May 13 2011:
The final CARP Poll™ before the election predicted the Conservative majority and beat the national polls on the Conservative’s share of the popular vote.
The final pre-election CARP Poll™ accurately reflected the mood of the electorate in that, while we saw a late surge for the NDP among our members, and a corresponding precipitous drop for the Liberal party, the Conservative party held their ground in first place, and indicated to us that a majority government with an NDP opposition was possible, if not probable.
Below are shown the results for the final pre-election CARP Poll™, the actual popular vote results, and the results of the final Ekos pre-election poll. Ekos polled daily on large samples at the close of the election and was widely seen as an accurate predictor of the results.
| CARP Poll™ | Actual Results | Ekos Final Poll | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 44% | 40% | 35% |
| NDP | 23% | 31% | 31% |
| Green | 3% | 4% | 6% |
| Bloc | * | 6% | 5% |
While we did not quite predict the extent to which the NDP vote would overtake the Liberal vote, we nonetheless clearly saw their surge. What’s more, our poll came closer on predicting Conservative majority support (44%) compared to actual support (40%) than the leading pre-election poll (35%).
More than 3700 CARP Poll™ panel members responded to this poll in less than 24 hours between April 29 and May 1. The margin of error for a sample this size is plus or minus 1.7%, 19 times out of 20. That is, if you asked all members of the CARP Poll™ panel the identical questions, their responses would be within 2%, either up or down, of the results shown here, 95% of the time.
Keywords: election
