and Liberals. The Conservatives dropped by 25 points while the Liberals picked up 24.9 points. Despite the record-setting low turnout, the Liberals increased their raw vote count by 1,301 ballots. The Conservatives dropped 16,043 votes and the New Democrats 2,604. The margin between the Conservatives and Liberals, standing at 18,798 votes in 2011, fell to just 1,454.

The changes were less significant in Macleod, where turnout was also quite low. John Barlow of the Conservatives took 69% of the vote against 17% for the Liberals' Dustin Fuller (the best performance for the party since 1957). The Greens placed third here with 6% support, and the NDP finished fourth with 4%.

The Conservatives dropped a more modest 8.7 points, but the Liberals picked up 13.3. Much of that came from the Conservatives, but also from the NDP, which was down 6.1 points.

In raw votes, the Conservatives fell from 40,007 to 12,394, a decrease of 27,613 votes. The Liberals, however, increased their total from 1,898 to 3,062, a gain of 1,164 votes. The Greens lost about half of their votes, and the NDP about 85% of theirs.

The Liberals did not suffer from the departure of Jim Karygiannis in Scarborough-Agincourt. Instead, their vote share under Arnold Chan increased by 13.9 points to 59%, while the Conservatives' Trevor Ellis dropped 4.9 points to 29%. The NDP fell even more dramatically, by 9.6 points to 9%. The Greens took 1% of the vote (and actually placed fifth, behind an independent candidate).

The Liberals could not increase their vote total here, however, dropping 5,669 ballots to 12,829. The Conservatives shed 7,586 votes, falling to 6,344, while the NDP dropped 5,532 votes to just 1,844.

The marquee match-up of the evening went very comfortably to the Liberals, as Adam Vaughan won 54% of the vote in Trinity-Spadina, an increase of 30.3 points over the party's 2011 performance and the best the party has done since the riding was created in 1988. Joe Cressy of the NDP took 34% of the vote, down 20.4 points from Olivia Chow's performance. The Conservatives fell 11 points to 6%, while the Greens were up slightly to 5%.

In terms of raw votes, the Liberals increased their total here by 3,271 to 18,547, while the NDP dropped 23,799 votes to 11,802 (less than what the Liberals took in 2011). The Conservatives lost 8,954 votes, falling to just 2,022.

Overall, it was a stellar performance for the Liberals across the board. They averaged 20.7% support across these four ridings in 2011, but on Monday night they averaged 41.3%.

The Conservatives placed second last night with an average of 37.7% support, after capturing an average share of 50.1% in 2011. The NDP was down from 24% to 14.6%, while the Greens held steady at 4%.

For the Liberals, this was their best performance since before 1988. The closest they have come since then was an average of 38.8% in 2000.

This was the Conservatives' worst performance since before 1988, if we combine the vote totals of the Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance/Reform between 1988 and 2000. Their previous low in that span was 2004, when the Conservatives took an average of 41.2% support in these four ridings.

For the New Democrats, this was their worst performance in these four ridings since 2000, when they averaged 12.8% support.

Considering how last night's results stand against historical performances over the last 26 years, the numbers are remarkable. So perhaps they are a fluke?

I don't think that argument can be easily made. Before the by-elections, I posted what the high and low ranges were when applying this site's projection model to the ridings using the last 30 days of Alberta and Ontario polling. At the time, I hadn't included the latest Angus Reid survey. But the chart below includes that survey, and shows that the results fell well into line with what the province-wide polls suggested could be the case.

As you can see, the bulk of the results fell just outside or well within the expected ranges.

In Macleod, the Conservatives performed within expectations, while the Liberals over-achieved a fair bit and the NDP and Greens under-achieved.

In Fort McMurray-Athabasca, the Conservative result was just below where the polls suggested it could fall, and Harrietha's was just above the high-end. Perhaps in this we see the push the Liberals made in the final days and the multiple visits from Trudeau.

The Liberals just out-performed expectations in Trinity-Spadina, no doubt due to Vaughan's high-profile, while Cressy performed just about as expected. The Conservatives, not in the running, were well below expectations.

And in Scarborough-Agincourt, both the Liberals and Conservatives performed as expected, with the NDP and Greens falling just below their low range.

This seems to back-up the results, suggesting that they were not a fluke but generally representative of wider trends. It also suggests that the national polls are not off the mark, and that what they are recording is in the ballpark of how Canadians feel right now.

