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Originally Posted by octothorp
Interesting stuff; it's too bad that the margin of error in Quebec is higher than elsewhere: given how important it is, you'd think they would focus on it more than most other regions. That said, the thing the article misses is that it still shows the Liberals and Conservatives neck-and-neck in Ontario, which still might be telling the Liberals what they want to hear when it comes to deciding about calling an election. It's also bizarre how in the poll, the Tories are down 10% in the West. I hate polls that group everything west of Ontario into one demographic. 10% averaged across the region isn't that significant, but a 10% drop in BC would be huge.
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Yeah, the regional samples for this poll are so tiny as to be in my view meaningless. 250 in Ontario and Quebec, only 125 in each of the other regions.
The overall numbers aren't good for Ignatieff--but the overall sample of the poll is only 1000, which is pretty small in and of itself.
At this point, I don't know what to think. My feeling is that the overall vote share is likely to be very similar to last time--a slight edge to the conservatives, and a relatively weak showing for the Liberals. But for some reason the Liberals are very confident and hawkish. I figure that means one of two things: either they're confident that another party will prop up Harper (all he needs is the NDP), putting the Grits in a better political position next year, or they have their own internal polling indicating massive regional weakness for Harper in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.
As for the regional samples in this last poll--I'm pretty alarmed at how small they are. Borders on meaningless, in my view.