Actually he does when he's in Alberta. The car assigned to him by the RCMP is a Cadillac CTS with Quebec plates. Don't know it it's the RCMP or the Government of Canada that owns the car.Oh what a load of bullshit. Do you really think Harper drives his old Chevy?
The poll numbers I have been looking at are from Nanos. Those are done as a rolling average daily, and provide a reasonable indication of where things are going.I think the 45.5% number comes from 2008.
I pulled up the EKOS April 30 2011 poll to compare with October 9 2015 so that I'm comparing apples to apples
BC Regional
April 30 2011
Conservative 36.3%
NDP 36.5%
Liberal 15.3%
Green 9.3%
October 9 2015
Conservative 26%
NDP 29%
Liberal 29%
Green 16%
The vote splitting among the "Progressive" parties is going to be massive. Which means the Conservatives can slide into many ridings with much less support than they needed in 2011. We'll probably see a bunch of recounts since a recount is required when the winning candidate wins with less than 1% of the vote. In 2011 there were 22 ridings where the Conservative won with less than 500 votes.
Nationally, the NDP is where the Liberals were in 2011
May 1 2011 Actual Vote
Conservative 39.6%
NDP 30.6%
Liberal 18.9%
Green 3.9%
EKOS April 30 2011
Conservative 34.6%
NDP 31.4%
Liberal 20.4%
Green 6.3%
EKOS October 9 2015
Conservative 33.7%
NDP 20.4%
Liberal 33.8%
Green 7.2%
The big loss for the Conservatives is going to be in the GTA, their success there in 2011 is what gave them majority government and losing the GTA is, at best, going to return them to 2008 where they won the West and lost the East for a minority government. You can't form a majority government in Canada without the GTA and Montreal.
The big loss for the NDP is going to be Quebec and the GTA, the "Orange Wave" is what gave them official opposition status and the loss of Quebec and the GTA is going to put them where they were in 2008 with 29 seats.
The Liberals will probably be the obvious winner when the polls in Manitoba have been counted. What they win in BC is just gravy that gives them a selection to select a BC Cabinet Minister. Probably Joyce Murray in Environment, although there are other possibilities.
Nanos doesn't have polling for vote intention for immediately before the May 2 2011 election. What they have:The poll numbers I have been looking at are from Nanos. Those are done as a rolling average daily, and provide a reasonable indication of where things are going.
The 45.5% number comes from the actual vote total for BC in the 2011 election. It is not polling done two months before the election.
Scroll down through this link, there is a table near the bottom that lists the seat numbers and vote % by province for each party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_2011
The NDP will obtain roughly the same number of votes per riding (Wikipedia pages have these for each current constituency, adjusted by the numbers from each individual poll station according to where they are located today), possibly a little less due to some bleed to the Greens.
If the voting goes according to current polls, then the Cons will get about 55% of what they got in the last election, with most of the remaining 45% going to the Liberals.
If you apply those percentages to each seat then even in their "safe" seats the Cons will have a run for their money. It is possible for them to lose in just about every seat, and probable for them to lose in most seats.
The writs of election for the 2011 election were issued by Governor General David Johnston on March 26. Prime Minister Stephen Harper advised the Governor General to dissolve parliament after the House of Commons passed a motion of non-confidence against the government, finding it to be in contempt of parliament. A few days before, the three opposition parties had rejected the government's proposed budget
So, the Liberals had been weakened by the NDP backstabbing and the resulting vote splitting in Quebec and Ontario resulted in the May 2 2011 election result.The 2008 federal election resulted in the continuation of the incumbent Conservative minority government, headed by Stephen Harper. The 40th Parliament was marked by two controversial prorogations: the first in December 2008 which ended an attempted opposition coalition, and the second a year following, which prompted public protests. Following the first prorogation, Ignatieff and the Liberal Party provided support for the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. On August 31, 2009, the Liberals withdrew their backing but the NDP under Jack Layton abstained and the Conservatives survived the confidence motion.[2] Ignatieff's attempt to force a September 2009 election was reported as a miscalculation, as polls showed that most Canadians did not want another election.[3][4] Ignatieff's popularity as well as that of the Liberals dropped off considerably immediately afterwards.[5]
In 2011, Elections Canada laid charges against the Conservative Party, alleging contraventions of the Canada Elections Act five years earlier.[6][7][8] This issue, along with the Bloc Québécois announcing its intention to vote against the budget, unless it contained numerous changes including $2 billion in compensation to Quebec for harmonizing PST and GST and funding for a new NHL arena in Quebec City, increased the speculation that there would be an election called soon as the Conservatives rejected the Bloc demands as "blackmail".[9]
On March 9, 2011, Speaker of the House of Commons Peter Milliken ruled that Bev Oda, a minister of the Crown, and, separately, the Cabinet itself could both possibly be in contempt of parliament,[10] the latter for its ongoing refusal to meet opposition requests for details of proposed bills and their cost estimates.[11] Milliken directed both matters to committee and set as the deadline for its report March 21, 2011, one day before the budget was to be tabled. The committee found the government to be in contempt of Parliament.[12] The vote divided along party lines, with the governing but minority Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs) opposing the finding and issuing a dissenting report.[11] After the committee released its findings, opposition leader and head of the Liberal Party Michael Ignatieff proposed a motion of no confidence against the Crown-in-Council and,[13][14] on March 25, 2011, the House of Commons voted on the motion, the majority agreeing, by a margin of 156 to 145, with the committee's conclusions.[15][16][17] A cabinet being found in contempt of parliament is without precedent in Canada or any other Commonwealth country.[15][16] Earlier that week, all three opposition parties had indicated that they would oppose the government's budget; the NDP said that the concessions that the Conservatives made did not go far enough.