But other polls did not do so well. As usual, Forum conducted riding-level polls in each of these four ridings, despite the myriad of difficulties involved with doing so. One particular issue is the inability to geo-locate cellphones, leaving them entirely outside the sample. Here is how Forum's polls did:

Overall, they did rather poorly. Even accounting for the +/- 5% margin of error that Forum reported, in only two cases (the Liberals in Macleod and the NDP in Trinity-Spadina) were the two leading parties in each riding gauged accurately.

The winners were identified in Macleod, Trinity-Spadina, and Scarborough-Agincourt, but these were relatively easy to call. The Tories were underestimated by 15 points in Macleod, and the Greens over-estimated by 10 points. In Fort McMurray-Athabasca, the Liberals were wrongly identified as the winner, while the Tories were underestimated by 14 points.

In Trinity-Spadina, the Liberals were under-scored by nine points and the Conservative overestimated by five. In Scarborough-Agincourt, the Liberals were underestimated by 11 points and the Conservatives overestimated by eight.

Not a strong night for Forum. But there is some credit worth portioning out. Forum did record that the Liberals were doing well in Alberta, greatly above historical levels. And throughout the campaign Forum pegged Vaughan as a game-changing candidate. Its polls there made Trinity-Spadina a much easier call, even if they missed on some of the final numbers.

Polling by-elections is perilous, and Forum should probably stop doing it as it has not helped its reputation. But these by-election polls have been broadly informative, rather than precisely accurate. They told us much about Vaughan's influence in this round of by-elections, and the surprising Liberal gains to be made in Manitoba last fall. We just need to know how to read these by-election polls better, if they will continue to be published. Look at the broad strokes and the general narrative, forget the calls on who will win and by how much. If we do that, these polls may prove useful after all.

Incumbents favoured in three of four by-elections (updated)

Four federal by-elections are being held on Monday in Alberta and Ontario. If voters in these ridings can be bothered to cast a ballot on what is a long weekend for many of them, the results should be interesting.

The ridings in questions are Macleod and Fort McMurray-Athabasca in Alberta and Trinity-Spadina and Scarborough-Agincourt in Ontario (both in Toronto). These four ridings have been very safe ones for the incumbent parties in the past, and in three of them the incumbent is expected to prevail. That leaves Trinity-Spadina as the race to watch.

The Conservatives should have no trouble holding on to their two Alberta ridings, which they won by gargantuan margins in 2011. Of note may be the performance of the Liberals, who put in some surprising showings, and almost an upset, in two rural Manitoba ridings at the end of 2013. Fort McMurray-Athabasca, with its fast growing population and large labour force hailing from elsewhere in the country, could be interesting as well. The Liberals have been polling relatively well in Alberta - compared to their usual support levels, at least - and it will be interesting to see if they can attract a large number of voters in the province like they did in Calgary Centre in 2012.

Scarborough-Agincourt is a Liberal fortress, having survived the purge of 2011. Some might argue it was a Jim Karygiannis fortress, but polls suggest Arnold Chan will hold on to the riding for the Liberals. Trinity-Spadina, vacated by Olivia Chow as she runs for the Toronto mayor's office, would normally be an NDP lock. But with popular local councilor Adam Vaughan carrying the Liberal banner, the riding could swing over to him. Voters in Trinity-Spadina just recently elected a provincial Liberal, defeating long-time MPP Rosario Marchese, who had represented the riding since 1999.

Let's take a look at what kind of results we might expect in these four ridings. The first chart below shows the high and low projections based on the last three polls conducted in Ontario. These were calculated using the site's standard methodology for making riding estimations.

By these measures, the Conservatives look quite comfortable in Macleod and Fort McMurray-Athabasca, while the Liberals look solid in Scarborough-Agincourt.

June 30 update: An Angus Reid national poll was released over the weekend. Adding it to the high and low projections, the Conservative high would be boosted to 56% in Fort McMurray-Athabasca. The Liberal low would be reduced to 35% in Trinity-Spadina, while the NDP high would be increased to 44% there. In Scarborough, the NDP high would rise to 16%, while in Macleod the Green low would drop to 6%.

In Macleod, the Conservatives have ranged between 62% and 70% when employing the provincial swing from the last three polls. The NDP, Liberals, and potentially even the Greens could claim second spot.

