EKOS Politics

The leaderless Ontario Liberal Party has now opened up a significant lead over the Doug Ford-led Progressive Conservative Party. The Liberals and the PCs are both up from December, while the Official Opposition NDP has been declining. The Green Party is holding steady at a respectable nine per cent but, as we have seen in the past, much of this does not translate into votes on Election Day. [More…]

[Ottawa – January 16, 2020] It has been a turbulent beginning to 2020. In particular, the heightened tensions between the United States and Iran have escalated dramatically, resulting in the tragic loss of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 and the deaths of 176 people, including 57 Canadians. In the first instalment of a broader poll looking at public outlook on key issues, we will look at the public response to this crisis. [More…]

[Ottawa – December 17, 2019] Clearly, the Canadian electorate isn’t in a forgiving mood. No matter how they voted in October, overwhelming majorities are happy to see Andrew Scheer exiting the Conservative leader’s office. A scant seven per cent are sorry to him leave, while more than ten times that figure approve of his decision. [More…]

[Ottawa – December 12, 2019] The political landscape appears to be as frozen as the land as we move into Canadian winter with a deadlocked and deeply divided citizenry. Vote intention hasn’t budged in the past seven weeks, although the Green Party and People’s Party are both doing better than on Election Day. Everyone else is pretty much mired in place. It is notable that the Liberals do better with middle class and university educated voters. Support for both the Liberal and Conservative parties rises with age, while the NDP does better with young voters. [More…]

The following presentation was delivered by Frank Graves to Massey College at the University of Toronto on November 27, 2019. [More…]

[Ottawa – October 23, 2019] Our final seat forecast was extremely accurate; however, our final four-day roll was somewhat off. In this brief addendum, we wish to explain that contradiction. [More…]

[Ottawa – October 20, 2019] After an exciting campaign, the 43rd Canadian general election has come to a close. We at EKOS believe we did a very good job in charting the direction in one of the tightest campaigns in recent memory. In the end, we correctly predicted that the Liberals would retain power (we noted that a minority government was the most probable scenario), although we acknowledge that our final estimate of the Conservative Party’s support fell slightly outside the margin of error. This was largely due to a sampling error in our final week of polling (more on this below). [More…]

[Ottawa – October 21, 2019] With just hours to go until the polls close, EKOS is offering a seat projection based on what we believe to be perhaps the strongest riding prediction model extant at this time. We have been constantly refining our model which is populated with more than 100,000 cases we have collected since January. We have made a number of qualitative adjustments based on each riding’s history and candidates. [More…]

[Ottawa – October 20, 2019] In our final poll for the 43rd federal election campaign, we are predicting that the Liberals will capture the most seats on Monday. Given the trends over the past week and the regional patterns, we feel comfortable that the Liberals are going to win with at least a strong minority. However, the distribution of Liberal support is extremely seat-efficient and there is still a strong possibility that the party could eek out a bare majority tomorrow. [More…]

[Ottawa – October 18, 2019] The 43rd federal election is lurching to the finish line and we still don’t know who the winner(s) will be. The race is statistical tie, with the Conservatives holding the narrowest of leads over the Liberals (32.5 per cent versus 31.0 per cent). The rejuvenated NDP is now stalled at 17.6 points and the Greens having fallen back to 7.9 points. The People’s Party is also fading and now sits at 3.6 per cent. In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois have had a renaissance, but that too appears to have stalled and they have fallen out of a tie and are now 10 points behind the Liberals in Quebec at 24 points. [More…]

[Ottawa – October 16, 2019] The national numbers could not be tighter with the Liberals and Conservatives at 31.2 and 31.8 points, respectively. The NDP has risen, but that rise seems to have plateaued and they now standing at 18.4 points. The Green Party is now at 6.8 per cent and they have seen a lot of their vote cannibalized by the rise in the NDP. At 3.4 per cent, the People’s Party has fallen back somewhat, while the Bloc Québécois is 6.4 per cent nationally, which translates into a statistical tie in Quebec (29 per cent, compared to 28 per cent for the Liberals. [More…]

This online survey was conducted using EKOS’ unique, hybrid online/telephone research panel, Probit. Our panel offers exhaustive coverage of the Canadian population (i.e., Internet, phone, cell phone), random recruitment (in other words, participants are recruited randomly, they do not opt themselves into our panel), and equal probability sampling. All respondents to our panel are recruited by telephone using random digit dialling and are confirmed by live interviewers. Unlike opt-in online panels, Probit supports margin of error estimates. [More…]

[Ottawa – October 11, 2019] We remain in a deadlocked national race, with the Conservatives enjoying a one-point, statistically insignificant lead. Results suggest that there may have been some effects from the debates. The most important finding is the diminution of the Liberal Party’s Ontario lead. The 13-point advantage the Liberals enjoyed in Ontario has sharply eroded since the debate (though there appears to have been a modest recovery in the later part of the polling period). [More…]

[Ottawa – September 30, 2019] With just three weeks to go until the 43rd federal election, the Liberals and Conservatives find themselves in a statistical tie at 33 and 31 points, respectively. At 13 points, the Green Party has squeezed its way into third place, while the NDP lies just two points behind at 11 points. The People’s Party is at five points and the Bloc Québécois is at three points nationally. [More…]

[Ottawa – September 23, 2019] The images of Justin Trudeau donning blackface makeup seemed to have had a significant but short-lived impact on the electorate. Just one in four Canadians (28 per cent) think the incident is serious, though this includes 21 per cent who think it is an extremely serious matter. About one in four voters (24 per cent) say it will make them less likely to vote for the Liberal Party on October 21^st. [More…]

Below is a summary of the survey results that EKOS has released via Twitter from July to August 2019. The tables below include full regional and demographic breakdowns, as well as methodological statements. [More…]

The political landscape is now clearly shifting in favour of the Liberals and to the detriment of the Conservatives. The Scheer-led Conservatives have seen their 11-point lead from just a month ago shrink to a narrow 2.7-point lead as of last night. [More…]

[Ottawa – April 15, 2019] In Canada, attitudes to immigration have never been a critical ballot booth issue. Unlike in America or Europe, where they have been deeply divisive the differences in Canada have been more moderate and there has been a political agreement on a broadly open policy on immigration. There have been significant differences across partisan boundaries, but they have not shaped election outcomes in a significant manner. This may be changing in important ways that reflect broader shifts in public outlook.

Our research is examining the evolution of what we have called ordered… [More…]

[Ottawa – March 31, 2019] With just over two weeks to go until Albertans head to the polls, incumbent Premier Rachel Notley is becoming more competitive. She has improved on some measures in the past couple of weeks, while Jason Kenny has gone down somewhat. Most notably, about half of Albertans (46 per cent) now say the province in headed in the right direction, up five points since February. Furthermore, Rachel Notley is narrowly seen as the best Premier for the province. [More…]

[Ottawa – March 1, 2019] The LeBreton redevelopment garners extremely high attention among NCR residents and there are some very important shifts going on in terms of public outlook.

Eugene Melnyk is increasingly wearing the mantle of author of the current mess. The previously near-equal accountability for both Melnyk and Ruddy now sees a 30-point gap with nearly 70% seeing Melnyk as ‘very responsible’.

Fully 63 per cent of NCR residents agree that the worst result would be for the project to be stalled indefinitely (just 15 per cent disagree). [More…]