3 statistics about the 2008 election you’ll never see in the media

With the 2008 federal election behind us, many pundits (myself included) are being faced with reality that the election did not turn out as we projected.  Having under-estimated the projected level of support for the Conservatives and over-estimated the projected level of support for the NDP and Greens; and with the NDP only gaining about 1% in the popular vote and the Green vote utterly collapsing by more than 1/3 between the last polls and election day, it seems that many progressives have been made to feel sorry for themselves.

As such, the triumph of the Harper Conservatives over the ‘progressive’ forces in this country has been a common theme  explored ad nausium by the mainstream media.

This notion is both interesting and straightforward.  Indeed the only problem with this post-election theme is that it’s completely unsupported by the facts.

If anything, this election should be noted as being exemplary of exactly the opposite.

This election, if nothing else, was a stentorian vindication of the long-term trend witnessed in Canada since the 1974 general election AWAY from liberalism and conservatism and toward progressivism.

A while back, I pointed out the long-term trend in Canadian popular support away from the neo-liberal/neo-conservative, ultra-capitalist parties (of which, I took to include Liberals, the Conservatives, PCs, Alliance, Reform Party, Social Credit, Ralliement créditiste, Confederation of Regions, and other small third parties) and toward the more moderate and/or progressive capitalist parties (which I took to include the NDP, Bloc, Greens, Communist Party, CAP, CPC-ML and other small third parties).  I am pleased to say that not only has this trend continued, but that it has also continued in every region of the country without exception.

In 2008, in every region of Canada without exception — West, Ontario, Québec, Atlantic & North — the combined ultra-capitalist parties (Liberal and Conservative) decreased in popular support.  Meanwhile, in every region of Canada, the combined more moderate or progressive parties increased their popular level of support.

The public’s appetite for laissez faire capitalism and vicious cuts to social spending as instituted by the Conservatives of today and the Liberals of yesteryear is clearly declining.  The only question is, how much longer can these two warring factions of the capitalist class continue to operate as separate parties before they are forced to ‘unite the right’ once again amidst the rising tide of public opinion against their policies.

And that is something that the mainstream capitalist media or their conservative apologists just won’t let you contemplate.

If the Tories don’t get a majority, thank the Bloc not the Grits, Greens or NDP

Having just finished a massive update to the Paulitics National Polling Resource, the Provincial/Regional Polling Resource, and the Seat Projection Meta-Analysis, there is one fact that has become abundantly clear:

If the Conservatives don’t get a majority, we should thank Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Québecois, not the Dion Liberals, the May Greens, or Layton’s NDP.  Of all of the data uploaded this evening, the astonishing rise of the Bloc in Quebec (pictured below) is perhaps the most impressive.

Because of the Bloc’s rise, the Conservatives have dropped 10% in Quebec since September 13th.  In other words, 1 in 3 Tory supporters in Québec have abandoned that party since September 13th.

Tories recover on eve of election, but still down from 2006

The latest polls are certainly to be viewed as a mixed bag for all five of the major federal parties, save the Bloc Québecois.  For the latter, of course, there is little ‘mixed’ about the situation.  The Bloc’s situation appears to be moribund.

For the Tories, the latest polls have given them a slight bump (which will be accentuated when the latest Environics poll pegging the Tories at near-majority government level support is included in the Paulitics Polling Resource).  However, the Tories still remain down from their 2006 election showing by statistically significant margins despite being flushed with cash and despite their aggressive recent media buys.

For the Liberals, the recent polls have shown them slumping on the eve of the election — not exactly the best time to have a slump in popularity — and have not been able to break beyond a statistically-significant margin of their 2006 support in well over a year.  Still, on the other hand, the Paulitics Polling resource does show the Liberals as one of only two parties to rest above their 2006 levels of support, even if it is by a statistically insignificant margin.

For the NDP, after dipping badly in support, the recent polls have shown what must be a welcome up-tick in popularity back to within the margins of their respectable 2006 finish.  However, much like the Grits, the NDP have not been able to break out above their 2006 levels of support by a statistically-significant margin in well over a year.

