Talk:Opinion polling for the 2019 Canadian federal election

Nanos

So it looks like Nanos is no longer releasing any polling data publicly. The link for their latest poll leads to a 'subscribers only' page. Should they still be included in the index? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.74.75.2 (talk) 15:02, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, they should still be included. Williamefwilson (talk) 18:42, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Only if there's a publicly accessible source for the results, that is; e.g. the Polling Canada tweet of the July 19 results. Undermedia (talk) 20:23, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes agreed, as long as there is a public source (including a tweet).

This is a big loss to not have the weekly release public Mikemikem (talk) 01:40, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Hopefully we can still source those rolling polls. They are very useful. - Ahunt (talk) 02:08, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. A constant, steady release is extremely useful Mikemikem (talk) 03:25, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't think you need a publicly accessible source. There's a lot of sourcing in articles to books and such that aren't available easily. You can also link to soruces behind paywall, with the appropriate flags in Template:Cite web such as those listed at Template:Cite web#Subscription or registration required. You need a source. Nfitz (talk) 23:38, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Although you're correct about the provision allowing paywalled content on the web to be cited on Wikipedia, I have concerns about using it in this particular case. Whereas I imagine this provision is most typically used in cases of a "one-off" citation of a paywalled news article, scientific paper, etc., the Nanos rolling polls are published weekly on an ongoing basis. So for this to work we would need a reliable editor with a subscription to the Nanos tracker to be able to commit to consistently adding the data every week going forward, otherwise I don't think it's acceptable to have the polls added sporadically/opportunistically here and there. I think it needs to be all or nothing. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 11:08, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Paywalled sources can be used as they make WP:RS, but reports of paywalled source results by random people in tweets, etc, are not reliable. They make also violate WP:COPYLINK. - Ahunt (talk) 23:50, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't see what's wrong with reporting random tweets, if the source seems reasonable, and is corroborated or partially corroborated. I'm not sure why User:Undermedia is removing Nanos data, when the consensus here appears to be otherwise. If WP:COPYLINK is really an issue, one can still reference the tweet, but not link to it. Nfitz (talk) 04:33, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

I've been one of the primary contributors to the federal election polling pages going back to 2011 and never have we supported the inclusion of polls with such incomplete data (the Reuters article is missing the numbers for 3 of the parties and doesn't include the last date of polling or sample size, so I can't even add it to the graph) or iffy sources (judgement of whether the source of a random tweet "seems reasonable" is completely subjective), so I don't see why we would suddenly start now. Clearly there isn't in fact a consensus on this based on my comments and those of Ahunt (also a very long-time contributor), so I will continue to advocate for removing the poll from the table, though I will refrain from edit warring at this point. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 11:28, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure how why the data being incomplete (not including all the third parties), or not being able to add to the graph, would preclude it; the information is there for the two primary parties, and meets WP:V. The complete data for all tracked national parties was there, but you objected that some of it came from a tweet (even though the later news article confirmed most of it - do you think the tweet is not reliable for the third parties? I don't see any opinion expressed from User:Ahunt over the media reported Nanos data - only the tweeted data, which was already removed. Nfitz (talk) 17:26, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Just for the record, I am just concerned that we can trust the source cited as being accurate, as per WP:RS. - Ahunt (talk) 17:36, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm surprised User:Ahunt. What's the concern of trusting Reuters as a RS? They are explicitly listed at WP:NEWSORG alongside BBC News, Interfax, AFP, UPI, etc. Those are some of our most reliable sources. Nfitz (talk) 18:11, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Reuters is fine as a source, what I am concerned about is quoting random twitter users, who may or may not be quoting polling data accurately. That is why I noted WP:RS, the sources we use here have to be reliable. - Ahunt (talk) 02:55, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

The page should be recording facts, not rumours. If a source (twitter or a secondary news source) is just skimming facts from another source, and not including all parties, and key information about the poll (date, size, MoE), it's just a rumour. On Twitter, @CanadianPolling (Polling Canada) does seem to consistently pass the test for completeness and key information, as do news sources reporting on polls that they have commissioned. Mw843 (talk) 01:47, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Agreed - though very RS such as Reuters seem fine as secondary sources to me. WP:V and WP:PSTS note a preference for secondary sources over primary sources. Nfitz (talk) 03:47, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I think things are going too far here. For the longest time we weren’t even including polls that only had a link to twitter. We started doing it for Ekos polls being tweeted out by the owner Frank Graves who gave full data including field dates and sample size.

But frankly including data from random twitter users is ridiculous. This is not a reliable source and can’t be verified.

Also, Ahunt and Undermedia have been long time contributors to Canadian opinion polling pages. Let’s not be so hasty to just override opinions of people who have put their blood sweat and tears in to this for many years.

