Angus Reid Strategies has partnered with CTV to provide polling results and analysis during the 2009 British Columbia provincial electoral campaign.
In this election one of the most important factors that needs to be understood is voter turnout. Only 58 per cent of voters took part in the 2005 provincial election, so figuring out who will actually cast a ballot on May 12 will prove crucial to the ultimate chances of all parties.
We look at those people and demographic groups who say they are most likely to vote to understand which party they are most likely to support. In close ridings one party having more motivated voters than the other can make all the difference.
Our surveys will go beyond the horse race to figure out what is motivating voters to come out and support specific parties and candidates.
Also, every area of the province must be balanced in order to come up with a true picture of British Columbia. The political make-up of the province varies from community to community, and the recent changes in the boundaries for ridings create an additional level of complexity.
Our polls are conducted online, and not over the telephone or through face-to-face interviews. The rationale behind this approach is simple. Canada is now one of the most connected countries in the world, and Internet access has spread to every key demographic group in the country, including seniors and people with below average household incomes.
Conversely, telephone-based research has been greatly affected by declining response rates and the absence of land-lines in the homes of many younger Canadians.
This online approach has allowed Angus Reid Strategies to correctly predict (that is, within the margin of error) six provincial elections in the past three years. Our 2008 federal election forecast was the closest to the final results of all polling firms in Canada. Our numbers in B.C. were particularly accurate despite a small sample size.
Angus Reid Strategies surveys are entirely different from the thousands of unscientific Internet polls that are featured on websites, and where any person can click on a particular issue or candidate. Our online panel of thousands of Canadians -- the Angus Reid Forum -- contains enough people in each major demographic group in British Columbia to draw random samples that represent the province's population as a whole.
All results are statistically weighted according to the most current demographic, regional, and political voting data available from the Census and Elections BC.
