Monday, September 24, 2012

Canada: SatW Fan Art

http://satwcomic.com/fanart/482/satw-canada-money-fight

This is some fan art I did for a webcomic on the topic of "Canada"

I hope you enjoy it :)

3 new Independents in the provinces

Since the last update, we have gained 3 new independents in the provinces.

BC Conservative MLA John Van Dorgan has quit the party to once again sit as an Independent. He is thus not "new" in that respect.

In New Brunswick, PC MLA Jim Parrott has been kicked out of the party due to this constant criticisms of the government.

In Newfoundland, Tom Osborne quit the governing PC Party, citing disappointment with the Premier.

And in the Yukon, the Liberal leader quit the party to sit as an independent. The Liberals other MLA will now become leader.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Not dead

Just writing to let you all know I'm fine. I will be getting back up to speed at some point shortly.

Just needed a "break" from everywhere.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

History of the ElectoMatic and what I'm doing

Two seemingly unrelated topics but I will explain how they are one. First I want to explain the history of the ElectoMatic.

I've told you before about the game I play, Politics Canada. I founded this game in late 2003, and even that is a bit of a spin on events. Politics Canada had actually been alive before I ever found it, and, I did not even "find" it myself. What I found was a dead forum and a game that was inoperative. How I found it was though a similar game called Politics UK, or, PolUK. PolUK was founded in 2001 and had created various other games like PolUSA, PolAus, PolNZ and so forth. When I stumbled across PolCan it was a dead game that I revived myself.

One of the first problems was how to simulate elections. As admins, we would read all the election advertisements made by players and from that deduce a popular vote score for each province. How to turn this into seats though? After some research and much experimentation I came up with the formula of X^2 I will explain how it works.

Lets use the Quebec election as our example. The Liberals took 31.20% the PLQ 31.96%, the CAQ 27.06% and the QS 6.03%. First, we need to get rid of the decimal and get rid of the % sign. This puts the Liberals at 3120, the PQ at 3196, the CAQ at 2706, and the QS at 603

Now, we square it.

The Liberals end up with 9,734,400 the PQ at 10,214,416 the CAQ with 7,322,436 and the QS at 363,609. Now we total these numbers, and use these numbers to determine the share of seats. In this case, 35.23% for the Liberals, 36.96% for the PQ, 26.50% for the CAQ, and 1.31% for the QS. The simplest way to turn this into seat is to multiply this by 125. 44.0 for the PLQ, 46.2 for the PQ, 33.1 for the CAQ, and 1.6 for the QS. All get rounded down except for QS which gets rounded up. The final result is:

PQ-46
PLQ-44
CAQ-33
QS-2

Not quite exactly the real end-results.

We can also throw other provinces into the mix, lets try this with Ontario 2011
48-L
42-P
17-N

or Alberta 2011
51-P
31-W
3-L
2-N

You can begin to see how this is just not accurate enough. One thing it does do, however, is give a very rough indication of how many votes is needed for a majority. If you are ever in a crunch, use this "just square it" formula to figure out what will happen.

So we needed something better.

While that was going on, I was made an admin at PolUK, and, the Elections Admin vanished at the same time. I was asked to run the election, and used my formula. As expected, the other admins were not big fans, so we set out to find a better way. This is when we stumbled across a program called UK Elect. It is a wonderful program that I still have, and suggest you get even if you are not British. The program allows editable scenarios, and you can use this to create your own fictional election tests, or even, put in another countries data and run elections over there. This is what we did for Canada. The problem however is that doing this was a very complicated process, and, since Elections only happened every 5 months or so in our game, I would quite literally forget how to do it each time.

Meanwhile, I was running election projections here on this blog, my earlier posts are at about this time, 2008. I've been a fan of the UBC-ESM Forecasters ever since I first saw them, and use them almost daily, even now. I realized after playing with the numbers that party-to-party swings were not working the way I thought, so I invented a new method. I would project on a curve. The party that did the best, compared to last election, would be set at 1.000 and all other parties would have their numbers reduced by the proper amount, so that the projected popular vote would be the same as the share of their real vote. In effect, I was applying a ratio method.