For the Greens, after flirting with the 12 percent threshold in the Paulitics rolling-5 poll average for a time, the latest polls have witnessed a dramatic slump for the Greens back down to the 8 percent area of support.  That said, even if the Greens are able to hold on to this comparatively low level of support through to election day, they will still have roughly doubled their level of support since the previous election which is something that the other parties shall ignore only at their own peril.

For the Bloc, I have yet to update the Paulitics Provincial Polling Resource, so a complete picture of the carnage is not yet available at this time.  But, with that in mind, the latest provincial poll results from Leger Marketing put them at a dismal 30%.

Overall, even without the possibility of a legal battle over the constitutionality of the election itself, the election is shaping up to be an interesting one.

Just how big is Quebec’s shift away from the right wing? Pretty big

Given the recent provincial by-election results in the province of Quebec, bloggers and politicians everywhere have been talking about the results and their implications.

As with any event, it helps to actually review what happened and then, based on this, generate an analysis.  If we do it the other way around, we risk being like a Conservative cabinet minister who, during a Question Period session shortly after the by-elections, tried to ridicule Gilles Duccepe by saying that the by-elections were a huge victory federalists and a huge defeat for the PQ.  (I don’t remember which Tory cabinet minister it was who said it, but I remember being shocked when I heard it).

In fact, contrary to the Tories’ contention, both the by-election results and the recent provincial polling results show a rather different story.

First, the by-election results.

Simply put, the Tories’ closest provincial ally, the ADQ, witnessed a staggering collapse.  This is rather significant since the far-right ADQ is lead by Mario Dumont, a man who attracted the attention of the international press in 2007 and who was (appropriately, in my opinion) called “Canada’s Le Pen” by the U.K.-based newspaper The Independent (source).

In the three by-election ridings, the ADQ’s support collapsed to just over 1/3 of their formerly mighty self.  Now, even though none of these ridings were strong ADQ ridings, nothing I think could have prepared political observers for just how spectacular of a collapse the ADQ made.  For instance, in my riding (Hull), the ADQ dropped from being the 3rd place party to being dead last among the 5 main provincial parties with both the Greens and Québec solidaire (which is an amalgamation of left-wing provincial parties including the Quebec Communist Party) finishing above them.  In fact, only the tiny Parti indépendantiste did worse then the ADQ in my riding.

Turning to the province-wide provincial polling results since the last provincial election, we see an equally bleak picture for ‘Canada’s Le Pen’ and the far-right ADQ.

Following the last provincial election, the ADQ had actually improved over their provincial results and were polling as the #1 provincial party with seemingly prohibitive odds of forming the next provincial government, either minority or majority.

As you can see, Quebec’s repudiation of far right politics since that time, clearly extends beyond merely the three ridings which had by-elections earlier this month.

Now that it seems as though the Québecois are well on their way to throwing out their version of Le Pen and become once again a beacon to progressives throughout Canada, maybe Canadians can learn from this and get to work on throwing out their version of George W. Bush.

Saskboy joins Paulitics, Jim Harris and the Green Party in the ‘dog house’?

For those of you not aware, a while back I posted mathematical evidence that Ipsos-Reid’s polling numbers are dramatically off from every other major polling firm in the country insofar as the level of support they attribute to the federal Conservative Party.

Jim Harris, the former leader (not ‘president’ as John Wright claimed him to be) of the Green Party of Canada, read my blog and enjoyed the post enough to reproduce it (with my permission, of course) with some additions of his own over on his blog.

Ipsos-Reid’s senior vice president John Wright (he seems to like it when we use his full title) didn’t particularly like what Jim and I wrote, and thus has, how shall I say, become a regular reader of Paulitics for the past few days.  Since then, however, it seems as though some additional bloggers have stumbled across Wright’s comment on this blog and have written posts on their own sites discussing what they think of Wright’s tactics.

