Readers of my two recent posts (here and here) on the Corporate Research Associates rolling poll for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald* should consider a new poll, commissioned by the right-wing Sun News Network, that shows a somewhat closer race than CRA's eyebrow-raising results. Sun headlined the 48-26-25 split, but it's worth noting that when Abacus Data, the firm that conducted it, counted only respondents it deemed likely to vote, the numbers edged closer to the CRA results: 51-26-23. The likely voter sample included only 243 respondents, which yields a sampling error of ±6.4 percent, 19 times out of 20, somewhat higher than...

03 October, 2013

Assume for the moment that the Corporate Research Associates poll showing Stephen McNeil's Liberals with a 30-point lead is accurate (which I assume it is), and assume McNeil holds that lead until Tuesday (which remains to be seen). The next question is, how the heck did this happen? The NDP made serious mistakes (see here and here) but they did not run a horrible government (see here and here). Not everyone will agree, but there is a reasonable case that Dexter deserves another term, something of a tradition in Nova Scotia, as many have pointed out. The curious thing is that one detects little passion in...

02 October, 2013

Don Mills sounds nervous. Nova Scotia's best known pollster has been conducting a rolling poll for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and over the last week, his numbers have pointed to an historic rout. For the last five days, he has shown Stephen McNeil's Liberals holding steady between 55 and 57 percent of decided voters—enough to propel him to a lopsided majority. "We're under a lot of scrutiny here," he told Contrarian. Here's the latest edition, published Tuesday morning: To understand how unusual such an outcome would be, I looked at every Nova Scotia election since 1960. Over those 15 provincial votes: The winning party got more...

01 October, 2013

A Contrarian reader asks: Does it not seem to you that there is a major conflict of interest in the Savage-for-Mayor camp? [AllNovaScotia.com, the online news service]  lists Don Mills as one of Savage's top supporters. Since  Mills operates Corporate Research Associates, the major polling firm in the province — one that just recently reported Savage with a big lead — why would one trust anything CRA has to say on the race? A fair question, and we put it to Mills, who replied: Corporate Research Associates has been since its inception a non-partisan polling company. It is one of the reasons our...

23 February, 2012

The old saw says they should let Cape Bretoners vote the next day, so we get it right. Until now, there has been a widespread assumption that of the 10 nine Cape Breton seats, only Victoria-The Lakes, held by PC Keith Bain, is in play. Today's CRA poll gives no reason to challenge that assumption. CRA's Don Mills says the NDP are merely holding their own on the island, where they currently hold but two seats. This bears watching. If Cape Bretoners get a sniff of a majority NDP government, things could change quickly....

01 June, 2009

The latest poll from Don Mills of Corporate Research Associates shows the NDP at 44 percent. More importantly, it shows them in first place in the rural mainland. Some will say the NDP vote is highly concentrated in metro, where they will "waste" votes by winning with unnecessarily huge majorities. Elections are won by seat totals, not vote totals. Still, 44 percent is well into majority territory. In the last 14 Nova Scotia elections, no party has ever won more than 40 percent of the vote and failed to win a majority. John Hamm won a majority in 1999 with 39%...

01 June, 2009