I had dual needs. I needed to find an alternative to UK Elect, and, I had to find a much easier less math-heavy way to do forecasts that did not require the UBC website to be online. This is when I started work on the ElectoMatic. The intent of the ElectoMatic was to mimic the results I would get in the UBC forecaster by using by "ratio" method. Eventually I figured out the math of how to do this. If I need a 5% increase, I don't apply a raw 5% to each riding, rather, I apply 1.05. The ratio method works wonders in places like Canada where we have "2.5" major parties in each province. The simple raw swing works great where you have two parties, but breaks down when you add more.

My first ElectoMatic was done based on the 1993 election, and was to be used in PolCan for our round based on the 1993 election. The program did what it had to for PolCan purposes and that was that.

However it occurred to me... My program is designed to take old election results, new poll results, and project the result. It seems to do that just fine. Why not use it for real elections, elections that have yet to occur. Thus midway though the 2008 election I introduced the ElectoMatic, and it worked. I later created an ElectoMatic based on the 1979 election and throw in 1980 popular vote results. The errors were rather minor.

So there you have it, the history of the ElectoMatic, a file created originally to give alternate history results of past elections. This is when we get into what I've been doing. You see alternate history, especially election alternate history, has always been something I'm interested in. People say that this or that party almost did this or that well in this or that election. With the ElectoMatic you can find out just how close they came.

That brings me to what I've been working on. User calivancouver has been helping me finish up the maps from the 1950s and 60s. The maps gave me an idea to test, how close did Social Credit come to being the official opposition in 1957. St. Laurent implied it was rather close. The problem is I don't quite yet have an ElectoMatic for this era. Part of the reason is the lack of Social Credit candidates in Ontario, giving spotty results.

At the same time the old questions I've had of how to compare the 1980 and 1984 PC vote in Quebec came to my mind. I wanted to know how much of the Social Credit vote went PC, so, I ran a basic test and the answer is not much. I've also been trying to see if I can patch the holes in Ontario for Social Credit in the 50's and 60's and the answer is I can. While they only ran 68 candidates in 1962, in the ridings they did not run, they ran candidates at other points during the era. Only 3 ridings did not have SC candidates during this time, and they can be estimated based on neighbouring ridings and other vote trends.

Thus brings me to what I've been doing. Along with the above, I want to create a new ElectoMatic for past elections. Most of the files I created were for the purposes of the PolCan game. Now I'm more interested in general alternate history. My experiments in Quebec in the 80s show that a single ElectoMatic can be used for the 1979, 1980 and 1984 elections. I will tinker around with the differences between 1988 and 1993 to find if a single file can do this as well, or, if the party-to-party swing is too great. 1997 and 2000 may also require individual files. I'll also take a look at the 4 most recent elections with the same things in mind, and of course, look at past elections such as 1968, 1972, and 1974, as well as 1953 though to 1965.

Another concern of mine is that there are some gaps.

See, Nationalism in Quebec prior to Levesque was a right-wing force. Having SC represent that trend is logical right up to the mid 70s. Prior to the constitution, left-wingers in Quebec were more than willing to trust Trudeau even if they did not care for his ideas on federalism, and there is a strong enough NDP presence in the province during this time for those who did not. 1984 saw a PNQ party, the first attempts at a Bloc Quebecois, and it is these numbers that can be used. In effect, this will allow me to simulate, in alternate history, a Quebec based party for all elections from future elections, going back clear to 1953.

A larger problem is that of Social Credit and Reform. While Reform did run in 1988 and can be forecast without problem to the year 2000, and, while Social Credit did run strong elections in the west to 1965, we still have gaps in the west. One thing the maps have made clear is that where SC did well, Reform did well, and vice versa. SC had a presence in 1968, and this could be used for elections on those ridings, but for 1979 and 1980, as well as elections since 2004, trying to figure out where a western based party would stand is difficult. Even more difficult, given that throughout the entire history of Social Credit, Reform, and the Alliance, only 3 MPs were ever elected from Ontario, is seeing where that party would stand in that province. Early information shows that in many of the areas Reform did well in Ontario in the 90s, Social Credit did well in the 60s, which is encouraging.

I will continue to work on these problems and hopefully have a shiny new set of ElectosMatic for all of you in no time.



Thursday, September 13, 2012

Political Parties

I was browsing around the http://www.1calgarycentre.com/ website, when the thought came to me that I really should look at all the political parties we have here in Canada.

