I find it hard to make head or tail of polls and other media reports on this topic...
Polls have confidence values associated, which I understand. Effectively, they mean that by interviewing 1000 (or thereabouts) people, their results would be within 3.1% points of what they would be if they polled all 23 million voters (19 times out of every 20 polls...statistically, one poll would have a larger margin than that).
There's an unstated variable, though, and that's the likelihood of the respondents to change their votes...either the truly "undecided" voter, or the "I'm decided but a good campaign ad could change my mind" type. Some fraction will have a 0% chance of changing, so that's your base value for every poll. The remainder is the "soft support" that's liable to change based on good ads, major gaffes, or great debate performances.
Any guesses as to how much support falls into each category? At present, I'd guess that poll results break down something like this, among probable voters outside of Quebec...
20% Definite Conservative
15% Definite Liberal
10% Definite NDP
2% Definite Green
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47% of the total is pretty solid?
15% Soft Conservative ... Currently supporting Con and would never support NDP, but remains open to supporting Libs / Greens if they get spooked by something during the campaign.
10% Soft Liberal ... Currently reporting Liberal, but remains open to voting Con if they think they're likely to elect a Con MP into a Con government. They only change, though if the Cons can avoid spooking them.
20% Soft Left-wing ... Lib/NDP/Green. Would never vote Con, and will likely go into conniptions if a Con majority gets elected.
8% Swing-in-the-wind ... the kind who doesn't have a clue how the NDP and Con platforms differ, and will simply vote based on which one looks best on his/her campaign posters.
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53% Soft support?
So, am I close, or way off-base with these guesses? Does anybody have actual numbers to back these up or refute them?
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