I am not talking about the poll numbers in 2011, I am talking about the ELECTION numbers in 2011. Who gives a crap about what the poll numbers were then. In the election the Cons received 45.5% of the vote in BC. Right now it is looking like they are going to be getting somewhere between 25-30%. If you apply those percentages to the redistributed results from each polling station in the old constituencies, you end up with most of the seats won by the Cons in 2011 going to either the NDP or Liberals, or being very close. The Cons are going to be losing a lot of seats in BC if the current polling numbers hold up.Nanos doesn't have polling for vote intention for immediately before the May 2 2011 election. What they have:
October 12 2015 http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/20151011 Ballot TrackingE.pdf
May 1 2011 http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/POLNAT-W11-T474E.pdf
April 30 2011 http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/POLNAT-W11-T475E.pdf
April 30 2011 http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/POLNAT-W11-T476E.pdf
EKOS was the public pollster that was closest to being correct on May 2 2011 and has their polling in their archive
October 11 2015 http://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2015/10/tie-continues/
April 29 2011 http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/full_report_april_29_2011.pdf
April 29 2011 http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/seat_projection_april_29_2011.pdf
May 1 2011 http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/full_report_may_1_2011.pdf
I think that you are counting apples and oranges. What's important is the relative order and difference between the parties. In BC, the Conservatives can benefit from vote splitting and win the seat under First Past The Post. They may get 21 seats as they did in 2011 if the NDP and Liberals supporters are unable to come to some workable plan for strategic voting. A plan that has a bias to NDP seats in BC is not going to form a majority Liberal government. The NDP thinks that the Liberals will be forced into a coalition with them, but Justin Trudeau has made it very clear - no coalition with the NDP. I think he'd rather go back to the polls for an election in January 2016.
In Ontario in 2011 the Conservatives demonstrated just how effective they will be if there is vote splitting between the Liberals and NDP. The result was a majority Conservative government.
The NDP can't even form a minority government with their support levels. But as NDP MP Pat Martin said in a Friday interview "Harper sleeps easily at night as the NDP and Liberals beat the shit out of each other"
Essentially, I disagree with the idea that any political party will get the same amount of vote as they got in 2011. It's a demonstrably mistaken notion if a person compares the previous election results from any election to the election results in the next election.
Each election is about the voter's perceived view on each political party and how that party's policy will benefit that voter.
In 2011, the Liberals had lead a failed non-confidence vote where they got stabbed in the back by the NDP. The Liberals were perceived to be all about regaining power and not interested in benefiting the voter. When the election was forced because of a motion that the Conservatives was in Contempt of Parliament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_2011
So, the Liberals had been weakened by the NDP backstabbing and the resulting vote splitting in Quebec and Ontario resulted in the May 2 2011 election result.
Justin Trudeau has made it clear that he won't entertain a coalition with the NDP and Gilles Duceppe also has no great interest in trusting the NDP. Possible coalitions are Liberals and Bloc if the Liberals only have a minority or Conservatives and Bloc if the Conservatives only have a minority. Gilles Duceppe has indicated that he's open to coalition if it's to the benefit of Quebec.
Quebec has now had 4 1/2 years of NDP representation.
That's why Quebec is again in play. I personally believe that the Bloc is going to recover many of the seats that they lost in 2011. However, the national polling currently has the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP in a three way tie in Quebec. The winner of each seat is going to be all about how the vote splitting goes.
Ontario also now has 4 1/2 years of NDP representation. NDP MPs resign to run in provincial or civic elections, then run for the nomination in the by-election to fill the seat that they vacated. In most of the seats currently held by the NDP, vote splitting got the NDP MP in ahead of the incompetent Liberal. The Liberals look to be recovering all of the Ontario seats that they lost to the NDP and most likely the Ontario seats that they lost to the Conservatives because of vote splitting. Again, the winner of each seat is going to be all about how the vote splitting goes.
Just to emphasize the NDP attitude of cooperation http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...rals-to-defeat-conservatives/article26781579/
The various strategic voting sites organized by the NDP are happy to recommend that Liberals vote for the NDP, but - as Thomas Mulcair states - having NDP vote for Liberals is not on.
You can only know the poll numbers for 2015 after October 19 2015. To say that comparing election numbers from 2011 to poll numbers from 2015 gives an accurate picture of the count on October 19 2015 is counting apples and oranges.I am not talking about the poll numbers in 2011, I am talking about the ELECTION numbers in 2011. Who gives a crap about what the poll numbers were then. In the election the Cons received 45.5% of the vote in BC. Right now it is looking like they are going to be getting somewhere between 25-30%. If you apply those percentages to the redistributed results from each polling station in the old constituencies, you end up with most of the seats won by the Cons in 2011 going to either the NDP or Liberals, or being very close. The Cons are going to be losing a lot of seats in BC if the current polling numbers hold up.
Based on apparent current support, the NDP will be getting about the same number of votes they got last time, or a little less, and probably from the same people. They won't be picking up disaffected votes from the Cons, pretty much all of those will be going to the Liberals. The Greens will double their number, mostly at the expense of the NDP, while the Liberals will take huge chunks out of the vote the Cons got last time around.