I am not going to comment one way or another on whether I endorse Saskboy’s analysis or not.  However, in the interests of ensuring that my readers have every opportunity to critically consider and contemplate for themselves all facts as well as what they think on their own about his analysis, I have decided to link to it.

Specifically though, I wanted to draw my readers’ attention to two comments on Saskboy’s post which very much interested me.  The first was one by Wright himself wherein he wrote:

“each one of those who posted the comments have now, on their own advice, taken them down or altered them, because in the end they knew you cannot make unfounded or defamatory claims about a person or company.”

This, of course, is demonstrably untrue.  As I informed Wright when I made the changes on my blog, the changes I made, to use legal language, were made “gratuitously” and thus were accompanied by no admission of guilt nor were the changes an admission that the original text was defamatory or unfounded.  Moreover, Jim Harris explicitly spelled out, in an e-mail to Wright, that his changes to his blog post were also not an admission of guilt or an admission that the original posting was defamatory.

So, I found it interesting that Wright received explicit wording stating that changes were not made because they were defamatory, yet he still wrote that above comment on Saskboy’s blog.  Thus, I invite my readers to critically consider and contemplate for themselves whether Wright’s comment is founded in reality.

The second comment on Saskboy’s blog that I found interesting was made by an acquaintance of mine (but was not made at my behest or request).  While I have no opinion or comment one way or another on whether I endorse or share Kim’s analysis or not, I did want to present this comment to my readers for them to be free to draw conclusions on their own.

Kim wrote:

“You know, I showed Wright’s original comment to a lawyer friend of mine and she asked if he’d gotten drunk one night and went trolling on the internet. Just saying.

And Wright, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that Paul at Paulitics changed his post “gratuitously” for your benefit. Just in case you’re not near your legal counsel at the moment, I’d like to refresh your memory that the legal definition of “gratuitous” is something that is done unnecessarily, without admission of guilt – so essentially, giving the baby his bottle.

The blogosphere knows you’re full of it, Jim. Instead of attacking a bunch of bloggers, I suggest that you make some inquiries into your survey-taking at the lower levels, where the mistakes are evidently being made. As a former employee, this seems entirely plausible to me. It could be the callers, or those people writing the questions themselves.

Numbers aren’t a personal attack on you – the methodology of some people in your company has been found to be lacking. Unless Ipsos-Reid has a mysterious database of Conservative supporters that nobody else has access to (you and I would both agree that this is ludicrous), Ipsos-Reid and other polling firms are contacting the same public. Why they would not get the same result is something you may want to look into, instead of making empty threats to bloggers who, despite what you may think, aren’t out to “get” you.

My point is, relax and carefully consider the facts before you comment on the blogs of others. Paul didn’t change his post because he believed what you were saying – he spoke to three or four lawyers and they said that changing the language would be the easiest way to appease you, even though he did nothing wrong. I actually know for a fact that one of his lawyers begged him to take it to the media, because nothing would be better than a story about a grown man, executive to a major polling firm, bullying a college student who crunched numbers and found his company’s polling to be inadequate, just because he can. It’s fear-mongering, John. Paul gratuitously changed his post, when he could have met your case and won, or taken you to the media and made a serious dent in your personal reputation.

And instead of attacking the evidence, be the better person and admit that there might, just might, be a problem, and look into it.”

Once again, I’m not saying I endorse Kim’s comment or not, and I certainly didn’t ask her to make it, but as a public service announcement, I felt it best to allow my readers to draw their own conclusions from it and to draw their attention to the lively (and still ongoing) debate over at Saskboy’s site.

Happy reading!

Liberals surge, Tories plummet, NDP recovers

Several new polls have been released in the last couple of days and the Paulitics Polling Resource has now almost recovered from the recent flurry of bizarre Ipsos-Reid polls.

Since the Paulitics Polling Resource uses rolling-five poll averages and that latest absurd Ipsos poll showing 42% for the Conservatives is still included in the rolling average, you can probably expect the next poll released to reduce the Conservatives’ standings even more.

