John Brewin on Politics

E-Day plus 6 (or E-Day minus 1,455!) LPC 39.5% (184 seats), CPC 31.9% (99 seats), NDP 19.7% (44 seats), BQ 4.7% (10) and Greens 3.4% (1). It turns out the 42nd Parliament will look like most of Canada’s Parliaments since 1935. Congratulations to the Liberals. They won a clear political victory. We now know why the Conservatives focused their pre-election advertising only on Justin Trudeau. They had discovered something that wasn’t indicated by the polls at that time: the Liberals were their chief threat. In the end, the pollsters got it right – especially after their final polls were completed on the last Sunday of the campaign. They landed very close to the actual result and pointed to the Liberal majority. Most of them probably got it right throughout the campaign. They accurately told us who was ahead and picked up the steady shift of anti-Harper voters from the NDP to voting Liberal in significant numbers. The seat predictors didn’t perform as well as the pollsters. They

E-Day minus 1 (!) If the polls are correct, tomorrow’s election will not produce a majority government. The Globe Forecaster says there is a merely 15% chance the Liberals will win a majority. Not a single poll, nor any combination of polls or seat prediction sites, gives the other parties any chance of a majority. In the final hours, projected results can change for any number of reasons. The continuation of a swing in voters. The return of voters to an earlier choice more consistent with their history or values.   The efficiency of a party’s E-Day organization and its ability to “pull” its vote.   Possibly a combination of all three. In the recent UK election commentators identified a handful of voters as “shy Conservatives.” They suspected that these voters didn’t tell pollsters the truth during the campaign. Instead they kept what they feared might be unpopular opinions to themselves until Election Day. A Liberal majority would not be a complete surprise although it is

E-Day minus 8 As we enter the final week of the election campaign, the Conservatives haven’t moved any closer to a majority. In fact, they may have fallen back. The latest Nanos poll reports a 2% point drop in CPC support in the past two days to 29% – back to where it was when the campaign started. The trade deal and niqab controversy haven't helped them. The Liberals have moved ahead of the NDP in projected seat counts. Will a Liberal surge of strategic voting cause the NDP vote to collapse, or will the NDP regain ground in the last eight days? The polls cannot be relied on to answer this question. The final election results will be determined in part by the effectiveness of the two campaigns, including their capacity to get out their vote, and the NDP's ability to hold off the Bloc’s challenge in Quebec. For the most part, however, the results will turn on how anti-Harper voters resolve the tensions created by having to choose between three parties – and, in Quebec,

E-Day minus 15 Anxiety is like a virus – it spreads from host to host quickly. It's contagious. When anxiety is high, people lose their capacity for reflection. Everyone left of Jason Kenney has been flattened by at least one anxiety attack this past week. Not only are the politics of division stirring up deep-seated fears, there is persistent anxiety that somehow Harper will pull it off in the end. There is anxiety amongst NDP supporters that the opportunity of a lifetime will be lost. Dramatic swings toward and away from the Liberal Party are making their supporters dizzy and disoriented. Progressive voters, looking for any port in the storm, have become desperate for reliable strategic voting advice. All of this is very bad for morale and weakens our collective capacity for clear-headed analysis and decision-making. Let’s see what the numbers actually say – not what the media says they say – to regain some perspective. None of the public polls show the Conservatives c