There is a full list you can find here http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&dir=par&document=index&lang=e but what do these parties stand for?

I think grouping them is actually somewhat simple.

First off, there are the socially conservative parties, or rather, party. The Christian Heritage Party.
Next, the Communist parties, both of them.
Next, the personal fronts. The Western Block Party is a personal front for Doug Christie.
Next are the self-admitted activist parties, which are only a party because of the tax credits. (AAEVPC)
Last, are the ethnic-based political parties, in this case, the First Peoples National Party.

This leaves us with a few other parties to play with. The Bloc Quebecois (BQ) the Canadian Action Party (CAP) the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) the Green Party (GP) the Liberals (Lib) the Libertarians (Lbt) the Marijuana Party (Pot) the New Democratic Party (NDP) the Pirate Party (Pir) the Progressive Canadian Party (PC) the Rhinoceros Party (Rhi) and the United Party (UP). Also, the eligible party, the Online Party (OP)

Only one of these parties is firmly on the right, the CPC, so I will discount them. The Rhino party, while generally progressive, is a silly party. The Pot Party is a single-issue party, and thus, I will exclude as well. Lastly, the CAP is based on the old social credit idea, so I will also exclude them.

There are two centre-right parties. The PC and UP.
There is one main party with left-wing economic proposals. The NDP,
There are two parties with centrist economic proposals. The GP and Lib.
And there are three parties that are socially progressive, the OP, Lbt, and Pir

Of these however, there are three parties that are to the right of centre on fiscal issues; PC, UP, and Lbt, and three that are firmly on the left when it comes to world affairs, NDP, GP, Pir

Why am I brining all of this up? And why did I start with this 1calgarycentre website? A website that's oddly blue for a party that supposes to gather up non-conservative voters?

Simple. On their website they list 3 large "progressive" parties. The NDP, the GP, and the Lib.
As a Liberal I protest our inclusion. I don't consider the Liberals as much "progressive" as much "centrist" and "moderate". While the Liberals would fit in as "progressive" I feel the other two labels are closer to the mark.

What IS odd about this website is their inclusion of a 4th party, the Progressive Canadians. Lets remember that this party was founded to be a successor to the PC Party that dissolved in 2003. It's leader is a former Tory cabinet minister. In fact, this website even lists Joe Clark as a "Progressive". I'm willing to bet if you asked him yourself he'd define more as a "Conservative" and that's how his voters felt. Red Tories are still Tories. A left-wing right-winger is a right-winger who happens to be left-wing. Just as a progressive conservative is a conservative who happens to be progressive. He is still a conservative first.

The inclusion of the PC, but not the UP, which split off from the PC about a year ago, is suspicious, especially as the UP has a more left-wing platform. Worse when you consider that the Pirates are not to be found, despite clearly fitting in as more progressive. Then there is the fact that the OP is missing. The website's twitter account even says they are not an ABC party, they want to unite progressives.

So, how far do you have to stretch the definition of "Progressive" to include the new PC Party? Frankly, pretty far, especially given the other parties that exist. If someone told me the PC Party was "Progressive" and included on a list of "Progressive Parties" I'd say that other parties on that list must include the AAEVP, The BQ, the CAP, The Communists, the FPNP, the Greens, the Liberals, the Online Party, the Libertarians, the Pot Party, the Marxists, the NDP, the Pirate Party, the Rhino Party, and the United Party. But to include it and the "3 big" progressive parties is fishy.

Fishy given the attention given to Joe Clark, a PCer who won the riding in the past.
Fishy given the fact that the website is blue, a PC colour.
And fishy given that the graphics show 4 'boxes' representing the parties, not 3 or 5

Perhaps this is all just a mis-understanding or mis-reading on my part.

1calgarycentre adding links to the other progressive parties, specifically the United Party and the Pirate Party, would certainly help dispel any connections.


EDIT
The webmaster has contacted me with an explanation that I'm not buying - but he says once all 3 parties choose candidates, the PC link will come down.

PLQ Leadership Update

Fournier, who had been my front-runner, has decided to serve as interim leader. This means that chances are that whomever is chosen as the new leader will be a former or current Federal politician. Lets examine some of them.

