The Liberals led by incumbent Prime Minister Paul Martin and the newly formed Conservatives led by former Alliance leader Stephen Harper are in a statistical tie at the end of a grueling campaign. The Liberals are nominally one percentage point ahead of the Conservatives in the preferences or expressed vote intentions of adult Canadians, as shown in table 1, with 34% and 33% support respectively. The NDP earns 15% support, the Bloc 13 %, and the Greens, 4%, as shown in table 1.

COMPAS also provides likely votes cast for each of the parties. “Likely votes cast” differs from vote intentions insofar as “like votes cast” takes into consideration well established evidence that older voters have a higher probability of actually casting ballots than younger voters.

The net effect of the higher turnout among older voters favours the larger parties over the smaller ones. The NDP and Greens each lose one percentage point. The Bloc, which also depends disproportionately on a younger vote, loses less than 0.5 percentage points. The Liberals and Conservatives each gain one percentage point.

In practice, COMPAS predicts that these vote intentions will likely hold firm until Monday with the main exception of a possible abatement in Bloc votes and a slight rise in Liberal support within the province of Quebec. The PQ leader’s recent declaration that Bloc success would speed up the holding of another referendum on sovereignty could well make some federalist Bloc voters rethink their ballot intentions.

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