We are quickly approaching the 2019 Canadian election: it is scheduled for October 21, 2019 and the campaigns are heating up. For those interested in following the “horse race”, Éric Grenier (CBC) has produced an interactive tool that projects the distribution of the seats in the House of Commons based on public polls. Well worth checking out!

After seeing Éric’s tool, I decided to quickly update my “Poll of polls” and rerun the time series analysis from an old post. It now spans almost two decades of polling data (from mid-2002 until today).

This time series of Canadian national-level polls runs from mid-2002 until August 2019

There are a few interesting recent trends since my last post:

The Liberals, having apparently overcome the negative stigma of the SNC Lavalin affair, are neck-and-neck with the Conservatives going into the 2019 election
The Green party has increased its support (presumably at the expense of the NDP) to levels not seen since 2011
There is a new party in town — the People’s Party of Canada, run by Maxine Bernier — but I’ve left them off the chart (for now) because they clearly have <5% of national support

As the chart clearly shows, elections matter: a lot can happen between now and late October.

All that being said, it’s important to remember that the national popular vote is utterly meaningless in our electoral system! Winning seats is what counts.

Full disclosure: In the Summer of 2007, I interned for Hamish Marshall, the 2019 Conservative campaign manager, in the Prime Minister’s Office and remain friends with him and his (L)awesome wife.