In Fort McMurray-Athabasca, the Conservatives look likely to be reduced from the margin they managed in 2011, but would still take between 48% and 55% against just 22% to 31% for the Liberals. Still, in a northern Alberta riding that would be a good showing for the Liberals. The NDP have the inside track on third place, but the Greens could narrowly take it.

The Liberals look set to take a majority of the vote in Scarborough-Agincourt with between 52% and 65%, against 23% to 30% for the Conservatives. The NDP should finish third.

And in Trinity-Spadina, the Liberals and New Democrats are in a close race that is leaning Liberal. Vaughan could take 36% to 51% of the vote, and Joe Cressy between 28% and 41%. The Conservatives, at 13% to 15%, would finish third.

But these are estimates based on province-wide support levels. In by-elections, local factors are extremely important. Forum Research has, as usual, tried to gauge the support of the parties in three of the four ridings (interestingly, Forum has opted not to poll Fort McMurray-Athabasca, due to the difficulties in reaching its transient, cellphone-only population). Let's see how Forum measures the three races, again using the high and low numbers they have reported in its two (Macleod, Scarborough-Agincourt) or three (Trinity-Spadina) polls released in the last few months.

Here we see some small variations from the estimates based on provincial swing.

June 30 update: Forum released some new numbers on the eve of the election. In Macleod, the poll would reduce the low Conservative result to 54% and the NDP low to 4%. The Liberal high would increase to 16% and the Green high to 16%.

In Trinity-Spadina, the Conservative low drops to 11% and the Liberal low to 45%. The NDP high increases to 35% and the Green high to 9%.

In Scarborough-Agincourt, the NDP high increases to 10% and the Green high to 4%.

Forum released its first numbers for Fort McMurray-Athabasca: 41% Liberals, 33% Conservatives, 13% NDP, 8% Others, 5% Greens. Not sure about those, but we'll see tonight.

Macleod lines up about the same, with the Tories a little lower than the provincial swing would suggest.

In Scarborough-Agincourt, Forum is less bullish on the Liberals and more favourable to the Conservatives, but still gives it to Chan by a fair margin over Trevor Ellis. The most recent Forum poll (June 18) gives Chan the advantage among all age groups, suggesting turnout might not matter.

Trinity-Spadina is perhaps the most different, if only because it doesn't give Cressy much of a chance. Vaughan has managed between 52% and 54% in Forum's three polls, against 31% to 34% for Cressy. In the latest survey, Vaughan led in all age groups except the 18 to 34 year olds, and 44% of former NDP voters said they would cast their ballot for Vaughan. That does not look very good for the New Democrats.

But just how reliable are by-election polls? They can be hit or terrible-miss. On the one hand, Forum has generally had a good track record in Toronto-area ridings. But calling cellphones is impossible for by-election polling, since it is not possible to ensure that the phones being called belong to people who live in the riding. A lot of people are cellphone-only in an area like Trinity-Spadina. The question is whether these people are different from the landline using population. Perhaps they are, or perhaps Forum has gotten lucky in the past. Cellphone-only residents might be less likely to vote in a more rural riding, but not in the downtown core of Toronto.

Macleod is unlikely to be gauged incorrectly by Forum, despite the company's bad record in rural ridings. The Conservatives will win here, but don't be surprised if Forum's estimations are off by double-digits. Nevertheless, in all ridings the numbers generally line-up with where the swing suggests they should be (that was not the case in Brandon-Souris in 2013, the big miss by Forum) so a bad performance may not be in the works.

Another complicating factor is turnout. Much was made of the decent advance poll turnout rates in most of the by-elections, particularly Trinity-Spadina. But was that because of high interest, or because many voters knew they would be out of town on June 30, the day before Canada Day? If turnout is low, there is a greater chance that something unusual could happen if one party is more successful in getting their voters to the polling stations.

It should be an interesting set of results. The wider implications will be difficult to gauge. If incumbents win in three of four, and a popular local councilor defeats the incumbent in the remaining contest, will that say very much?

How did the polls do in the Ontario by-elections?

Two by-elections were held in the Ontario ridings of Niagara Falls and Thornhill last night. I wrote about how the parties themselves did for The Huffington Post Canada, but let's take a look at how the polls did here.

As is usually the case, Forum Research was the only pollster in the field. The firm was a little less active than it was in the Ontario and federal by-elections of 2013, and conducted its final poll on February 11, rather than on the eve of the vote as Forum has usually done.

