Monday, September 29, 2008

National Numbers

We are still working on our new calculation system, but we do have new national numbers.


CPC-148
Lib-72
BQ-48
NDP-38
IND-2
Grn-0

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Update by monday night

I'm getting the new "projection engine" up and running as well. We will now be able to make projections that are more accurate than ever before.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Please accept my apologies.

I am having personal problems right now, and have had limited time to update this blog. Please accept my apologies. An update should be here by Friday at the latest

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Liberals down, NDP up

We are still working on our new calculation sheets, but I can tell you now that in general, the Liberals are down and the NDP is up. This is likely only a minor difference of a few seats, but something is going on in Quebec. Exactly what, remains to be seen.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Methodology Update

Due to radically differing polls (Nanos showing the Liberals making a shocking recovery, and Angus Reid showing them skirting the lowest poll numbers ever) we are going to re-tool our methodology. The new weighting system will be designed to weight polling firms more equally. Currently, we feel we are over-weighting firms that post polls often. This will also allow us to add pollsters who do more limited polls (like Leger in Quebec)

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Trends




We've made a graph of the trends from our projections. Note that the first projection has the corrected numbers of 123-121 as our original projection had a input error in saskatchewan.

Numbers still stable




The numbers have not moved much in the past week. Seats have changed hands here and there but all within a narrow range. The numbers, it seems, remain fairly stable.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Update Delayed

Unfortunately our update for this afternoon will have to be slightly delayed (hopefully just to tonight, if not then tomorrow) due to serious connection problems on my end.

Numbers stable again

There are no changes to our projections with the addition of today's polls. There are many seats, however, that are on the cusp and are in danger of falling. One is Hull, where our current projections have the NDP winning by less than 500 votes over the Liberals. As before we will include our numbers in text format for those with disabilities to improve the accessibility of this site.


National Numbers.
Conservative Party / C.P.C. = 151 seats.
Popular Vote = 37.79%

Liberal Party / Lib = 89 seats.
Popular Vote = 29.09%

Bloc Quebecois / B.Q. = 37 seats.
Popular Vote = 7.75%

New Democratic Party / N.D.P. = 29 seats.
Popular Vote = 17.08%

Green Party / Grn = 0 seats.
Popular Vote = 9.74%

Others / Oth = 2 seats.


Atlantic Canada.
C.P.C. = 9
Lib = 17
N.D.P. = 5
Others = 1

Quebec.
B.Q. = 37
C.P.C. = 18
Lib = 17
NDP = 2
Others = 1

Ontario.
Lib = 49
C.P.C. = 48
N.D.P. = 9

Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
C.P.C. = 23
N.D.P. = 4
Lib = 1

Alberta.
C.P.C. = 28

British Columbia.
C.P.C. = 24
N.D.P. = 8
Lib = 4

The Territories.
C.P.C. = 1
Lib = 1
N.D.P. = 1

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Regional shifts




There are some significant shifts with the addition of today’s polls. The weighting of the pro-Tory trend in the Atlantic has come out in full. The Tories are projected to win at least 9 seats here and have knocked the Greens off the board. Meanwhile, the Tories have lost support and seats in Ontario and Quebec. The Bloc is also staging a resurgence. Not due to increasing poll numbers, but due to weakening Conservative ones. I'm very curious to see where this all stands at the end of the week

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

No changes from this morning

This afternoon's polls have been added to the matrix, but there is no change in seats from this morning. The Tories are very close to losing seats in Quebec. Here are the numbers for those who are vision impaired who may be using computer-assisted devices reading this blog.

Tories - 148
Liberals - 92
Bloc - 35
NDP - 30
Green - 1
Indp't - 2

Liberals up in Quebec



A growing liberal resurgence in Quebec is becoming the new trend. Right now the numbers are not enough to change many seats, but that could change by the time that this afternoons polls are weighted into the matrix.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Bloc overtakes NDP in seats



The Bloc Quebecois is projected to win more seats than the NDP. This is partly due to NDP weakness in areas like British Columbia, and a resurgance of Bloc strength in Quebec. The NDP still stands strong in Quebec, we expect them to win two ridings, and there's a small possibility they could take up to five (including that of Bloc leader, Gilles Duceppe!)

The Greens are edging closer to a seat in BC. Not Blair Wilson's seat (that one is going solidly Conservative) but rather the riding of Saanich--Gulf Island where senior Green, Andrew Lewis is running. They are within a few points here and with polls shwoing up to 25% of canadians are willing to vote strategically to defeat the Conservatives, its not out of the realm of possibility that they can win here. Having two MP's in Ottawa will help the Greens emmensley; someone needs to second your bills.

