The Truth Hurts: Canadian Political BlogThe model is complete! And I can hear some of you screaming now, because it shows the Liberals with a net gain of seven seats and the Conservatives with a loss of 15. Let's see if I can explain this.
Let me start with Ontario, since that is the last model I built. I could have published the numbers three hours earlier than I did for Ontario. However, I went over them thoroughly to make sure they are correct. If one looks at the polling data, the Conservatives have seen some increase, but nothing that signficant. It does result in a minor increase in the number of seats for the Conservative Party. Most of the talk in Ontario for the Conservatives has been based on the expectations of increased seats in southwestern Ontario. However, those numbers have not moved significantly yet. So far, it is just expectations. Also, the Liberals take a few seats away from the NDP which offsets their losses to the Conservatives. However, I suspect that the NDP numbers, which went down in recent polling, will bounce back up. So even if the Conservatives do not make any further gains one can expect that the Liberals will still lose seats in Ontario by election day.
Now let me go all the way over to the west coast - British Columbia. There has been some buzz about the Liberals doing well here, but no one has really talked about the implications of this. Well, it is significant. According to recent polls the Liberals are doing well throughout the entire province. That means big gains for the Liberals at the expense of the Conservatives. In fact, the Liberals gain more seats here than they lose in Quebec.
Speaking of Quebec, while Liberal support has declined there are several seats which are nearly impossible for the Bloc Quebecois to win. I have analyzed the numbers and 14 seats is a reasonable number for the Liberals given their current polling data. Indeed, further analysis shows that it would be incredibly difficult for the Liberals to drop below 12 seats, which is only a loss of an additional two.
In the Praires we see the Liberals basically staying the same. However, the NDP are regaining seats they lost last time. Jack Layton has made much about how Conservatives were able to defeat NDP candidates because strategic voting went to the third place Liberals. It seems he has been able to convince these voters to come back to the NDP which will allow them to regain those seats. But that means loses for the Conservatives.
There are no changes for any of the parties in Atlantic Canada.
All in all, I think because Stephen Harper has very successfully set most of the agenda for the election campaign many pundits believe he is winning. However, polling on the events and issues of the campaign has actually shown that it is the Liberals that are swaying more undecided on the events and issues thus far (see The Truth Hurts article on this for specifics).
The Truth Hurts announced in a previous article that if the Conservatives are to pull ahead they must win back British Columbia and make a breakthrough in southwestern Ontario. Not enough attention has been put on the implications of these two areas. With the forecast by The Truth Hurts one can now see exactly what those implications are.
