Election oracle, part 4

Time is ticking: election day is here!

This is my last post before election night. Here are the remaining predictions for the five "nail-biters" I identified earlier.







Fort Garry

If the NDP and PC party were tied in the polls, I would definitely call Fort Garry for the Conservatives. Even if the NDP was 2% or 3% ahead, I'd predict a Tory victory. But the NDP are a lot more ahead. Add to that the greater name recognition of Kerri Irvin-Ross on the doorstep compared to four years ago, and you have a re-elected incumbent.

Prediction: NDP win

Inkster

"Big Mac" Kevin Lamoureux, or K-Lam as I've seen him called elsewhere, is a tough candidate to beat. His name is recognized through the constituency and, despite his strange behaviour, he's built a certain measure of rapport with some of the local community. For him to lose, both the Conservatives and the NDP need to drain votes from the 53% he had last time (to the NDP's 43%).

For the Conservatives, it shouldn't be hard -- they earned only 4% last time (I think a raccoon running for office could draw at least 5%), which is down from their traditional 10% to 15% level. I think they'll recover somewhat, stealing back maybe 5% of 6% of their vote that went to K-Lam last time. The NDP will gain a few points, putting them neck-and-neck with the Liberals. I have to predict this one on gut-feeling: I think K-Lam wins by a hair.

Prediction: Liberal win

Kirkfield Park

First, I should correct an error I made in my earlier post when I implied that there wasn't a heated race for the Tory nomination. Candidate Chris Kozier did actually win the nomination against two other other candidates. Nevertheless, he is a rookie candidate and I would have expected to see someone with more established levels of support run to hold the seat for them.

The Tories still might pull it off, but with their chances down and with the full weight of the NDP's organizational machine in the constituency, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict a close victory for NDP candidate Sharon Blady.

Prediction: NDP win

La Verendrye

If you read my earlier post on this constituency, you'll see my summary of the many challenges facing the NDP in this constituency. It's enough for me to think that the Tories have a slight -- very slight -- edge.

Prediction: PC win

Brandon West

Brandon West will be reasonably close, but I think Scott Smith's 2003 margin is too wide for even well-known Rick Borotsik to overcome.

Prediction: NDP win

Prediction summary

As you can see, I'm predicting an NDP win in 35 seats to 20 for the Tories and 2 for the Liberals. Though I'm predicting a loss for the NDP in La Verendrye and a gain in Kirkfield Park, the seat totals are a carbon copy of those we saw in 2003.

Winnipeg seats: 24 NDP, 5 PC, 2 Lib
Non-Winnipeg seats: 11 NDP, 15 PC, 0 Lib
Total: 35 NDP, 20 PC, 2 Lib

What if...

If I'm a little off and the NDP actually add to their 35 seats, it will be utter devastation for Hugh McFadyen and the Tories. To widen the gulf between the two parties could even be too much for the Tories to get themselves into shape as serious contenders in 2011. The knives would be sharpened in the darkness of the Tory back rooms and McFadyen would emerge facing a fight more brutal than the one he just lost. That gets me thinking - all of Hugh's talk about Doer not being likely to stick around if re-elected may just come back to haunt him.

If I was overly generous to the NDP and they lose several seats while the Tories gain, the opposition will come out with a small victory in the sense that they'll have established themselves as something of a government-in-waiting. That'll put them in a much better position to recruit decent candidates, get themselves properly organized, and stoke up a mood for change among the electorate, all things they struggled to do this time around. It will also give McFadyen some more experience, including some of those statesperson-like wrinkles and grey hairs that come all too quickly to those in political careers.

Possible election night shockers
(this content rated R for frightening scenes)

Regardless of which way Fort Garry, La Verendrye, Inkster or other highly-watched close races go, no one will really be too shocked at the outcome in those seats because they could go either way. There are several constituencies, however, in which a dark horse candidate could emerge to win, much to the shock of election night onlookers.

Radisson: I doubt that Linda West, the perennial PC candidate in this part of town, will take this one. However, maybe we'll all be shocked and she'll do better than expected, snatching the seat from Bidhu Jha.

Dauphin-Roblin: The Tory candidate here could coast to a stunning upset by defeating Conservation Minister Stan Struthers. I personally doubt it, but the numbers suggest it could be close.

Portage La Prairie: The Tories should hold this seat easily, and I'm predicting they will. However, the NDP's Kostuchuk could pull off a surprise victory.

Assiniboia: Rondeau should sail to an easy victory in Assiniboia, but the little voices in the back of my head keep saying "what if! what if!"

River Heights: Looking at the numbers and the Tory candidate running here, this should be an easy Liberal win. But Liberal support in the province is very very soft. If it collapses, we could all be shocked to see Jon Gerrard go.

Disclaimer

The author of this post accepts no responsibility for flus, colds, cancelled dates, or other unfortunate consequences resulting from excessive nail-biting and, in fact, strongly urges blog readers to refrain from biting their nails no matter what transpires on the evening of May 22.

Election oracle, part 1

Image: John William Waterhouse - Consulting The Oracle (oil on canvas; 1884)

This week's Free Press/Probe election poll included an interesting addition: a voter migration matrix. This is a matrix of voters by the party they supported in one election with the party they supported (or plan to support) in a second election.