Forum and the Toronto Star did seem to be aware of the skepticism that had grown with Forum's by-election polls after the misses in Ottawa South and Brandon-Souris. In their reports, the Star pointed out that Forum uses a proprietary weighting formula that was shown to the Star, and that the raw data of the polls had been deposited at the University of Toronto (if you're a political science student there, take a trek down to the library and take a look at that raw data, please!).

There was no Ottawa South or Brandon-Souris type error last night in the polls. As forecasted, Wayne Gates of the NDP won in Niagara Falls and Gila Martow of the PCs won in Thornhill. The final poll in Thornhill was quite close, with all parties' results falling within the reported margin of error, while the final poll in Niagara Falls over-estimated the support of the NDP. Otherwise, the poll did fine.

A few notes on the charts below. The "With reported MOE" row shows the margin of error ranges for each of the parties when applying the margin of error that was reported (Forum rounds the margin of error off, and calculates it for the entire sample, not just decided voters). The "Actual MOE" row shows what the margin of error for each party actually was, taking into account their level of support (a party with 50% support has a higher margin of error than a party with 5%) and the number of decided voters.

In Niagara Falls, Forum over-estimated the support of the New Democrats by at least five points, and as much as twice of that. So that was a miss, but at least the winner was correctly identified.

The PCs, Liberals, and Greens all did slightly better than the poll expected, though the results were within both the reported and actual margins of error.

The poll conducted by Forum on February 5 would have been much closer. That survey had the NDP at 38% to 36% for the Tories and 19% for the Liberals.

The poll in Thornhill was much better. The results were within three points for the PCs and within 1.8 points for the Liberals, NDP, and Greens. All results fell within the reported and actual margins of error, and comfortably within them (unlike the PCs in Niagara Falls, who fell just within the edge of the margin of error).

This is not the first time Forum has had a good performance in the Toronto area. Its Toronto Centre poll in the November by-elections was the closest of the four, while the polls in Etobicoke-Lakeshore and Scarborough-Guildwood were the best of the five Ontario by-elections of August 2013. Forum has had much less success outside of the GTA. I cannot speculate why that might be.

UPDATE: A reader made an interesting suggestion of why that might be. Forum's by-election record has been generally good in races where voting patterns did not change much (i.e., the GTA) but has been very poor in ridings where those patterns changed significantly. If Forum is making assumptions to model the voting population in its polls, those assumptions may be incorrect when the electorate is shifting so greatly.

This site's By-Election Barometer continues to have a flawless record. Thornhill had been forecast to be a Likely PC win, while Niagara Falls was a Toss-Up that favoured the NDP. This stretches the barometer's record to 29 by-elections without an error.

Manitoba NDP takes a beating in by-elections

Last night's results in the two Manitoba by-elections in the ridings of Morris and Arthur-Virden showed that Greg Selinger's NDP government has indeed taken a big hit from the increase in the PST that started their poll numbers spiraling downwards in 2013. Though the winners were never in doubt - both ridings are solidly Tory - the NDP dropped more than half of its vote share from the 2011 provincial election and, overall, finished third on the night.

We'll start in Arthur-Virden, where the results were particularly bad for the New Democrats.

PC candidate Doyle Piwniuk won handily with 68.2% of the vote, improving upon Larry Maguire's performance in 2011 and putting up the best numbers for the Tories since at least 1990.

Liberal candidate Floyd Buhler finished second, surging from 3.8% in 2011 to 16% last night, the best performance for the Liberals in Arthur-Virden since 1995. He was the only candidate last night (excluding the Greens and the independent Ray Shaw, who did not run in 2011) to get more raw votes despite the steep slide in turnout. Buhler received 738 votes, compared to 288 for the Liberal candidate in 2011.

The New Democrats' Bob Senff fell most sharply, to just 10.4% after the NDP took 30.2% in this riding in 2011. That was a drop of almost 20 points, and the NDP took just 21% of the vote haul they did in 2011. It was their worst performance since before 1990.

The Greens' Kate Storey captured 5.3% of the vote.

There was less movement in Morris, but again the NDP lost support to the Liberals and the Greens. PC candidate Shannon Martin's vote share was slightly lower than Mavis Taillieu's, at 70% to 74%, but that is a minor quibble when you take more than two-thirds of the vote.