The Greens are also threathening a win in Ontario, in Ottawa Centre. Beyond that, how the recent by-election has changed the field in Guelph remains to be seen, knowing that the Greens are best positioned to unseat the Liberals here, we might find that NDP voters have moved to the Greens. This, of course, remains to be seen.

The Liberals have seen a rebound, and the Tories have dropped from majority status. This is partly due to our updated projection methods in Ontario.

Note that our riding by riding projections have been updated as well.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

More on Methodology

Questions have come up as to exactly what our Methodology is, and how we differ from other prediction websites out there? That's simple. Our projections are, at their base, a geometric projection. This is done by taking the poll numbers and applying it to the last election in a way so that if a party is polling at 10% in a province they polled 5% in last election, then all their numbers are doubled. Therefore a riding where they took 5,000 votes, we project they will take 10,000 this time.

What makes our methods different is how we arrive at those polls. Rather then use a straight 5-poll average, we average out all the polls in the past 7 days. We give each poll a "Weight", the default is 9. If the same polling firm has put out many polls in the past 7 days, the "Weight" of their older polls is less then 9 (7 for the second poll, 5 for the third, 3 for the fourth, etc) Also, polls 4 days or older are given a weight below 9 as well. This gives us a full range of opinion that is affected less by one-poll changes then a 5 poll average is. Currently we have 15 polls in our "average", and half of the "weight" comes from the 5 polls taken over the past 3 days.

The second way we differ is what we do once the geometric projection has been completed. We use that projection to find seats that are close, say within 3% or less. We then look at each of those ridings individually and judge if there is any reason the numbers might be wrong. Did a star run here last time who is not running this time? Is the opposite true? Has the incumbent resigned? so on and so forth. When combined with the numbers this gives us a powerful picture of what is going on electorally across the country.

The differences between our methodology and that of others comes out most clear in Quebec. Currently we are projecting the highest numbers for both the Tories and NDP, and lowest for the Liberals and the Bloc. This comes from our Quebec numbers. There is often doubt and people want to discount the numbers when they tell you something that seems incredible (like the NDP winning Hull) but we trust our numbers and methodology in this case. It was my using of these numbers to project 10 Tories in Quebec (and going against every prediction website in the country in doing so) that motivated me to run my own site this time. We have strong confidence in our Quebec numbers.

Numbers stable


The addition of 5 new polls and dropping of 2 old ones has a net change of only two seats on the numbers. The "Election Norm" appears to have set in, and this is where the parties will be fighting from for the next month.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Tories on cusp of Majority

The Tories have dropped a few seats since the last projection. This now puts them at 154, which is right on the borderline of a majority. The opposition would have a total of 154 seat in this instance, leaving the two sides tied. Considering that both Independents lean to the right, this would give the Conservative and effective majority, but not a solid one.

Who is on my list?

In order to keep this site up to date, I need to look at information from many sources. The two most well known websites I visit are Democratic Space run by Greg Morrow, and Election Prediction run by a team headed by Milton Chan. I've mentioned both of these before, but where else do I look for information? I often find myself going to a specific wikipedia page to find out the most recent polls. I also check out Polling Report and NoDice for the same reasons. I also check out LISPOP and the Paulitics blog as well as the election website for our two major media networks, the CBC and CTV Finally I use the UBC election forecaster to project all results.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Nanos Polling




We have now been able to add Nanos Polling to our projections. The only noticeable change is in Ontario.

Small update

I've taken Tory "Star" Candidate, Gail Shea, and NDP "Star" Candidate, Jack Harris, into more account and have updated my projection from the Atlantic provinces.


Surprise!

It’s the end of the first week of the election campaign, and something that was unthinkable only a week ago has happened, at least according to our projections. The Tories are set to win a Majority Government.



Beyond this (which should be coming more clear for the poll-watchers) we have other things we are keeping our eye on.

Gilles Duceppe might be in trouble in his own riding, especially if voters start to associate him with the Bloc's slide. Our numbers put the NDP 5 points behind the Bloc leader in his own riding.

The NDP walks away with 3 seats from Quebec. Outremont and Hull (which they win purely on the numbers, despite having two star candidates here) as well as Westmount.

Ignatieff is knocked out of his own seat as the Tories pick up their first Toronto seat. This is by a wide margin.

The Liberals are shut out of Manitoba

The Tories are shut out of Nova Scotia

On the island of Montreal, the ridings of Lac-Saint-Louis and Peirrefonds-Dollard are threatening to go Tory blue.