And I happen to think Nanos is the single best, most reliable pollster we have in Canada. Publishing deal with CTV, live interview telephone polls, expensive and the gold standard. So this isn’t about not including Nanos or anything like that, it’s about not including incomplete polls (needs at least sample size, field dates, and top 2 parties %) or polls from random twitter sources. Mikemikem (talk) 05:29, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Surely polls that don't list all the third parties, from very reliable secondary sources (such as the Reuters article) shouldn't be excluded. I'm not sure how the history of blood, sweat, and tears is relevant - doesn't than violate WP:OWN - we need to apply policies to decisions - not who has worked on this the most ... or longest. The problem with the most recent Nanos poll, is we have a perfectly reliable source (Reuters) for 3 of the national parties, with the same data as a tweet, that has 2 more national parties. And somehow the result for the regional BQ keep appearing as well, despite not being in either source - which implies that someone is looking behind the paywall (which is also a reliable source, if someone were to reference it ). Nfitz (talk) 05:45, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

It looks like BQ support was added because the twitter user actually posted a screenshot of the Nanos report in a reply to his own tweet, which I would think raises WP:COPYLINK concerns even further. I agree with everyone that it's frustrating to suddenly lose access to these weekly Nanos polls. The amount of time I've been contributing to these pages is indeed irrelevant to this debate; the reason I mentioned it was only to emphasize that over that time I've been through a lot of precedent for debates like this, and this is definitely the messiest attempt to add a poll that I've seen thus far. With the screenshot of copyrighted, paywalled material, I suspect referencing the tweet is now completely off limits. That leaves us with only the Reuters article, which only gives numbers for 3 out of the 6 parties, and doesn't actually state the last date of polling or sample size (even though "we" know what those parameters are). So it still seems awfully iffy to me. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 10:45, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I hadn't seen the screenshots. Referencing the tweet might be problematic (ironically, I have the same email from Nanos, but my subscription is ASCII, and it is blanked). But the answer is simply referencing the paywalled Nanos site instead. There's no doubt the numbers are correct, and WP:NOTCENSORED. Nfitz (talk) 15:08, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

What's with Opinion polling for the 43rd Canadian federal election by constituency

I was about to just redirect it to Opinion polling for the 2019 Canadian federal election#Constituency polls - but then I noticed in addition to a couple of polls that are there, but not here - that the numbers are quite different for some of the polls there, that are here? I haven't dug into the details though. Nfitz (talk) 23:35, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I see that the article "Opinion polling for the 43rd Canadian federal election by constituency" was published on 10 June 2019, before someone began to add constituency polls in "Opinion polling for the 2019 Canadian federal election" on 24 July 2019. Since there's an article for the polling by constituency, I suppose those polls should go there. Regarding the differences in numbers, I looked only at the May 2019 poll for Markham-Stouffville: the numbers in "Opinion polling for the 43rd Canadian federal election by constituency" are the numbers of decided and leaners after repartition of the undecided respondents, while the numbers in "Opinion polling for the 2019 Canadian federal election#Constituency polls" are the numbers for decided respondents, before leaners and before repartition of the undecided respondents, rounded, and with inversion of the NDP and Green numbers. -- Asclepias (talk) 03:15, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I think we could move those polls over to this article as a temporary solution until it is clear whether or not this should be a seperate article. Username6892 (talk) 16:31, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

It wasn't until I checked the talk page after being away for a few weeks that I realized that Constituency Poll section had been added without any discussion. I think the information should be in the separate article, as in 2015. It's quite likely that by the end of the campaign, over 100 ridings will have published polls, which will make this page unnecessarily unwieldy. Also, I think one of the important uses of this page is to record results over time, and most of the constituency polls are one-offs, never to be repeated. (Note that this is not the case for the regional polls, where the historical data has been lost, as opposed to never existing ... and in the case of the 2015 Election, lost in their entirety.) Mw843 (talk) 13:19, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

All moved now (thanks). But back to the "which result" question. Looking at just one result (May 30 for Vancouver Granville), this article used the results of the poll, when they listed the local candidates, and the Opinion polling for the 2019 Canadian federal election, by constituency lists the results when they asked by just party name. So which should be used? I can't see a 2015 discussion. The results shift by up to 4%. Nfitz (talk) 05:50, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I hope you're not really considering using the second question of the poll with the fake "candidates". This second question with the names of non-candidates was more an experiment by the pollster, but it's hardly useful alone. If something from that poll could be used at all, it may be the first question. Even then, a question mixing some options without names and one option with a name is disputable. -- Asclepias (talk) 11:50, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I was considering asking questions to find out more information. I'm not familiar with the riding - I assumed that they were the candidates. There were other differences between the pages ... I haven't dug any deeper. Nfitz (talk) 06:35, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Nanos Poll Results

I've noticed that the Nanos Poll results are no longer being posted or, I presume, being factored into the results you develop. Is there a reason for this?Kenhardie (talk) 13:22, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