Other than the Conservatives, the Liberals have recovered and now stand 4 points higher than they were less than 10 days ago.  Unfortunately for the Libearls, however, this surge in support has only brought them back up to the less than stellar level of support the received in the 2006 election.

More importantly for the Grits, this surge in support has come where they need it most: Ontario.  While the Liberals remain either stagnant (or worse) just about every where else in the country, they have jumped over 5 points in Ontario in just 9 days and now enjoy a commanding lead in the vote-rich province over the Conservatives.

The NDP has maintained its strong standing in Atlantic Canada, but has droped precipitously in Quebec and to a lesser extent in the Prairies (Manitoba and Saskatchewan).  Less than 3 weeks ago, the NDP was tied with the Liberals in La Belle Province, now the NDP has lost 1 in 3 of its supporters and has slumped back down to the 10% range.

Meanwhile in Quebec, the Bloc has recovered nicely since its mid-October low and the Conservatives have slowly and steadily been increasing their support since the summertime.

The Greens have also slipped slightly in Quebec, losing roughly 30% of their support (dropping them from 10% to 7%).  The Greens have also shown lackluster performance in BC (where they have also lost between 30% and 1/3 of their supporters, but are still up considerably from their 2006 election showing), the prairies and, more importantly for Elizabeth May, in Atlantic Canada where they have continued their slow decline in support since their summertime peak at 10% and now stand at 6%.  Elsewhere the Greens are holding steady.

So, paradoxically enough, we have a situation where really every party can be unhappy with the recent poll results to some extent.  The only party who can reasonably be quasi-happy with the latest poll results, the Bloc, still finds itself badly down from its level of support in the 2006 election.

Top 100 Canadian political blogs

Here’s a sort of ‘top 100’ list for the Canadian political blogs which I compiled for fun (I know, I’m at work right now and I’m bored and I have a really distorted sense of ‘fun’). Actually, the idea wasn’t really mine, I stole the idea from a post that Greg from democraticspace.com did back in 2006 and I decided to expand it to a top 100 list, take out the now defunct sites, and update the rest.

Just a few caveats to keep in mind when going over this list. First, about one third of all blogspot blogs that I entered into alexa.com‘s traffic analysis generated no data. For some reason though, all other blog hosts such as wordpress (and all people who host their own blog) seemed to register just fine. So, if you don’t show up on the list, don’t take it personally, it’s possible that alexa just doesn’t have data on you. Second, I believe that the traffic ranking at Alexa is based on the past 4 months or so, so if you’ve been taking the summer off (as I believe Rick Mercer has) then your traffic rank will probably reflect that more than your normal traffic flow. Third, this isn’t an exhaustive list. What I’ve done is taken Greg’s list, deleted all the blogs which no longer exist, and then simply went down the list of blogs at Bound By Gravity, starting at the top, until I filled in enough empty slots to equal 100.

If I’ve left out some blogs that generate data on Alexa.com (and are, say, under the 7,000,000 mark) and you’d like them included in the list, feel free to comment below with the Alexa url of the blog traffic overview and I’ll add it as soon as I get a chance.

.