The Tories are poised to win 23 seats in Quebec. The numbers alone show them winning 21, with Shefford and Gatineau being a 3-way race. We believe that enough Liberals will vote Tory in election day to defeat the Bloc.

Our polling “work sheet” and more riding-by-riding projections will be put up on our forum shortly.

Adjustment to Polls

As of today, we feel that we now have enough polls that have been published in September to drop our older polls from August. This will allow us to drop the polls which did not account for all 5 parties (thereby making our poll projections add up to more than 100%). We will be adopting a new methodology where we do not accept polls that do not show the result for all 5 parties. It appears as though Environics, Ekos, the Strategic Council, and Nanos (former SES) will be taking regular polls throughout the election, so we do not expect the missing of one or two polls to be a problem as we fully expect 40-60 polls during the election.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Update!


A new poll has been added to the forecast.

Tories close in on majority


As news that the Greens will be in the debate after all hits the airwaves, our newest projection shows the Tories closing in on majority territory.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Commentary

First, I want to point out that over on our forum, the Information Bin there are riding-by-riding projections in map form. I'll be adding more information here within the week, so check it out for the latest news!

Now on to the Greens. Why do I have them at 1, and the NDP at 2 in Quebec? First, the Greens. Check the major news websites, CTV, CBC, and so on. They are all considering the Greens a major party, and all have Elizabeth May as one of "The Party Leaders" This makes for a powerful argument that only she can defeat Peter MacKay (Remember, the Liberals are not running here). Although math would tell us the NDP has the best chance (and we think they would - MacKay could finish third) the argument that a party leader can knock off MacKay is much stronger. For this reason, we project a May victory in Central Nova.

Why the NDP in Quebec? One of the key assumptions we are making here is that the Liberals will not be able to hold on to current polling levels in La belle province. The party is very short on cash, its lacking organization, and Dion, who is just disliked in the rest of the country, is hated by some in Quebec. If the Liberals do drop in Quebec, and we think they will, the NDP will be able to edge them out in ridings in urban Montreal. We project them winning Outremont and Westmount.

Here are the polling averages we are working with

More details are on our forum!

Projection - September 08

And for today! commentary to come shortly. Note the Green seat.

More information

Note that I've added a link in the list to the right of the page to the Information Bin
http://s3.zetaboards.com/The_Information_Bin/index/

This forum is tied to our blog, and will be used to host information that cannot really fit here. For example, the poll-by-poll results that we use to determine our calculations; and shortly, riding-by-riding predictions and maps.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Methodology

Unfortunately, what kind of polling atmosphere we will have this election is as of yet unknown. I have an ideal methodology, however weather or not I can use it will depend on how many polls come out and from whom. In short, our methodology is as follows.
All the polls from the past three days are averaged, with no one pollster being allowed to carry more then half of that average. Polls from four to seven days ago are also averaged, and given a weight of half. The success of this, of course will depend on how many polls come out every week. If two pollsters do daily rolling polls, this is super, however if we are limited to just one, then our methodology will be difficult to do. Currently, while the polls are sparse, we are using a modified methodology that weights polls from the further past more then we otherwise would.

We take these polling numbers and put them into UBC’s 2008 election forecaster. Using a special method that allows us to increase the vote of each party without swinging it from another party, we then raise or lower the vote of that party so it matches our poll average. We will also take into account the projections offered by democratic space blog, and may give this it’s own weight in our calculations.

Lastly, we then take into account each riding. We will check election prediction blog and look at the “swing” ridings, seat by seat. We then make a judgment call (a human one) based on the information available, and the margin of victory in the simulation. I feel this addition of a human element to be critical to the success of any simulation.

In the end, what we end up with is a prediction that takes into account all the elements needed to properly “see into the future”.

September 07 projection

And our projection for today.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Current Projection - Sep 4

On the eve of the election, we have our first projection here at niXtuff. Please bear with us while we get used to the formatting needed to make this work properly.



Our first projection is two days old, but still valid, despite new polls showing the Tories winning potentially two dozen seats in Quebec.

Our methodology will be posted soon!

We encourage our readers to also keep track of other projection websites such as
Election Prediction and Democratic Space

Friday, September 5, 2008

Re-Launch

Note that Nixtuff is being re-launched. Following the federal election we will return to our focus on Public Transit issues in the GTA, Canada, and the world; however in the interim, we will serve as an Election Prediction website!

All the older posts on the blog (which are currently mostly part of a series either explaining why I believe the things I do, or explain things) will be saved. Any that are about 'current events' of that time will be saved in place, whereas the more "Educational" entries will be removed, reworked, and re-posted at a later date.

Happy reading!
~Nick