I've already listed the Liberal MPs who may run in my previous post on this topic. I still think a Trudeau run is a real possibility. Remember that Charest gave up a resurgent PC Party leadership because he heard 'the calling' of federalism. Trudeau may hear it as well. Of course, that risks having Dion start hearing voices and try to make a stab at it. It was then brought to my attention that a non-Liberal may run. Charest, after all, was a PC member. So who are the possible non-Liberal candidates?

Current or former Tories:

Lucien Bouchard
This would amuse me greatly, but beyond a few comments recently, there is no reason to think he wants anything to do with federalism.

Josee Verner
Verner held a membership in the ADQ, but with many ADQ voters going PLQ, and with Verner being a committed federalist, she may run if no higher calibre candidate does.

Lawrence Cannon
Perhaps the most serious person on the list so far. Cannon has a history as a former member of the PLQ and served rather well federally until his defeat in 2011.


Current of former New Democrats:

Francoise Boivin
A "rookie of the year" in her first term in parliament, Boivin is now a New Democrat, but is still somewhat popular among all sections. She could be a serious female candidate if she decides to run.

Romeo Saganash
He ran for federal leader of the NDP for reasons I don't understand, so perhaps he will chose to do for the PLQ as well.

Maps of federal elections 1953-2011

Our maps page is ready to go. I'm uploading all the maps as we speak.

I'd also like to ask you for some help. I'm also announcing a new and fun contest, the "Find the Errors" contest!
I've probably made a number of errors I've secretly inserted errors on purpose
The person who finds the most errors will be sent things get credit by having their name mentioned on the blog.

So what is and is not an error? Remember that the "official and final" maps only go up once all the errors are caught. Hence there are some minor discrepancies that are not errors, they are just a symptom of me not being 100% finished.

Not an Error: Various islands within a riding have the wrong colour.
Error: A riding has the wrong colour (IE, showing the wrong party has won).
Not an Error: The winning party is shown in a different shade than the legend.
Error: A Bloc seat is shown as a Tory seat, or vice versa.
Not an Error: Your map says "Montreal" but it includes Laval too.
Error: A riding is mis-labled either with the wrong number or name.
Not an Error: Two parts of the same riding have the same identifying number.
Error: Two separate and different ridings have the same identifying number.

Bonus points:
Finding ridings that had their name change midway from a boundary change, and noting the date of said change.

Pages!

We now have pages. Over the next hours, days, weeks, and months, I will be adding content to all of them. A further post on the Maps page will be done once that page is complete (in a day, or hopefully, much sooner)

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Election maps and other things

Given that politics has quieted down, and will probably remain quiet for a little while, I am going to work on expanding the website. Things to expect.

MAPS
I am completing a series of real riding by riding result maps (Federal) covering the period from 1952 to the present day.

RESULTS
I am working on result tables for comparison in all the provinces, and federally as well.


I will update you as I work.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Alternate History

I'm looking for some feedback about various possible alternate history stories between 1979 and 2003. Anyone who would be interested in being contacted with regard to this, please post below.

Friday, September 7, 2012

PLQ leadership


Here is my list of possible candidates:

Jean-Marc Fournier - MNA - Montreal Area
Nathalie Normandeau - Former MNA - Gaspe
Marlene Jennings - Former MP - Montreal area
Liza Frulla - Former MP - Montreal area
Martin Cauchon - Former MP - Montreal area *
Denis Coderre - Former MP - Montreal area *
* = May chose to run Federally.


Longshots:
Stephane Dion - MP - Montreal area
Jean Lapierre - Former MP - All over the place
Pierre Pettigrew - Former MP - Montreal area
Justin Trudeau - MP - Montreal area


Thursday, September 6, 2012

Libs hold Vaughan, lose Kitchener

The Liberal Party of Ontario has managed to hold on to the Vaughan ridings by a wide margin, but has lost it's attempt to grab Kitchener-Waterloo from the Tories.

At the time of this post, Kitchener-Waterloo has 20% of the polls in, and the NDP leads the PC Party, 43% to 30%. It's still a bit to early to call, but, things should become very clear by 10pm. I will edit in more counts below.


edit
With a third of the polls in, I've seen enough, and am declaring an NDP victory.