Canadian Political Blogger rank. Site name (& url) / site’s global Alexa ranking

1. Paul Wells / 70,893
2. Small Dead Animals /133,987
3. Matthew Good /187,454
4. Le Blogue du Québec / 210,363 (blogue francophone)
5. The Politic / 274,126
6. Progressive Bloggers / 283,480
7. Steve Janke / 318,783
8. Antonia Zerbisias / 324,154
9. Garth Turner / 356,627
10. Blogs Canada / 378,886
11. Blogging Tories / 396,832
12. Damian Penny / 455,529
13. Vues d’ici / 460,543
14. Vive le Canada / 461,727
15. Amériquébec / 469,643 (blogue francophone)
16. Emotion Creator / 484,553
17. Andrew Coyne / 551,817
18. Warren Kinsella / 593,125
19. CalgaryGrit / 614,119
20. Western Standard / 664,824
21. Ken Chapman / 683,125
22. Samantha Burns / 732,689
23. Gen X at 40 / 735,226
24. Werner Patels / 738,070
25. Joseph Facal / 821,472 (blogue francophone)
26. Montreal Simon / 840,565
27. Stephen Taylor / 850,234
28. Colby Cosh / 889,912
29. Paulitics: Paul’s Socialist Investigations / 911,369
30. Bound by Gravity / 912,488
31. Dust my Broom / 939,419
32. Abandoned Stuff / 949,762
33. Scott’s DiaTribes / 954,036
34. Canadian Cynic / 1,013,469
35. David Akin / 1,070,642
36. James Bow / 1,104,491
37. Getting it Right / 1,113,156
38. Girl on the Right / 1,166,381
39. Red Tory / 1,175,715
40. Far and Wide / 1,360,164
41. Rick Mercer / 1,372,926
42. April Reign / 1,387,411
43. Prairie Wrangler / 1,440,822
44. The Galloping Beaver / 1,455,318
45. La Revue Gauche / 1,486,069
46. Jordon Cooper / 1,518,839
47. Canadian Cerberus / 1,553,403
48. Buckdog / 1,591,003
49. Big Blue Wave / 1,715,540
50. Daveberta / 1,762,705
51. The Blog Quebecois / 1,772,550
52. Liblogs.ca / 1,870,127
53. Jason Cherniak / 1,929,394
54. Big City Lib / 1,960,969
55. Larry Borsato / 2,065,636
56. Section 15 / 2,065,958
57. The Monarchist / 2,066,261
58. The London Fog / 2,067,851
59. Jay Currie / 2,190,102
60. Stageleft / 2,238,667
61. Green Bloggers (Canada) / 2,252,729
62. democraticSPACE.com / 2,391,081
63. Quebec Politique / 2,575,012 (blogue francophone)
64. Un homme en colère / 2,653,297 (blogue francophone)
65. Urban Refugee / 2,661,034
66. Accidental Deliberations / 2,717,441
67. Devin Johnston.ca / 2,718,187
68. Idealistic Pragmatist / 2,725,501
69. My Blahg / 2,800,670
70. Uncorrected Proofs / 2,891,152
71. Adam Daifallah / 3,018,846
72. Political Staples / 3,222,345
73. Marginalized Action Dinosaur / 3,302,191
74. Rootleweb / 3,327,246
75. Dr. Roy’s Thoughts / 3,622,245
76. The Vanity Press / 3,622,958
77. Crawl Across the Ocean / 3,625,835
78. JimBobbySez / 3,632,287
79. Bill Doskoch / 3,637,532
80. Verbena-19 / 3,672,713
81. The Spirit of Man / 3,787,343
82. Cathie from Canada / 3,789,273
83. Peace, Order and Good Government, eh? / 3,794,370
84. Odd Thoughts / 3,796,069
85. Canadiana’s Place / 4,020,291
86. Unrepentant Old Hippie / 4,284,573
87. A BCer in TO / 4,802,829
88. Dawg’s Blawg / 4,817,302
89. Red Jenny / 4,838,538
90. East-End Underground / 4,874,982
91. The Cylinder / 5,185,136
92. Maxwell’s House / 5,533,134
93. WingNuterer / 5,563,968
94. Woman at Mile 0 / 5,610,425
95. Begin Each Day… / 5,623,330
96. HarperBizarro / 5,626,895
97. Liberal Catnip / 5,776,892
98. Antagoniste / 5,797,151 (blogue francophone)
99. Blogging Dippers / 6,135,616
100. Fuddle-Duddle / 6,238,129

Tories tank in the East, NDP hits 1 year high nationally

What’s that loud “thwack” sound you’re hearing?  Why, it’s the Tories collapsing badly in Atlantic Canada from their once impressive showing.

