Archived Seat Projections

• Little Change Following Debate
  2011-10-03
• New Survey Confirms Dead Heat
  2011-09-1426
• Liberals Slip but Still in Minority Government Range
  2011-09-20
• New Polls Confirm Liberal Lead
  2011-09-14
• Conservative Lead Erodes
  2011-09-09
• Ontario Conservatives Just Shy of Majority Numbers
  2011-09-02
• Ontario Liberal Campaign Picking Up Steam
  2011-08-18
• Conservatives Making Gains in Ontario Election
  2011-07-19
• Conservatives in the Lead for Ontario Election
  2011-06-20

Liberals Slip but Still in Minority Government Range
       
Liberals lose six seats since last week's projection, now standing at 46 seats, the Progressive Conservatives gain 4, and the NDP 2. Current projection is drawn from a blended and weighted aggregation of polls from Angus Reid, Leger Marketing, Nanos Research and Ipsos Reid conducted from Sept.7-18 (n=4000). Given the relative dearth of polls available during the Ontario election campaign to this point, LISPOP is going to revert to a 14 day window for poll inclusion, but will down weight the earlier data. Given the methodological variance associated with a recent Abacus poll during this period, it is not being included. Movement in the most recent polls has been slightly away from the Liberals and toward the NDP, but has been within the range of sampling error from the previous numbers. This projection is based upon an estimate of popular vote, where the Conservative lead over the Liberals is under 2%. That the Liberals still retain a small lead in seats reflects the fact that the Conservatives lost relatively fewer seats by small margins in 2007. The safest conclusion from this is that we are now in minority government territory.

Projected distribution of seats by party, released September 20, 2011

	2011 Projection	2007 Results	2007 Projection
	41	26	29
	46	71	68
	20	10	10

Note:

The "regional swing model" is more fully explained in a paper originally prepared and presented by Dr. Barry Kay to the 1990 annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, entitled "Improving Upon the Cube Law: A Regional Swing Model for Converting Canadian Popular Vote into Parliamentary Seats". It should be noted that the application of the model above does not make use of the "incumbency effect" described in that paper. In tests for past elections, using late campaign polls to project electoral outcomes, the model has proved to be accurate within an average of four seats per party since 1963. Readers interested in post-dictions for past federal elections dating back to 1963, for projections using pre-election polls dating back to the 1980 federal election and for three Ontario provincial elections, may contact me at bkay@wlu.ca.