The papers have all been reporting this morning that the Conservatives, if an election were held today, might be able to eek out a majority. If you’re handy with a spreadsheet, you can figure this out for yourself. I headed over to the Elections Canada website, and downloaded the results for the last election. Next, I converted the whole thing into a pivot table, and then overlaid the poll results from the last week. It’s a little crude, and makes some gross simplifications since I don’t have poll data for every province, but it provides a good snapshot of what might happen if an election were called today.
What did I learn? It would be a stretch to forecast a Conservative majority. There’s no doubt that the Conservatives would win the election, however. The Liberals would likely lose more ground in Quebec, one or two seats in Atlantic Canada, and most of their Western seats. In Ontario, they wouldn’t be wiped out, but they might be reduced from their current 75 seats to somewhere in the low 30′s. In Quebec, I believe the Bloc would increase their representation — all but the Anglo enclaves around Montreal and near Ottawa would vote with the separatists.
So, based on my quick and dirty analysis, if an election were called today, the results would look something like this, then.
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Conservative 140 (perhaps as high as 145, but definitely not 155).
- Liberal 85
- NDP 18
- Bloc 65
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