Using the highly accurate technique used in the polling industry known as the ‘rolling average’ (the concept of which is familiar to anybody who’s visited the Paulitics Polling Resource), it is obvious that the Conservatives are in trouble in Atlantic Canada.

Now, before I show you the actual graph of rolling averages for every poll conducted in Atlantic Canada in the past six months, do keep in mind that the technique of rolling averages, by definition, makes huge swings in popular support less marked.  Thus, both spikes and drops in support tend to be flattened and appear less dramatic.

So, with that, let’s look at the rolling averages for Atlantic Canada courtesy of the Paulitics Provincial/Regional Polling Resource.

So, on the 28th of March of this year, the Conservatives were at roughly 37% in support in Atlantic Canada, which was an improvement over their 34.7% showing in the last federal election.  However, since then, the Conservatives have dropped 12.4% — not in an individual poll, but in the rolling average of polls.

Put another way: Take 3 Atlantic Canadians who voted Tory in the last election.  Now take one of them away and dress him in either NDP orange or Green and what’s left is how many Atlantic Canadians polls suggest would vote Tory in the next election.

Moreover, at the national level, we see declining support for both the Liberals and the Conservatives as demonstrated here (in fact the combined Liberal & Conservative parties’ rolling average has never, in the past 12 months of rolling averages, been lower than it currently is: 62.4%).

So take these two phenomena together and we have very bad news for the two mainstream, uber-capitalist parties; very good news for the three smaller, less capitalistic parties; and even worse news for Peter MacKay.

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See also:

Data suggests the NDP may win the Outremont by-election

A Proposal for Greens & the NDP: A “300″ Strategy

Data suggests the NDP may win the Outremont by-election

A combination of polling data and monetary data suggests that the chances of the NDP winning the upcoming Outremont by-election and gaining a Quebec MP are good.  However, regardless of who wins, I would bet money on this being a close race and the data seems to validate this bet.

I’ll briefly explain the data and how I came to these conclusions.

I started off with the local results in the Outremont riding from the 2006 General Election.

	Lib	Bloc	NDP	Con	Green
2006 Outremont results:	35.18%	29.01%	17.20%	12.73%	4.82%

From that, we can take current provincial polling data, courtesy of the Paulitics Provincial Polling Resource and compare that with the provincial results in 2006 to get a ratio describing the relative increase or decrease of each party.  This ratio will later be multiplied through the 2006 Outremont results to get the first set of data.

	Lib	Bloc	NDP	Con	Green
Current polls @ prov. level	21.40%	35.40%	13.40%	22.00%	6.80%
	Lib	Bloc	NDP	Con	Green
2006 Quebec results:	20.70%	42.10%	7.50%	24.60%	4.00%
increase/decrease (ratio)	1.03	0.84	1.79	0.89	1.70

We’ll come back to that ratio later.

But for now, let’s move on to the monetary data portion of the analysis.

We know what the cash spending limit for this particular riding is from elections Canada and we know the financial statements of the candidates from the last election (note: the previous link was working earlier today, but seems to be down now.  There is an alternate, and less pretty source of the same data here).

From this, we get:

	Lib	Bloc	NDP	Con	Green
Cash spent: 2006 election	$69,816.11	$63,590.41	$26,625.29	$73,991.17	$572.33
cost per 1% of vote	$1,987.36	$2,207.23	$1,554.31	$5,762.55	$119.48
Spending limit:	$74,512.38	$74,512.38	$74,512.38	$74,512.38	$74,512.38
Raw vote potential	37.5%	33.8%	47.9%	12.9%	insuf. samp.
vote potential	28.8%	26.0%	36.9%	9.9%	insuf. samp.

I don’t think too many people would be willing to take just the polling data or just the financial data to come up with any sort of prediction.  So, I figured that the best way to come up with some sort of reliable prediction-worthy data, it would be suitable to take the pro-rated vote potential calculated from the financial data and then average that with the pro-rated vote potential calculated form the polling data (using the ratio calculated above).