The NDP's Dean Harder narrowly placed second, with 12.9%. That was a drop of 6.5 points and the party's worst showing since 1995. The Liberals' Jeremy Barber took 11.2%, up from 6.6% in 2011, and their best performance since 2003.

Shaw took 3.7% of the vote while Alain Landry of the Greens captured 2.3%.

Overall, it was a rough night for the New Democrats. In these two ridings in 2011, they had captured just under 25% of votes cast. That fell to less than 12% last night. The Liberals increased their share from 5% to 14%, while the Tories held firm.

Average vote share across the two ridings (eliminating the difference of turnout between the two) was 69.1% for the Progressive Conservatives, 13.6% for the Liberals, 11.7% for the New Democrats, and 3.8% for the Greens.

In 2011, the average vote share in Morris and Arthur-Virden was 70% for the PCs, 24.8% for the NDP, and just 5.2% for the Liberals.

That means the Liberals picked up 8.4 points last night, primarily from the NDP. They dropped 13.1 points, with the remainder going to the Greens and Shaw. The PCs dropped by just 0.9 points.

If we apply those proportional changes to the province-wide results in 2011, we get the Tories at 43%, the NDP at 22%, and the Liberals at 20%. That is remarkably close to the last Probe Research survey, that put the Tories ahead with 48% to 26% for the NDP and 20% for the Liberals. These ridings did just about as expected in that respect, and the results go a long way to confirming the NDP's slide. It also suggests that the Liberal support recorded in the polls can actually manifest itself at the ballot box - at least in a low-stakes by-election. But what about a general election?

By-elections in Manitoba today

Two provincial by-elections are being held in Manitoba today, and both are expected to be easily won by the opposition Progressive Conservatives. But that doesn't mean the two are without interest: as the first opportunity for (some) Manitobans to express their opinions of the NDP government since the PST increase of 2013, the results could be revealing. It will also serve as a first test for the third-party Liberals and their new leader, Rana Bokhari.

The two ridings up for grabs are Arthur-Virden in southwestern Manitoba and Morris in the southeast. Both of these are rural ridings, with the largest towns being Niverville in Morris (population: 3,500) and Virden in Arthur-Virden (population: 3,100).

Arthur-Virden was vacated by Larry Maguire after he narrowly won the federal by-election in Brandon-Souris. Maguire had represented the riding since 1999, and the PC vote in Arthur-Virden has been growing in every election since. In fact, the 66% of the vote he took in 2011 was the best performance by a Tory candidate for some time. This makes it likely that Doyle Piwniuk will be able to retain the riding - and with the NDP vote tanking province wide he may be able to take as much as 71% of ballots cast (as a simple swing from the last Probe Research poll would suggest).

The New Democrats peaked in 2003 here, when they captured 42% of the vote. Their share had been growing as the Liberal vote slipped to just 4% that year, where it has roughly remained. But the NDP has dropped to around 30% over the last two elections. With their sinking poll numbers, their candidate Bob Senff could drop further to around 18%. The Liberals, who have put up Floyd Buhler, could put up their best result since 1999. The Greens also have a candidate in the race.

The by-election in Morris follows the resignation of PC MLA Mavis Taillieu last year. The riding has been solidly PC for a very long time, and 2011 represented a strong year for the party. Shannon Martin should be able to take the riding comfortably.

The New Democrats saw their vote increase in elections between 1990 and 2007, peaking at 32% that year. But it dropped significantly in 2011 to just 19%, and Dean Harder is in danger of falling into third place for the first time since 1999, based on the provincial polls. Jeremy Barber of the Liberals could finish second, after the party dropped to just 7% in 2011. They have a better base here than they do in Arthur-Virden, however, as they took one-fourth of the vote between 1990 and 1999, and were still at 20% in 2003 (when the party was at just 4% in Arthur-Virden). A Green and independent candidate are also in the running here.

So the question is not whether the Progressive Conservatives will hold these ridings - they absolutely will. Instead the question is whether the governing New Democrats will be able to hold on to second place in both Morris and Arthur-Virden. The NDP's vote has fallen dramatically province wide, but especially so in the rural parts of the province. It will be interestingly to see if the Liberals can make a splash. They have a good shot at it: the party has traditionally performed respectably in Morris and their federal cousin almost stole the riding of Brandon-Souris, which contains Arthur-Virden, in November.

The results won't make any real difference in the legislature, but if the Liberals put up some strong numbers the New Democrats may have to be more concerned with the party in their rear-view mirror than the one charging ahead of them.