Where I was wrong




Ridings where I was wrong, but within the margin of error (12)
Berthier
Masko
Argentuil
Riviere Du Loup
Orford
Megantic
Soulanges
Jean Lesage
Mille Isles
Vmont
Fabre
Groulx


Ridings where I was just plain wrong where the model, after adjustments, is correct. (3)
Trois Rivieres
Anjou
Bellechasse


Ridings where I was just plain wrong where the model, even after adjustments, is within the margin of error. (8)
Cote De Sud
Becuase Sud
St. Henri
Verdun
Huntingdon
Richmond
Nicolet
Laurier


Ridings where I was just plain wrong where the model, even after adjustments, is still just plain wrong. (3)
La Prairie
Johnson
Chateauguay









Model on Results


Further adjustments:
50% of the ADQ vote given to the Liberals
Aussant Factor increased to 25,000 due to CAQ adjustment
N Shore set to 0
S Shore set to .4

Results:
PQ - 58
PLQ - 42
CAQ - 23
QS - 2


Full file here
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5UDSiORyjxid1I2bHdic21Hc3c
Click above

Quebec Results




Putting in the real final popular vote into the ElectoMatic, I also had to make the following adjustments:


ON did not gain any "Student Votes"
"Student Factor" set at 200, 650 gives better results.
"Aussant Factor" set at 13,500, should have been set at 11,050
CAQ took .31 less than ADQ in QC area, set at .45
CAQ took .47 more (than ADQ) in N Shore, set at .2
(CAQ) took .41 more in Montreal, set at .27
took .28 more in south shore, set at .0
"Anglo Factor" set at 35%, with "Montreal Factor" at 0.78, Both should have been set at 0

These results give
PQ - 48
PLQ - 44
CAQ - 31
QS - 2
ON - 0

The CAQ is still winning far too many seats, indicating to me that the fault is with transfering 100% of the ADQ numbers to the CAQ.

I will try that and report back.

Ontario By-Elections

Polls close at 9pm, and I will hopefully be able to live-tweet all the results, but something may come up.

Vaughan is expected to be a close race between the Liberals and Tories, but the Liberals seem to have the edge.

Kitchener-Waterloo seems to be a close 3-way race, where no party has the edge.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

New Schedule

Due to my inability to keep to the old schedule, I'm writing a new one.

First off, I should explain a bit more about my cat (Boo) and what has happened to him.
In March, my Roomate (whom I shall call Kris) noticed that Boo was peeing a lot, much more than usual. She decided to test his urine and it came back positive for sugar - something not normal. We called a vet and the vet tested Boo's blood, and turns out he has Diabetes. We gave him insulin, tested multiple times a day, and switched his diet. He went into remission in June
.
In late July, Kris and I noticed that Boo was throwing up at about the same time every morning. We could not figure out why. A week or so later, Kris noticed Boo not acting normal, and we again called the vet who ran a number of tests. We were referred to another vet, and from there to another. We eventually found out that Boo has a combo of Irritable Bowel Disease, Fatty Liver Disease, Pancreatitis, and inflamed intestines. This is a very bad combination, as the treatment for any one of them (pain killers, for the Pancreatitis, for example) makes another worse (constipation) and other drugs can't be processed due to the Liver problems.

We had a feeding tube put in, and since then, have been feeding Boo though the tube using a syringe. The process of feeding takes about 15 minutes and Boo is sometimes resistant. In addition, he throws up once or twice a day, and can only eat so much at one time. Due to possible feeding tube damage when he vomits and the need to get a minimum of food in to him so he can physically survive, this means he needs to be monitored 24 hours a day.

Kris and I have been doing so. More her than I actually, as she knows much more about medicine, and I have a bad habit of passing off work to others when I can. We've agreed that we would take "shifts" of 10 to 10. From 10pm to 10am, I am "on duty". The idea is for me to be awake during these hours, and sleeping during the remainder. Since I only need 8 hours sleep, the exact timings are flexible. We may change these timings (for example, to 6 to 6, with me still on the "night shift") but in general, I'm awake at night.

At least, that is how things are supposed to go.