I’ve run this calculation using 4 different scenarios so nobody can accuse me of bias (not that I’d vote for any of these parties if I had my first choice). 

In scenario #1, I haven’t weighted anything and I’ve assumed that the Green Party will not want to invest significant financial resources into this by-election and thus, I’ve listed their cash pro-rate as equal to their vote pro-rate.

Scenario #1	Lib	Bloc	NDP	Con	Green
vote pro-rate (raw)	36.3	24.2	30.6	11.5	8.1
vote pro-rate	32.8%	21.9%	27.6%	10.4%	7.4%
cash pro-rate (raw)	28.8	26.0	36.9	9.9	8.1
cash pro-rate	26.3%	23.7%	33.6%	9.1%	7.4%
predicted results:	29.5%	22.8%	30.6%	9.7%	7.4%
Elected:			x

The result is an NDP victory, although by the slightest of margins.

In scenario #2, I haven’t weighted anything but I’ve assumed that the Greens will throw a significant portion of financial resources at this by-election.  So I’ve listed their cash pro-rate as equal to the highest cash pro-rate of all of the other parties.

Scenario #2	Lib	Bloc	NDP	Con	Green
vote pro-rate (raw)	36.3	24.2	30.6	11.5	8.1
vote pro-rate	32.8%	21.9%	27.6%	10.4%	7.4%
cash pro-rate (raw)	28.8	26.0	36.9	9.9	36.9
cash pro-rate	20.8%	18.7%	26.6%	7.2%	26.6%
predicted results:	26.8%	20.3%	27.1%	8.8%	17.0%
Elected:			x

 The result is still an NDP victory, but by even smaller margins than before.

In scenario #3, I’ve assumed that the Greens will be middle of the road with their finances and won’t go as spartan as they did in the last election, but won’t go all out either.  I’ve also assumed for this scenario that polls matter more than cash on hand and have weighted to 2x its normal unweighted value.

Scenario #3	Lib	Bloc	NDP	Con	Green
vote pro-rate (raw)	36.3	24.2	30.6	11.5	8.1
vote pro-rate	32.8%	21.9%	27.6%	10.4%	7.4%
cash pro-rate (raw)	28.8	26.0	36.9	9.9	22.5
cash pro-rate	23.2%	20.9%	29.7%	8.0%	18.1%
predicted results:	29.0%	21.5%	28.5%	9.4%	11.7%
Elected:	x

The result is a bare Libearl victory.

Finally, in scenario #4, I’ve assumed the same thing about the Greens as in #3, but this time I’ve assumed that cash on hand for the candidates matters more than polls and have weighted it by 2x.

Scenario #4	Lib	Bloc	NDP	Con	Green
vote pro-rate (raw)	36.3	24.2	30.6	11.5	8.1
vote pro-rate	32.8%	21.9%	27.6%	10.4%	7.4%
cash pro-rate (raw)	28.8	26.0	36.9	9.9	29.7
cash pro-rate	22.0%	19.8%	28.1%	7.6%	22.6%
predicted results:	26.3%	20.6%	27.9%	8.7%	16.5%
Elected:			x

The result is an NDP win and by wider margins than before.

Now, keep in mind, there are any number of factors which can’t be calculated mathematically which will undoubtedly play a part in this by-election.

For starters, there’s no way of accounting for the fact that the NDP has a star candidate in this race.  This data assumes that the candidate is of little-to-no importance whatsoever.

Second, polls suggest that Dion may not be as much of an asset to the Liberal candidate in this election as Layton or Harper might be.

But, on the other hand, the Globe and Mail suggests that Mulcair’s leftist credentials are being questioned by NDP activists (I know, I was shocked too — who thought the NDP still had leftist credentials??) which could in turn cause a ‘get out the vote’ (GOTV) problem.

Either way, the only thing I’m willing to place money on right now is that it’s not going to be a blow out.  But I will say one thing:  The NDP’s chances are certainly good seeing as how they won 3 out of the 4 scenarios I ran.