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Latest Federal polls

Translation: Conservative majority due to vote splitting between Liberals and NDP. Cons will win with only 35% support, the lowest of any majority government in CAD history. Harper dictatorship starts on Monday.
 
This surge seems to be snowballing. Many of the people who were voting conservative because Harper was the devil they knew (I know Liberals who won't vote for Iggy so they're voting for Harper!) are now finding an alternative in the likeable and positive Jack Layton.

People like to back the come from behind challenger and that's exactly what Jack is. Unless Layton does something tremendously wrong, his support is going to compound over the final week. The more people who join the NDP, the more who are going to be attracted to voting orange. It's totally possible that Layton can actually win the election. Wow...
 
According to the latest Forum Research poll, Jack Layton’s party enjoys the support of 31% of those surveyed — only three points behind the governing Conservatives, who fell to 34% from the 36% support the party gleaned as of April 21. The Liberals, having been reduced to third place in a slew of recent polls, dwindled to 22% in this latest survey, while the Bloc Quebecois remained unchanged at 6%.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/04/27/ndp-trail-tories-by-just-three-points-new-poll-finds/

pretty impressive.
 
Though the one big doozy in the tank might be that a Quebec-based NDP tidal wave could bring in a whole bunch of didn't-expect-to-win types straight off the turnip truck--and if we're not careful, the NDP might have an "Ontario 1990" situation on its hands...
 
So it appears that the risk of the NDP splitting the centre/left vote with the Liberals and handing Harper a majority is dwindling. They're in a statistical tie with the Conservatives. Anything can happen now, but a Harper Majority seems unlikely at this point.

Iggy has already said that the he would try to form Government if the Conservatives couldn't indicating that he will probably lead his party to vote No at the throne speech. I think that Ignatieff would prefer Prime Minister Layton with a comfy cabinet position for himself instead of another non cooperative PM Harper.

hmmm, that calls for a poll...
 
So it appears that the risk of the NDP splitting the centre/left vote with the Liberals and handing Harper a majority is dwindling. They're in a statistical tie with the Conservatives. Anything can happen now, but a Harper Majority seems unlikely at this point.

Well, it *could* be likely...if the Grits and BQ sink so low that a even 130-seat NDP couldn't hold up a Tory majority...
 
It is interesting to see that the increased support for the NDP seems to be coming from every other federal party.

The NDP have gone from ~18% before the debate (where they had been stuck since the start of the current election campaign) to ~30% today, a rise of 12%. The Liberals, in the same timespan, have dropped from ~28% to their current ~22%, accounting for half of the NDP gain.

The other 6% seems to be fairly evenly distributed among the other three federal parties:
Conservatives, from ~38% to ~35%, a drop of ~3%
Bloc, from ~9% to ~7%, a drop of ~2%
Greens, from ~7% to ~6%, a drop of ~1%

The sizes of their respective drops are roughly proportional to their pre-debate support.

So the NDP seems to be gaining support at the expense of every other party, not just the Bloc and the Liberals.
 
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I've yet to see a comprehensive list of races that would show the consequences of this NDP surge. Will they simply take enough support away from the Liberals for the Conservatives to edge by in close races? Will the NDP manage to come from behind in a significant number of races to jump over both the Liberals and Conservatives, gaining seats in the process?

The best case scenario for Jack Layton is that the NDP and Liberal roles are completely reversed with the NDP contesting the tight races against the Conservatives and the Liberals falling way behind in 3rd place, below NDP's last election results.

At the beginning of this campaign, another minority Conservative government would have been enough to kick Harper out because Ignatieff would no doubt form an alliance with the NDP and if need be the Bloq. Harper has held firm that he won't work with the other parties. Now, with the NDP as the benefitted party, I'm not so sure the Liberals will defeat the Conservatives and allow Jack Layton to become PM.
 
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I have put together this chart, showing the daily averages of the polls used at ThreeHundredEight.com

ScreenShot090.jpg
 
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Perhaps what we're seeing with these polls, where the NDP are gaining support and the Liberals plunging, is a sea change similar to that which occurred when the Reform/Alliance cannibalized the old Progressive Conservatives party? Instead of fighting to occupy the mushy middle ground, the new dynamic in a post-Liberal world will consist of two parties that offer distinctly different platform choices.
 

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