Poll tracker

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/09/2015 (3662 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We’re monitoring the polls, so you don’t have to.

Once a week up until election day, the Free Press will update its readers on the current poll results, this week we are looking at recent polls from Nanos and Ipsos.

Nanos leadership tracker (three-day tracking ending September 21st): Who is your preferred Prime Minister? Over 30 per cent (30.3) would choose Stephen Harper (Conservative); 27 per cent would choose Justin Trudeau (Liberal). Meanwhile, Tom Mulcair (NDP) had 26.1 per cent support; Elizabeth May (Green) received 6.1 per cent support; Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Québécois) was at 1.5 per cent and 9 per cent were unsure

Last week three-day tracking ending September 15th: 31 per cent of Canadians said Harper was their first preference followed by Mulcair at 29 per cent, Trudeau at 25 per cent, May was at six per cent, Duceppe at 1.2 per cent and nine per cent were undecided

Margin of error: The margin of error for a survey of 1,200 respondents is ±2.8%, 19 times out of 20.

Ipsos poll (conducted between Sept. 18 to 21, 2015): If the election were held tomorrow, 33 per cent of decided eligible voters would vote for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, while 30 per cent would vote for Thomas Mulcair and the NDP. The Conservatives led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper would receive 27 per cent of the decided popular vote. Support for Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc is at 5 per cent nationally and the Green Party led by Elizabeth May would receive 4 per cent of the vote.

Last week: 32 per cent of decided eligible voters would vote for Thomas Mulcair and the NDP, while 31 per cent would vote for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, and 29 per cent would vote for the Harper Conservatives. The Bloc led by Gilles Duceppe would receive four per cent of the decided vote nationally and Elizabeth May’s Green Party would also receive four per cent of the vote nationally.

Margin of error: The poll is accurate to within +/ – 3.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Here’s a more comprehensive look at some of the polls to date:

Use the top slider to zoom in on particular polling dates between April 30 and now. Users can also click on individual parties in the legend to hide them in order to isolate particular parties.

For the purpose of spotting trends during the election, The Winnipeg Free Press is tracking public opinion poll results from major pollsters in the country.

Research companies included in the Free Press dataset are Forum Research, EKOS Politics, Ipsos Canada, Nanos Research, Abacus Data, Angus Reid Institute and Environics Research.

It is important to note that questions posed by the pollsters — and how they gather information — vary considerably.

For instance, for its rolling poll, Nanos asked respondents their "preferred Prime Minister" as well as for which party they'd consider voting. For the sake of continuity in the dataset, the Free Press took numbers from the preferred PM results in that case.

Some gather data with live phone interviews while others use automated phone menus.

As Curtis Brown, vice-president of Probe Research Inc., a Winnipeg-based public opinion firm and the polling firm of record for the Free Press, stated, "No survey methodology is perfect, with each having weaknesses that must be overcome."

Consult researcher websites for more information on poll questions and methodologies.

graeme.bruce@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @grjbruce