In Canada’s election, the polls were the story

Before Canada’s general election was called in late March there was some criticism in the press of opinion polls as “unreliable, inaccurate and far too prolific”. We had to wait until this week, when the final result was announced, to see whether there was any truth to such claims, particularly the questions over accuracy and reliability.

So how did the polls stack up?

Angus Reid, one of Canada’s best-known pollsters, told Research today he felt the polls in general were “a little all over the place” (although his own company’s were “the most precise” – you can see how all the pollsters stack up in a release here).

But, he said, it was an historic election by Canadian standards, with the NDP seeing its support leap from the high-teens/low twenties of the past to just over 30% of the popular vote, while the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois saw a collapse in their votes.

This made it tricky to work out how vote share would translate into actual seats won, hence the Conservatives’ “surprise” majority. Yet by and large, many pollsters came “close on their popular vote predictions”, wrote the Globe & Mail.

Indeed, for all the criticism, Reid said, “The polling story was the story of the entire campaign. Without polling, the historical shifts [in vote patterns] would not have been widely known.”