I've been feeling ill recently. I finally got a family doctor, the first in my adult life. He told me that my Asthma was flaring up. The difficulty in breathing was making me sleep much more than 8 hours (due to poor quality sleep) and this put stress on Kris, which in turn, but stress on me (I was not choosing to sleep all day long) The new medication that the doctor gave me however seems to be having the opposite effect, in that now I can not get to sleep. Due to these things, my sleeping has been all over the place, and when awake, I've been having difficulty concentrating. Now that the election is over, and Kris begins at university, our schedules are getting more set, and I will hopefully be able to get into a normal routine.

The schedule for the new few days is therefore "get into a routine". This is not very good for posting on a blog however. Therefore I will commit to the following.

My first goal is to finish gathering and sorting the data from the election. Once that is done, I will examine where I went wrong, and compare my results to that of other projectors. None of us did very well, but I may have done worse than average. I will examine the reasons why.

I'll take the real data and I will examine it in comparison to my projection. My goal here will be to find ways to adjust the model to better match the results. I suspect that I can do this somewhat easily by taking a third of the ADQ vote and applying it to the PLQ.

Sometime before the Ontario By-Elections I will make a post about it. I will also live-tweet the results.

Once all that is done, I will have to make a serious change to the ElectoMatic, the most serious change ever made. In the post explaining it, I will describe the "Ratio" system I use, and how it is much better than the "Flat" system used by others. I will also explain how I will add a new "Swing" method to the mix.

Once that is complete, I will take the new model out for a few test runs, putting in past election results (IE 1979 federal) and past result popular vote numbers (IE 1980 federal) and seeing how well it works. I will continue to tweak it until I get it to work as close to reality as possible. I will also focus on trying to estimate huge swings (1980 to 1984 federally in Quebec, or 1988 to 1993 in Western Canada) and anything else I think could be useful.

After that, we'll have to see what is going on in politics!

Brian Pallister elected as Manitoba Leader of the Opposition

Pallister, Manitoba PC leader, has won a by-election, becoming the new Leader of the Opposition.
http://electionsmanitoba.ca/2012Fortwhyte/results/division.asp

Analysis to continue

I've woken up feeling refreshed and will continue my analysis shortly. I will also focus on why the model failed (in short, ADQ voters voting Liberal) and why I failed (I saw the polls indicating this would happen but did not want to believe them)

Yet another delay

I can't get my mind off the assassination attempt, and am having trouble focusing on the numbers. I've also been very sleep deprived recently, and that is not helping. Regardless, the numbers I have right now are as follows.

Northern Quebec
PQ - 107,261 - 48.88%
PLQ - 51,188 - 23.33%
CAQ - 45,696 - 20.82%
QS - 9,025 - 4.11%
ON - 3,637 - 1.66%
PVQ - 276 - 0.13%
Aut - 2,371 - 1.08%

I also have a map showing which regions I am using.

Analysis of Final Results

Coming in the next minutes to hours.

Final Results

Yup, there's still an election to finish counting.

Marois Assassination attempt?

As the new premier-elect was finishing her speech, a security person rushed her off the stage suddenly.

2 minutes later, some PQ operatives came on stage, saying that they had to protect her as something happened. He then asked everyone to leave.

1 minute or so later, Marois came back and said the same thing. She mentioned a sound grenade.

3 minutes later there is news footage of a man lying on the pavement and a rifle.

What
The
Hell

I've never seen anything like this before and probably never will again.

If this was an assassination attempt I have one thing to say

I hate the PQ, and Marois. I think they are potentially dangerous.
But they won.
They won the election, fair and square.
No matter how much you hate or fear the other guy, you can't try to stop them by force.
Democracy is the cornerstone of our freedom, and we must respect it, even when it tells us the things we don't want to hear.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Counting Continues


Where things stand (updated)

Fixed a few errors, updated other ridings.


Where things stand

Note blank ridings are where the winner is still not clear.

So what happened


Quoting from a previous post about the CAQ heartland, south of Quebec City.



"If the PLQ starts winning big here and the CAQ is still managing to find seats somewhere, it means the old ADQ voter has split between the CAQ and PLQ. ."


More analysis later on, of course, as well as full results (eventually)

PROJECTION CHANGE

As the counts come in it is starting to become more and more clear that the PLQ will take near it's projected maximum.

Our projection is now for a PQ minority based on counts that have come in.


We will examine where we went wrong overnight.

PQ will not win a majority

PLQ vote just too strong

PLQ to take near maximum

PLQ to take near their projected maximum.

