Three way race in Canada? Not quite...

We are now just over 150 days away from the next federal election, and the public opinion polls over the last week have shown the three major parties within just a couple of percentage points from each other when it comes to national support.

Weighted average of opinion polls over recent weeks appear to show a tight race

However, when you translate this into seats in parliament, a substantial difference begins to emerge.  The Liberals and NDP are close to each other, but the Conservatives are well ahead, though well short of being able to form another majority government.

Seat projection ranges based on recent opinion polls

So how do we explain the discrepancy between the opinion polls and the seat projection?

UK Election 2015: Polls, voting systems, and other thoughts

It was billed as the most unpredictable election in a generation, and it surely delivered.  Nobody expected the Conservatives to finish with a majority government.  Nobody expected Ed Balls to lose his seat.  Nobody expected the SNP to get quite as many seats as they did.  And nobody expected Labour to go backwards in terms of seats, even despite the goings-on in Scotland.

I could go on. But the point of the matter is that the polls are wrong.

Well, haven't we all got egg on our faces...

When this hit my screen, I had to take a double-take, as it just didn't make sense.

Hardly anyone believed the exit poll when it first came out.

All the opinion polls suggested that we'd have the most hung parliament in 40 years.  The suggestion that the Tories would be within striking distance of a majority government was, to say the least, surprising.  We even saw a pledge by Lord Ashdown to eat a hat on air if the poll was right.

Before the first result came in, we saw an online poll conducted by YouGov, asking voters how they voted.  That poll showed very little change between the two parties, so I (among numerous others) started considering that as the true indication of how the election went.

That's two elections in a row now where we were mistaken in disbelieving the exit poll.

Campaign Week 6: The final polls

That's it.  The campaign is over.  In just a few hours, the polls will be open, and in 24 hours, the new government will have been decided.  So what is the final call?

Campaign Week 5: It's Nearly Over (Maybe)

Seven days from now, the result of the election will be known.  Well, at least the technical part of how many seats each party has will be known.  What will be less clear is who will be running the country for the coming years (or months).

In the aftermath of the 2010 election, which produced the first hung parliament in 36 years, nobody knew what to do.  Though it took five days following the election to decide upon a prime minister, what made it easy is that one party, the Liberal Democrats, held the balance of power; they were able to effectively decide whether Gordon Brown or David Cameron would walk into Downing Street.

2010: Liberal Democrats hold balance of power

Compare that with the likely range of possibilities in this election, and things get a little more complicated, as we will have at least four parties with sizable enough representation to make a difference.

2015: Balance shared by SNP, Lib Dems, and possibly others

So if this is the result we can expect, how does that work in terms of the formation of a government?

Campaign Week 4: No Consensus Among Pollsters

This election is going to be very difficult to predict.  We have three parties going from practical obscurity in 2010 to national prominence in this campaign, and it's very difficult to tell how spread out or concentrated their newfound support will be.

This alone makes coming up with a seat projection difficult enough.  What makes things even more challenging is the fact that polls are, quite simply, inconsistent with each other.

Campaign Week 3: The Manifestos

Ah, manifesto week.  The week where we see all of the parties making pledges for the people of this country, telling us where the priorities for our very scarce resources lie.  It's a welcome, even if temporary, break from the usual mudslinging that goes on during the campaign.

So whose manifesto was most convincing to voters?  Well, it's a bit surprising what the pollsters are finding.