The poll data showed 2007 provincial election voting intention by reported 2003 votes cast. The poll showed for example that 64% of 2003 NDP voters plan on voting NDP again, while 9% will vote PC, 4% will vote Liberal, and 22% are undecided. The Tories appear to be keeping a greater share of their 2003 voters (69%), while the Liberals are struggling to hold their own, with just 44% of their 2003 voters intending to vote the same way this time. Twenty-nine percent of 2003 Liberals remain undecided, which is higher than for any of the other parties.

For fun, I recalculated the poll numbers to exclude the undecided and entered them into UBC's voter migration matrix election forecaster. Developed by Professor Werner Antweiler, the forecaster projects the voter migration numbers you enter into overall and seat-by-seat results. In response to my entry, the forecaster spit out an election prediction of 44.5% NDP, 39.4% PC, 12.8% Liberal, and 3.3% other, which isn't unreasonable.

The forecasted seat-by-seat results showed 35 NDP, 22 Conservatives, and zero Liberals. Fort Garry is predicted to shift from NDP to PC, while the Liberals are predicted to lose Inkster and River Heights, the former to the NDP and the latter to the PCs. Tight holds for the NDP were shown in St. Norbert, Seine River, and Radisson, while Minnedosa remained a tight hold for the PC. Other expected tight races generally weren't.

The calculator's weakness is that it applies voter migrations universally across all constituencies: in reality, voters may swing in greater numbers or to different parties in some regions than in others. It also can't account for the effect of "star" candidates, the added name recognition that comes with incumbency, the degree of effort put into winning by a party or candidate, or local issues. The numbers I entered also didn't take into account the weakness of the Liberals, who are holding less than half of their 2003 vote and whose intended voters this time are by far the softest of any party's.

For years, I've played with how shifts in party support province-wide translate into shifts at the constituency level. I'm always surprised at how the shifts are generally parallel despite so many local factors that must also play a role. For example, if a party increases their province-wide support by one-fifth (say, from 20% to 24%), it's likely that the same proportional increase will materialize in each constituency (say, from 5% to 6% and from 40% to 48%). An Excel-based calculator I created that does this automatically provides a good baseline for making seat-by-seat predictions. A consideration of incumbency, the level of effort a party is putting into a seat, and regional trends or local issues has to be made as well, but amazingly, these usually account for less than 5% of the vote, according to some studies that try to weigh the impact of these variables.

Right now, I'm predicting province-wide totals of about 45% NDP, 40% PC, and 14% Liberal, with relatively little change in seats between the parties. The NDP could lose a non-Winnipeg seat or two to the Tories, but then make up for it by picking up Inkster or Kirkfield Park. I'll profile the seats I expect to change hands or be close races over the next couple of days.

Strategically-speaking, the Tories simply must close the seat gap between the NDP and themselves (a difference of 15 in 2003) to come out of the election looking at all credible and able to challenge in 2011. If the Tories fail to pick up any seats outside the Perimeter Highway from the NDP, who then pick up one or two inside the city, it'll be completely devastating for Manitoba's party of the right. Tories tend to be a lot harder on their leaders than do New Democrats, so I think Hugh will be in for a very rough ride if he doesn't pull off victories in at least a couple of seats they don't already hold.

Those are all my thoughts for a late Friday evening. There'll almost certainly be more to say tomorrow.

Wellington's fringe candidates

According to today's Free Press, both incumbent NDP MLA Conrad Santos and turfed nomination challenger Joe Chan are running as independents in the constituency of Wellington against Angie Ramos, who won the nomination race to stand as the NDP's candidate.

The Free Press quotes the Liberal candidate, Rhonda Gordon Powers, as saying "it gives me a lot of hope." A pal of mine seemed to confirm this by wondering out loud about Wellington.

Should the NDP be worried?

Last election, the NDP candidate received 74%. The Liberals came second, with 15%, while the Tories pulled up third, with 10%.

Conclusion: not exactly a horse race. However, the NDP's opponents are arguing that the election is a lot closer this time, right? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and take a look at the numbers.

First, let's assume the worst-case scenario for the NDP: it drops province-wide from 49.5% in 2003 to 40% this year, while the Tories surge to 43% from 36%, with the Liberals sopping up about 15 points of the remainder (up from 13). Let's also assume that these shifts in support are consistent across every seat in the province.

Projecting these results to Wellington using the groovy Excel vote-shifting calculator I invented, we find the NDP at 65%, the Liberals at 20%, and the Conservatives at 13%.

Conclusion: still not even close, though we haven't yet considered the impact of the vote splitting.

Let's assume that Chan and Santos take votes only from the NDP and that they both do stunningly well for independent candidates. Let's say Santos gets 15% and Chan gets 10%.

Final results in a worst-case scenario: NDP 40%, Liberal 20%, Santos 15%, PC 13%, Chan 10%.

Conclusion: nothing to worry about for the NDP. The only question remaining is over just how bad the drubbing will be for the NDP's opponents.

More predictions coming soon - for all 57 constituencies!

Photo: Wellington, New Zealand, where rumours of Conrad Santos cycling have NOT been confirmed.