PLQ should win by-elections, as Montreal vote holds steady

Voters in the Quebec provincial ridings of Viau and Outremont will be heading to the polls on Monday to fill the seats vacated by Emmanuel Dubourg (recently elected federal Liberal MP for Bourassa) and Raymond Bachand (who placed third and last in the PLQ leadership race). Both ridings should stay within the provincial Liberal fold, but it does give us an opportunity to look at voting intentions on the island of Montreal.

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The by-election in Viau looks unlikely to have any surprises. David Heurtel of the Liberals should easily take a riding won by Dubourg with 47.3% of the vote in a very bad election year for the party in 2012. In fact, 2012 was the only time that the Liberals did not capture a majority of the vote in Viau. Tania Longpré of the Parti Québécois, Jamilla Leboeuf of the Coalition Avenir Québec, and Geneviève Fortier-Moreau of Québec Solidaire will fight it out for second place.

The PQ has the inside track on that title, as the party took 23.7% of the vote here in 2012, compared to 12.4% for the CAQ and 11.5% for QS. In addition, as we will see below, the PQ's vote on the island of Montreal has been holding steady - if not increasing. Fortier-Moreau, however, is the only return candidate from that election year on a long ballot (nine candidates are running, the others being from Option Nationale, the Greens, the Conservatives, the UCQ and the Équipe Autonomiste).

But Outremont might be of more interest. Philippe Couillard is the Liberal candidate, as he tries to get into the National Assembly to lead his party. With an election expected in the early spring, Couillard might best be able to count in weeks the time he will be Outremont's representative.

On paper, there is the potential for a Couillard defeat. Why? Both the PQ and the CAQ have opted not to put up candidates of their own, in order to facilitate Couillard's entry into the National Assembly. Québec Solidaire is awarding the Liberals no such courtesy, and have the best shot of pulling off an upset if they can gather almost every vote that is against the Liberals.

In 2012, Bachand took 41.5% of the vote in Outremont, followed by the PQ's Roxanne Gendron at 23.2% and Québec Solidaire's Édith Laperle at 18%. Laperle is running again, and if she can capture the PQ's share of the vote she could take as much as 41.2%. Throw in a few CAQ voters not willing to back Couillard and supporters of ON who might be tempted to back the best horse, and you have the ingredients for a QS upset.

But the ingredients are very thin, and not just because Laperle needs every PQ vote as well as a few more votes in order to topple Couillard.

The chart above shows support on the island of Montreal as recorded by CROP since the last election. In that election, the Liberals won the island with 44.9% of the vote, compared to 23.8% for the Parti Québécois, 15.4% for the CAQ, and 12% for Québec Solidaire.

There have been wobbles back and forth since then, but the latest polls suggests that the PQ and the PLQ have both picked up a little support on the island of Montreal, coming from both the CAQ and QS. The most recent poll gave the Liberals 49% support on the island, followed by the PQ at 30%, the CAQ at 12%, and QS at 9%.

If we stretch that back to August, in order to get a stronger sample of around 900 decided voters, we get a clearer picture of support on the island (numbers for all parties have been relatively stable since then, so averaging out these four polls is not unreasonable). In that larger sample, we get the Liberals at 48.5%, the PQ at 29.8%, the CAQ at 9.8%, and QS at 9%.

This means that since the last election, the Liberals have gained roughly four points and the PQ six, with QS down three points and the CAQ down more than five.

If we apply this swing to Outremont, we see that fewer votes are available to Laperle. The proportional swing model would now give the Liberals 45% in Outremont, against 29% for the PQ, 14% for QS, and 9% for the CAQ. Whereas before the combined vote of the PQ and QS was almost equal to that of the Liberals, the two parties now fall two points short of Couillard. And that is without taking into account the boost Couillard is undoubtedly going to get as party leader. Laperle would now need more than a third of the CAQ's vote, an ideological leap that may be too wide to reasonably expect.

In Viau, applying the swing would give Heurtel 51% to 30% for the PQ and 9% for Québec Solidaire.

That Québec Solidaire has apparently dropped in support on the island of Montreal is something to consider when looking at their province-wide support. They have bettered the 6% they took in 2012 in the last seven polls, and the current aggregation has them at 9%. But all of those gains have apparently come off of the island of Montreal, where Québec Solidaire has no concentration of support and little prospect of winning new seats. It is hard to see how QS could win a third or fourth seat on the island of Montreal if their support actually drops - especially considering that we can probably expect Françoise David's share to increase in her riding next time (note that almost 1 in 3 ballots cast for QS on the island in 2012 was either for her or Amir Khadir).

