Over the last few weeks, a series of polls have been conducted within the city of Ottawa which have redefined the state of the electoral race in four local swing ridings. While some ridings appeared to have their future MP's pre-determined, other ridings looked like three-way races. With these recently released poll results, we can now say with more confidence that the race is a lot tighter in some of these key swing ridings than we initially thought. What the data is telling us is that some of these ridings could be won by a marginal number of votes!
Ottawa-West-Nepean
For most of the summer leading up to the election period, our analysis from previous years was telling us that while the Liberals and Conservatives were close to each other in the riding, we could not count the NDP out of the race. An initial riding level poll by Environics Research conducted on September 20th ended up clarifying the situation, and put the Liberal candidate, Anita Vandenbeld ahead of the Conservative Abdul Abdi by 4 points, at 39 and 35 respectively, while the NDP was still sitting at their 2011 level of 20 points.
The situation was soon confirmed and even amplified by two more recent polls from Forum Research and Mainstreet Research, putting Vandenbeld at the 46-47 points mark, and Abdul Abdi dropping from 35 to 29 points, without any significant changes to the NDP and Green numbers.
Vandenbeld looks poised to take the riding on October 19th, but the race is still on. Things can still change and we must not be complacent.
Orléans
The riding of Orléans has shaped up to be what we had anticipated going into this election period, a two-way race between the Liberals and Conservatives.
The Environics Research Poll initially showed Liberal candidate Andre Leslie with 51 points and a 15 point lead over Conservative Royal Galipeau with 36. The NDP’s Nancy Tremblay initially held 11 points and the Greens trailed with 3 points.
However, the Mainstreet Research poll released at the end of September indicated an 8 point loss for the Liberals over the Conservatives as their numbers fell from 51 to 40, and the Conservatives fell from 36 t0 33 points. The gains made in the poll go to the NDP who shifted from 11 points to 19 and the Greens with 3 to 8 points.
Nepean
Nepean is a new story, in a sense. It has been brought back from the dead in the re-arrangement of the ridings in 2012. Initially, the riding looked like a shoe-in for Poilièvre’s former aide, Andy Wang, but it is now looking slightly different.
In late September, the Environics Research poll showed Wang with a 6 points lead over Liberal candidate Chandra Arya with 40 and 34 points respectively, while the NDP and Green candidates Devine and Cooke remained at 19 and 8 points respectively. The two-way race was clear then.
The more recent Mainstreet Research polls (October 4th), however, show a slightly different story. Liberal candidate Chandra seems to have caught up with Wang, leading him by one point at 42 vs 41 points respectively, putting them in a statistical tie, while the NDPs’ Sean Devine is down to 13 points, and the Greens’ Jean-Luc Cooke is also down to 4 points. The race is as tight as it gets in Nepean, but it clearly has become a battleground riding.
Kanata-Carleton
This riding follows the trend in Nepean. This riding was created in 2012 and is an amalgamation of a majority of the Carleton-Mississippi Mills riding and a part of the Nepean-Carleton riding. This riding looked like another Conservative stronghold until the most recent polls emerged this week.
The Environics Research poll showed a 7 point lead for Conservative Walter Pamic with 44 over Liberal Karen McCrimmon with 37 points. The NDP and Greens are trailing with 13 and 5 points respectively.
The Mainstreet Research polls released this week indicate a tighter race between the Liberals and Conservatives than originally anticipated. This polls shows another very close race with Pamic at 45 and a mere 2 point lead over McCrimmon with 43, with the NDP at 8 and Greens at 4.
All of the above information can be found as a comparative analysis divided by riding on Wikipedia:
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