so, i got a start on this. i'm taking what i think will probably be a more efficient aproach this time, so it should be a bit faster.

but, i just want to stop for a second to double down on what i'm projecting in the election.

first, i'll remind you that i do have a four year degree in mathematics, plus enough credits for a masters (taken while working out a degree in computer science that i stopped a credit short of). i made a hard turn out of academia, because i decided i wanted to be a musician and i was wasting my time with it. i then ended up doing a lot of political activism, and ended up as a prolific blogger, so here i am. i've also worked in polling, as a student. so, referring to me as an "amateur" is a bit of stretch; i'm as qualified to speak on this topic as anybody else that you'll meet.

and i need to get this point across very clearly: it's not that i'm too lazy to model, it's that i actually think it's a bad approach because the sampling frames suck. i'm explicitly dissenting; they're trying to ram square pegs into round holes, and more often than not end up completely wrong regarding anything that's not already obvious. in order to statistically model canadian elections with any kind of accuracy, the way that the computers accept the data has to change very radically. right now, it's largely just garbage in, garbage out.

so, this isn't an amateur approaching this from an ad hoc perspective; this is an expert that is offering a dissenting opinion around the existing methods, and offering a different approach. 

but, how do i get a liberal majority when they can barely get 30%, and might not even win the popular vote, and everybody else is suggesting a coin flip minority?

because the regional numbers actually aren't even close.

the conservatives are at 70% in alberta and saskatchewan, the liberals are at 45% in ontario and quebec is a clean split between the liberals and the bloc. when you add it all up, they're tied, nationally, sure. but, in actual fact, the liberals are going sweep the east, and the conservatives are going to sweep the west, as we've seen however many times since wwII - and i don't need a sophisticated modelling algorithm (one that the greens running at 10% in ontario, concentrated into urban ridings, is going to completely break, i might add) to tell me that.

my dissenting opinion is that we're better off fitting the data to past results than trying to interpolate it in real-time.

and, for ontario, which is going to decide this election, the numbers are most similar to the ones in 2000 - where the pcs and reform split the rural vote, handing the liberals a huge majority.

even if that doesn't happen, the conservative numbers in ontario appear to be very low, right now. the rural split with the greens might be stretching, right now. but, a liberal sweep over the 905 is a reasonable projection, and the conservatives simply can't win an election when that's the reality in front of them.

we've seen very weird election results in canada, in the past. run the 1979 data into your model and tell me what it says - i promise you that you won't get a clark minority.

these results could be awful, from a democratic perspective, but that's the norm, here.

don't let that huge conservative lead in alberta skew your analysis - they're not running well in the east, right now, and are not going to win the election.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i took a look at the tube on my bike a little more closely, and i can't figure out where the hole is. so, i filled it back up, and it came back down again after about an hour.

i can't help but feel i can save this tube, but it'll need to wait a few days. going out on saturday is, in fact, dependent on the bike, due to the distance i'll need to travel. i could in theory hop the rail to grand, but it's still a long ass walk to hamtramck. and, i am morally opposed to using a car (at all.), unless i have to. so, no cabs, no uber. and, i don't have or want a phone, anyways. pretty much the only valid use of combustion engines are ambulances and fire trucks, imo. i'm pretty strict on myself about that...

the options are really walking or biking, and this place is too far to walk and not on any reasonable bus route.

i don't want to take my other bike to detroit, that's what i bought this one for.

so, if i make the choice to go tomorrow or the next day, i'll have to take the whole tire apart, patch it and put it back together again.

for right now, i want to work on the rebuild for the end of 2013.

the sewers held overnight. i'm going to see if i can push it the whole day....

as it is, i'm showered and fed and ready to get at it.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

indeed, pelosi can always be expected to stand up for what's wrong - even when she's in the minority.

she has a history of standing up for what's wrong.

she has a history of standing up for saudi blood money.

and, she has a history of standing up for imperialist wars, too.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

yeah.

so, the legal stuff is put aside for a few days, and i'm going to put a major push to try to finish 2013 before the end of the weekend.

seriously.

there's minimal amounts of communication with the outside world, at this point, so i think we can rocket through this...

i'm not currently excited about saturday. we'll see how i feel on saturday.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

...and, if there is a strong bradley effect, along with a last minute liberal surge in the urban areas, then those 2000 results may be the right model, subject to a reasonable error.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

back in the 90s, the liberals were running a little higher in ontario - around 50% - and the ndp were running a little lower, around 10% (or lower). but, that's not why the liberals virtually swept ontario in three successive elections - 1993, 1997 and 2000. rather, the reason that the liberals swept ontario is that the reform party and "progressive conservative" party split the vote on the right in rural areas, allowing them to come up the middle.

these were the 2000 numbers:

liberals: 51.5%, 100 seats.
reform: 23.6%, 2 seats.
pcs: 14.4%, 0 seats.
ndp: 8.3%, 1 seat.