Last minute change

Live blogging is to become live tweeting.

http://twitter.com/thenewteddy


Bump - Final

POLLS HAVE CLOSED!







Timings

Live Blogging will begin when the polls close. I've chosen to make a new post every few minutes.

Things to keep an eye on.

What should you keep an eye out for as the results roll in?

Sherbrooke

Jean Charest should lose by a convincing margin. The first 10 or 20 polls in any riding can show just about any result, just ask the leader of the Quebec wing of the Marxist-Leninists (who was shown leading in his federal riding in 1997, based on 1 poll) Beyond 20 polls however things get a bit more stable. At that point here is what you should see: Charest trailing. Maybe Charest jumping into the lead for a few minutes, but going back to trailing. Here is what you should not see: Charest ahead, and staying ahead. If you do see the latter it is a sign that the PLQ Campaign has done far better than expected. A Charest win in his riding should spell a PLQ minority government.


Anglo-Montreal

The PLQ should sweep the ridings in West Island Montreal. The PQ is certainly not going to sweep them and there is no evidence that either the QS or ON has managed to appeal to them in large numbers. If the CAQ starts winning seats here all bets may be off. The CAQ is not expected to take the Anglo vote, and if it does, it could decimate the PLQ, and, possibly thrust itself into government as a result. 


Franco-Montreal

Areas of Francophone Montreal are expected to split between the PQ and PLQ. The QS is expected to take Mercier and Gouin. The QS could have a strong shower in Laurier-Dorion, Sainte-Marie--Saint-Jacques, and Outremont. They may also do well in Rosemont, and Hochelaga--Maisonneuve. ON is expected to do well around these areas too. Should the QS start leading in any of these ridings (past 20 polls) and hold on to the lead, they may well be able to win the riding, and the same goes for the ON. This would be on the strength of the Student vote, and those whom the Students have convinced to follow them.


South of Quebec City

Parts south of Quebec City (Beauce, Bellechasse, Arthabaska, Levis, etc) are expected to be the heartland of CAQ support. If the PLQ starts winning big here and the CAQ is still managing to find seats somewhere, it means the old ADQ voter has split between the CAQ and PLQ. If, however, the PLQ sweeps this area and the CAQ is doing awful, it means the CAQ has failed to find new voters and has lost old ADQ voters.


Saguenay

The PQ is expected to sweep all the ridings in this area (Chicoutimi, Dubuc, Jonquiere, Lac-Saint-Jean, Roberval, even Rene-Levesaue, and Duplessis) a failure to do so would indicate all the existing projection models have a flaw and other areas of supposed PQ strength could be equally misleading.


Notre-Dame-de-Grace

The PVQ has had an awful campaign, only finding candidates in half the ridings. This is their best riding in the province, and, the leader has chosen to run here. The lower the vote share for the PVQ in this riding, the longer it will take to rebuild the party.


Levis

Perhaps the most interesting "smaller party" this election is the new provincial Conservative Party lead by former MP Luc Harvey. He is running in Levis and is not expected to do well. You can gawk at him in this riding as the results come in.

Another - 70 #PQ | 30 #PLQ | 22 #CAQ | 2 #QS | 1 #ON


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- 70 #PQ | 30 #PLQ | 22 #CAQ | 2 #QS | 1 #ON
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Final Proj - 70 #PQ | 30 #PLQ | 22 #CAQ | 2 #QS | 1 #ON

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- 70 #PQ | 30 #PLQ | 22 #CAQ | 2 #QS | 1 #ON
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Turnout?

At this point in the day, the media usually talks about the turnout they've seen so far. Much of this discussion happens just after lunch, when the journalists have had a bite to eat and gone to cast their ballots and asked around... at least, that is what I suspect.

How is the Weather!?

It always amuses me that at about this time of day, the media wants to talk about how the weather will impact the election. They list the areas where it is raining and say that low turnout will help this or that party. Alternatively, they list areas with great weather and imply people would rather spend the day walking in the park rather than voting. When it comes down to it, outside of truly extreme weather, none of this really ever effects the results.

