Nanos Poll should give Liberals (and Canadians) Hope

by John Laforet
posted on September 11th, 2008 at 16:07:41 pm

Less than a week ago, I stated that Nanos Research in my opinion provided the most accurate election polls. Nik Nanos has released his first poll and will continue releasing them daily as part of a tracking poll he conducts during the election. In 2006, he called the party totals within 0.1%. An acceptable margin of error for his poll would have been 3.1%. This kind of accuracy is incredible. That is why I follow his polls so closely.

Nanos Research Today: Tories 37 %  Liberals 32 %  NDP 13 %  Bloc 9 %  Green 9 %

That isn’t that gloomy for the Liberals though. The NDP won many of their seats with small margins so any drop in the polls is dangerous for them. Their numbers are tanking and it looks like the Greens and Liberals are picking it up.

Hill and Knowlton has an election prediction tool that is fairly accurate. It’s one weakness is the inability to recognize unique circumstances that make some races vastly different. Below is a chart comparing the 2006 federal election day percentage for each party, the real seat counts won, and what the election predictor suggested would happen with these totals. As you can see the predictor was quite accurate.

2006 Federal Election Results Compared to Projected Result

Take a look at this poll below where if Nanos (whose accuracy was demonstrated during the last campaign) is correct, and the Hill and Knowlton seat projector (see above) is correct, the NDP and Bloc loss of support dramatically favours the Liberals. If the election was held today, the Liberals would be just three seats shy of forming a minority government according to this, even though they are five points behind in the national poll. Give it a month and I’m sure this will continue to change in favour of Dion as progressive Canadians realize how much is truly at stake in this election and continue to abandon the Bloc and NDP in favour of the Liberal vision for Canada to block Harper’s vision. Below is a table showing how Nanos numbers play out in H & K’s projection. 

Nanos Poll Results in H & K Seat Projector

Throughout the election, I will continue to update readers using the Hill and Knowlton Election Predictor and Nanos Research daily tracking information. If you want to do it yourself visit Nanos Research and plug their numbers into the Hill and Knowlton election predictor. 

Tags: Nanos Poll