the ndp appear to be running a little higher, which you can take away from the liberals. this should get the ndp a small number of union seats if they actually run at 15% - but may not even be good for that if they dip much lower.

but, current green numbers are not that different than those pc numbers, and current conservative numbers are not that different than those reform numbers.

so, you can see what might happen.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

there was brutal flooding in ontario a few months ago, and the rural areas are the ones that got hit.

the conservatives want to lay a pipeline through the carnage.

it's easy to understand the backlash.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

the national numbers continue to flatline. but, nik posted some ontario numbers. thanks, nik.

there are large margins here. and it's one poll. so, be careful. but....

if that is close to being right, what does it say?

liberals: -3.4%
cons: -6.6
greens: +8.2

the ndp are +0.8 which is statistically flat, but i also suspect a bradley effect. i'm not taking their numbers seriously, right now. in the end, i expect they'll be down a few points.

you can look at the file yourself, but i pulled this out for a reason. at 44.8% last election, the liberals won 80 seats in ontario. if the ndp are flat (or down) and the conservatives are way down, they're not just going to keep almost all of those 80 seats, but they're going to pick up an extra dozen urban seats from the conservatives and ndp.

even better for them, that huge boost in green support is actually rural. that's right - the greens are way up in conservative ridings. and the conservatives are way down. that means the greens could actually be handing seats to the liberals on the split.

again, the margins are huge, and i'm operating in them. so, if we end up with the following, in the end:

liberals: 45%
conservatives: 26%
ndp: 15%
greens: 12%
ppc: 2%

....the liberals are going to win 110+ seats in ontario. like, 115, even

and, that's why i think they're on track for a majority.

we'll see what happens.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

fwiw, we were a part of the initial bombing attack on isis. that was a choice made by harper. trudeau actually ran on withdrawing (like his father should have...), and what happened was that we did a kind of juggling act - we pulled the planes out and shifted support to "training the kurds" instead, which meant we had a small contingent of special forces there. at the time, it seemed like the liberals were doing two things - (1) listening to the experts on the ground, that argued that bombing was not sufficient to actually defeat isis and (2) upholding their historical position on requiring a un mandate to actually fight.

i did support the bombing campaign on isis, which is very rare for me. and, when the commanders said "we need boots on the ground", i supported that, too, as was required. i opposed the 2003 invasion. there are only two imperialist wars i've ever supported, and the other one is wwII. that means i'm drawing a clear parallel between nazis and islamists, but, in fact, i do that all of the time and am actually baffled that others don't see the obvious similarities. what exactly is the difference between a nazi and an islamist? they seem like the same thing, to me. hence, the only good islamist is a dead one! bombing the shit out of them sounded like the right idea, to me; i listened to the generals when they said they need ground troops, too.

over time, it became less clear what was actually happening on the ground. where we fighting isis or supporting it? the liberals had pr reasons for shifting to a support-the-kurds mission, but the whole thing was always shady,

apparently, this ended some time last year. they were pretty quiet about it, because i don't remember hearing about it. but, it kind of just upholds the point - canada left syria 15 months ago, because we decided we'd won. why, exactly, are the americans still there?

and, why is chrystia freeland pushing saudi talking points on the matter, in apparent contradiction to her government's own policies?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-no-longer-training-kurdish-troops-in-iraq-amid-fight-against/

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

and, yes - we can all be glad that trump is, in fact, pulling out...like his father should have done.

now, as for trudeau...it would be nice, anyways.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

hey, hey, pelosi!
how many kids did you kill today?

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

where is the grassroots backlash to the democrats voting to extend the war?

where are the protestors?

that's the side i'm on, here.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

they're switching back...

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/05/how-did-the-republican-party-become-so-conservative/

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

is it too late for a liberal republican to primary trump from the left?

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i don't know what colour pill you need to take, but you'd better start popping them, 'cause you're going to need to wake up with this sooner than later.

there's no future in the democrats.

a third party is necessary. and, you'd better get to it, to stop it from ending up in the same co-opted, backwards mess that sanders' campaign ended up in.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

everything that you hate about the republicans is now true of the democrats.

deal with it.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i don't care about this dumb and dumber school yard spat between trump and pelosi. they're both idiots.

but, something substantive just happened: the democratic house - including aoc and her friends, apparently - just voted to try and continue a war that the republican president tried to end. this is a massive, paradigm shift in the pro-war lobby. it's a realignment.

and, then, when the president lashed out (reasonably.), the democrats claimed they would "pray for him". as though magical thinking has any effect on reality...

if you're still supporting the democrats after this, you need to give your head a shake. this should be more than enough to turn any clear-minded, thinking person away from this backwards-thinking party for a very, very long time.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

they've all been terrible from the start.

and, then we learned recently that the one decent candidate - sanders - is actually a complete bigot in his attitude towards queer people.

so, what's the point, other than to wallow in misanthropy and defeatism?

https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-debate-ratings-low-viewership

\the liberals are supposed to do better than this