How Useful Is The VSun's Online Predictor Tool?

There'sNoNumberCrunchingLikeUselessNumberCrunching
ForCrunching'sSakeVille


My view?

Not very useful whatsoever.

Or.

Put another way...

Pretty much useless.

Don't get me wrong - I have a lot of respect and admiration for much of what the VSun's Chad Skelton has done with numbers and maps and stuff, but when you read the following I'm pretty sure your eyebrows will immediately begin to arch:

...The Sun’s online seat prediction tool is based on a relatively simple formula that predicts riding-by-riding results based on each party’s share of the popular vote and the parties’ vote totals in the 2009 provincial election...


So.
Essentially, they are taking the overall party differential between the 2009 election numbers and recent province-wide party preference polls (they use the latest from AReid for the current iteration of the 'tool') which they then apply to the old 2009 numbers at the individual riding level.

And what does this lead to?

Well, for example, the 'tool' is currently predicting that Greeniac Andrew Weaver will get only 11% in Oak Bay-Gordon Head, which is laughable on its face.

And as for Vancouver Pt Grey, they have Dipper David Eby beating Christy Clark by nine full points. Now, I, for one, would like that to be the case. Unfortunately, however, the 'tool' completely ignores the fact that these two candidates went at it head-to-head two years ago and the results were really, really tight.

And finally, there is the really big whopper....According to the 'tool'  the 'other' candidate in Abbotsford South, who we presume is John van Dongen, will receive a mere 5% in Abbotsford South. On the flip-side the LINO, Darryl Plecas, who was foisted on the Abb-South BC Liberal riding association by Darth Vader, is predicted to get 56% which, of course, is only that high because Mr. van Dongen's numbers in 2009 were stratospheric when he was a....

...A BC Liberal.

OK?


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With respect to what's actually going down in A-South....I've heard from a reader who has seen some actual internal/on-the-ground polling numbers, and they say it is a three way race between the Dipper Jhaj, van Dongen and Plecas....That's a little different than what I was suggesting the other day...
And how about that Forum Poll, eh?....More to say about that soon...

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