It is also worth noting that the fact the PQ has gained support on the island of Montreal goes against the conventional wisdom that the debate over the secular charter is between urbane Montrealers and bumpkins in the rest of the province. Instead, and polling data has explicitly backed this up, it appears that Montreal francophones are no less likely to support the charter than their counterparts in the rest of the province (some polls suggest they are even more likely to support it). The divide is most certainly regional because of the multicultural population of Montreal vs. the rest of the province, but that is primarily due to the linguistic differences between the regions. This makes the charter good politics for the PQ, because it would appear that they are unlikely to lose the few seats they have in Montreal, while gaining new ones elsewhere.

But for now, the Liberals are the ones who will be gaining seats: Viau and Outremont on Monday.

By-election post-mortem

The four federal by-elections last night played out as ThreeHundredEight forecast, with the Liberals retaining Bourassa and Toronto Centre, the Conservatives retaining Provencher, and Brandon-Souris being a toss-up riding that leaned slightly towards the incumbent Tories. So slightly, in fact, that the Liberals were less than 400 votes short of winning it.

By-Election Barometer Record

This makes 22 by-elections without a wrong call by ThreeHundredEight, going back to June 2012. The Barometer will be put to the test again tonight in Carbonear-Harbour Grace in Newfoundland and Labrador. The model suggests the riding is leaning Liberal, though the PCs do have a slim chance of holding on to it. However, the forecast is for the Liberals under new leader Dwight Ball to take it by a narrow margin.

The results in Brandon-Souris, which were the most at-odds with the polls by Forum Research, showed the mettle of the By-Election Barometer. The forecast was that it was a toss-up between the Conservatives and Liberals, with the Tories considered to have a 52% chance of winning to 48% for the Liberals. In the end, the Tories won it by a single percentage point.

This was similar to the by-election this summer in Ottawa South, where the polls suggested the Tories were well-placed to steal former premier Dalton McGuinty's riding away from the Liberals. The model still considered it a toss-up that leaned slightly towards the Liberals, which turned out to be the case. It demonstrates the need to take into account the fundamentals in a riding, particularly when riding-specific polls are showing numbers that are wildly out of step with historical performances.

I assessed the performance of the polls for The Globe and Mail, and the results are not great for Forum Research. They missed Brandon-Souris by a wide margin and Provencher was off by a considerable degree as well. The polls were better in Toronto Centre and Bourassa, however. This record matches their performance in the Ontario by-elections this summer, where I gave them a score of 2.5 out of 5. Last night, they got 2.5 out of 4, for picking the right winner in Provencher but missing the respective levels of support for the Tories and Liberals.

Because of this very mixed record, I employed confidence intervals far wider than the reported margins of error of these polls. This turned out to be a good idea, but only captured some of the error. Of the 20 calls Forum Research made (one for each party + others in the four ridings), 60% fell within the 67% confidence interval and 85% fell within the 95% confidence interval. Clearly, these wide ranges will need to be stretched even further, but that is the usefulness of these extra data points.

The performance of the confidence intervals, based solely on Forum's polling, compared to the results can be seen in the chart above.

The misses at the 95% confidence interval were primarily in Brandon-Souris. The results for the Liberals and Conservatives were so off that a +/- 10-point confidence interval still did not capture the result. The Greens in Provencher also fell outside of the 95% confidence interval.

At the 67% confidence interval, only the Others in Toronto Centre and the Conservatives in Bourassa were wide of the mark. In Brandon-Souris, the Liberals and Conservatives fell outside the interval, while all parties fell outside of it in Provencher. In short, even compared to Forum's past errors in by-elections the ones in Brandon-Souris and Provencher were extraordinary.

Note: I inquired with Forum about their methods for Brandon-Souris in relation to the reports of multiple calls being received by some residents. I was told by Lorne Bozinoff that they used the same random dialing in all ridings, and that no panel of phone numbers was used to dial the same people over and over again. I was also told that if a number was called in consecutive nights, that person's results were dropped from the sample and that all three of their final polls (Forum also polled on Nov. 23, but did not publish the results which were similar to the poll of Nov. 24) were independent samples.