Bump - 70 #PQ | 30 #PLQ | 22 #CAQ | 2 #QS | 1 #ON

Polls open at 9:30am

I recommend following http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebecvotes2012/

Bump - Final Results


Bump - Final Riding by Riding






#CAQ Minimum


#CAQ Maximum


#PLQ Minimum


#PLQ Maximum


#PQ Minimum


#PQ Maximum


Riding by Riding / Circonscription par Circonscription






Monday, September 3, 2012

Final Map / Carte


Analysis

So, what happened? A few things.

First, the CAQ fell apart in the past 24 hours. Voters thought "can I trust Legault and the CAQ with my vote? I don't really want to vote for Maoris and the PQ, or for Charest and the PLQ, but I don't know if I can trust Legault and the CAQ, humm" and decided "Naw, I can't trust em, they are just too unknown, worrysome, and untrustworthy."

Other voters remember the 2007 minority and seem to have gone to the PQ just to give someone a majority. A few voters even swung over to the PLQ.

In the end the result is clear, a stable PQ majority, with a stronger than expected result on the Island of Montreal, and in the 450 area around the city.

There is not much more I can say at this time that has not already been said.

70 #PQ | 30 #PLQ | 22 #CAQ | 2 #QS | 1 #ON

Final Projection

More information to come.

Final Poll (Forum Research)

PQ 36%
PLQ 29%
CAQ 25%
QS 6%
ON 2%
PVQ 2%

In 30 minutes...

At 11pm, the final Forum poll comes out, and I release my final projection. I will be setting up the projection to trickle out throughout the night, and be working on it for a few hours. As soon as the poll is out I will post my topline results. All results will be finished being displayed by 6am.

The Competition

This blog has 3 major competitors in this Quebec election projection season.

http://www.threehundredeight.com/
Three Hundred Eight is the most well known. Their track record is a bit shaky at times, being further off the mark federally in 2011 than any other major projection website. It is run by Eric Grenier. I've mentioned it before, but at one point, I wanted to merge this website with his, as, I thought his website name was stellar and would attract visitors, but after some thought, we both agreed it would be a bad idea. Then I came up with riding by riding!

http://electionsqc.com/
A new website that looks made specifically for this Quebec election. Professionally done and with many visual options, there is little past history to go on. This website however uses the correct methodology pioneered by myself and this website, the "Ratio" method. In his own words:
La variation d’un parti est répartie également à 50%, et en proportion du nombre de votes reçus dans la circonscription à 50%. Par exemple, si QS passe de 3,8% à l’élection à 8,7% dans les sondages, cela fait un écart de 4,9%. Tous les candidats QS monteront donc de 2,45%. Ensuite, comme cela représente une augmentation de 129%, tous les candidats augmentent de 64,5% par rapport à la dernière élection. Dans une circonscription où ils avaient obtenu 1% des voix, ils obtiendront 3,99% des voix (1+2,45+0,645). Dans une circonscription où ils avaient obtenu 10%, ils obtiendront 18,90% (10+2,45+6,45).
I am very very happy to see other projectionists using the ratio method!

This website was a minor player in the 2011 campaign, not garnering much attention until the end, when his projections were pretty damn close to being accurate. With an excellent mastery of English and French, the webmaster Bryan Breguet could be a forced to be dealt with. The main problem appears to be a faulty methodology, based on "uniform swing" - a method proven not to work in Canadian elections. 


I have no problem mentioning the fact that I have competition, or, pointing out who they are. Part of my objective is to be the most accurate election projectionist out there (so that, maybe one day, a political party will hire me to get their candidates elected, or, a media outlet will hire me to come in and talk about things whenever there is an election) Unless I can compare and contrast myself with my competition, I will never be able to do that.

I urge my readers to, if they follow any of these websites, encourage the webmasters to compare themselves as well. 

Prior to the final poll...

Prior to the final poll, our projection stands as follows.

PQ - 64
CAQ - 29
PLQ - 28
QS - 3
ON - 1

Forum poll coming

A final poll from Forum Research will be coming out later tonight.

This is why you never do your "Final Projection" before midnight!

Final projection sneak peak

QS winning 3 seats, and ON winning a seat. PQ winning a majority. What else, you'll have to stay tuned!

BREAKING - New Poll

Follow https://twitter.com/VoiceOfFranky for more details.

Looks like a PQ Majority, our last projection will reflect this.

Bump