See the Nanos section further up. No reason not to add, if there's a comprehensive reliable source, or one has access to the paywalled data - other than that, there's not clear consensus yet. Nfitz (talk) 13:27, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Nanos Results

Given that your graph includes the top line results and given that those results are still available from Nanos at no cost, you should resume including their weekly numbers. Those who want to do a deeper dive into Nanos' data can pay the $4 per month to do so. Not including Nanos top lines significantly impairs the value of your chart. Kenhardie (talk) 12:07, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

• Where have you seen the top line results for voting intention available for free User:Kenhardie? The topline results I've seen at the Nanos website are for preferred Prime Minister and a "Power Index", neither of which are tracked on this page. Nfitz (talk) 20:53, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Ah, I see that Nanos has changed something...when they first put up their paywall, they showed you the main page with the overall results, but I couldn't access the cross-tabs until I paid the $48. So, a couple of options...you can pony up the $48 to get the results, I can pay it for you if you're strapped or I can relay the top line results. What do you think? Kenhardie (talk) 13:24, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, if you have access to the paywalled data you can add it. JonathanScotty (talk) 22:05, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

EKOS 'Twitter' Polls - Should exclude Tweet-only results like Nanos

Should we really be posting the "EKOS" poll results that are only shared via Frank Graves' Twitter feed on this page? I get that he is the president of EKOS, but his tweets do not include the full data set, tables, methodologies, etc. or even links to this information. If we're not going to post the Nanos results by linking to data shared on Twitter, I think we should apply this standard across the board and exclude poll info that is only available on Twitter posts. Without full poll breakdowns we have no way to verify methodology, possible sampling issues, etc. Some of these polls have tiny sample sizes and huge MOEs, so there are concerns about these subsets of data when we cannot see the full table breakdowns. Even the CBC Poll Tracker excludes these results. 338 only includes ones where the full data sets are provided to P.J. Fournier. - Matticus333 (talk) 14:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree that tweets are bit too iffy/informal to source polls from, full stop, but there appear to be strong feelings on either side of this debate. The consensus right now seems to be that if a tweet is from an "authoritative" source (e.g. Frank Graves, 338Canada), then it's acceptable. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 12:19, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I tend to agree: if the numbers in a tweet are complete and it comes from a WP:RS person then we should go ahead and use it. You may want to ensure the tweet is archived on archive.org however... - Ahunt (talk) 13:33, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Campaign-period polls & graph

With the writ apparently dropping any day now, I wanted to suggest that we simply add a "special event" row (same as for new party leaders) to the national polls table indicating the cut-off between pre-campaign- and campaign-period polls. This will make it straightforward for me to create a new version of the graph zoomed in on the campaign period, with the trendlines simply carrying over from the current graph. Creating a whole new table would make it more complicated to achieve this continuity between the graphs, which is why I'm suggesting we simply go with a separator row. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 14:14, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Good idea. I think it helps readers anyway. - Ahunt (talk) 14:32, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes agreed Mikemikem (talk) 00:29, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I see a separate graph has been created.

Is it not too much work to have it updated? Mikemikem (talk) 17:05, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Ya I would create a new section not only as this is what we have historically done but it creates a clean separation. On the other hand I am not sure what kind of work would go into the graphs, etc. Otherwise seems like a clean break to me. Krazytea(talk) 18:37, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm afraid splitting the table in two would mess up the campaign-period graph. Not sure I'd be able to make it work properly that way. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 19:00, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Adding debates to chart

Should the date of debates be added to the chart? Or is that too much clutter do we think? Mikemikem (talk) 13:07, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Probably too much clutter and given the limited participation and the large number of debates may not have much polling-discernible impact anyway. - Ahunt (talk) 13:13, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Polls that do not give results with the undecideds filtered out - any way to incorporate them?

https://ipolitics.ca/2019/09/17/liberals-tories-deadlocked-as-first-week-of-campaign-comes-to-a-close-mainstreet-poll/

Talking specifically about this poll, but also in general Mikemikem (talk) 23:03, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Looks like someone added the poll...but it looks odd as the numbers are so much lower with the undecideds Mikemikem (talk) 00:00, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Looks like someone added the poll...but it looks odd as the numbers are so much lower with the undecideds Mikemikem (talk) 00:00, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

This could be problematic to include polls that includes and excludes undecided voters. This is mixing orange and apple juice and calling it apple juice. Simply look at the undecided % that is higher than both the NDP and Greens. Plus, the % for the major parties in the rows only add up to nearly 90%. This is misleading when other rows adds to nearly 100%. One potential way to accommodate both decided and undecided % is to include an additional column for undecided, but I’m not sure how it would look on the graph. Aquitoba (talk) 03:21, 18 September 2019 (UTC)