Mark H.

There has been a whole lot of moral authority coming from harperquarters. Tough on crime, making niqab an issue (dare I say it), etc. etc.

This turn out is good news for the Cons. if those advanced polls were located in retirement homes but basically bad news if they weren't. They weren't. I'm in my late 30's - plenty of friends who are my age or younger voted yesterday

Maybe there's hope for democracy yet - if only there were more swing ridings across the country

2.4 million people have voted at advance polls. People were saying lineups were as long as 30 minutes.

That's easy - it's at the bottom of a Bombay bottle

Just wondering, do these polls reach people through social media or are they conducted as in the past, strictly by phone? • Ballot tracking reflects only the first choice given by decided voters • A national dual-frame (land+cell) random telephone survey is conducted nightly by Nanos Research throughout the campaign using live agents. Each evening a new group of 400 eligible voters are interviewed. The daily tracking figures are based on a three-day rolling sample comprised of 1,200 interviews. To update the tracking a new day of interviewing is added and the oldest day dropped. The margin of error for a survey of 1,077 decided voters is ±3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. • The margin of error for weekly surveys before Sept. 4 is ±3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 This is way off topic, but if there are any statisticians out there, can you tell me why they phrase things like this. Is the margin of error +/- 3 or not .... if this happens to be the 20th time, what is the margin of error? Or is it completely unknown? 19/20 is 95% so why not just build that other 5% of uncertainty into the +/- 3. It all seems a little hodge-podge. It helps to cover their asses when they get it wrong. That's what I was going to say, it's sort of just like 60% of the time it works every time. Just a way to say usually it's within the 3 points but that one time you might get something totally screwy. I used to teach this stuff - switched to English and History. Every confidence interval has it's own margin of error. + or - 3% just happens to be the one they use for a 95% confidence interval. A 90% interval would have an even broader margin, whereas if you have a 99% confidence interval the margin of error is half of a percentage point. https://www.google.ca/#q=90%25+confidence+interval

Liberals have 120 seats on the poll tracker. And team New Dumb is down to 84 seats and dropping, daily. So happy to see that.... Some people like bashing Trudeau but he's done well and is winning Liberal seats back. Sure. Not entirely sure what your response has to do with me mentioning that the New Dumbocrats are falling in the polls, but all righty then. Because people who decide not to vote NDP again will very likely vote Liberal. If they had a snob like Ignatief running again, that wouldn't be the case.

Liberals have 120 seats on the poll tracker. And team New Dumb is down to 84 seats and dropping, daily. So happy to see that.... Some people like bashing Trudeau but he's done well and is winning Liberal seats back.

Curious: what's LPC seat projection at this point?

The more I read about this deal, the more it fits with rural ridings being strong CPC supporters. Harpers already upset some of his support base by taking away the wheat board's monopoly. Whether or not the pay out for dairy farmers is warranted (the wheat board issue is debatable) the CPC simply could not afford to upset their support base again.

NDP vote splitting helped the CPC last time - no such luck this time

Yes, I'm not sure why compensation is required at this point. Mind you, farmers make up a good chunk of Harper's support base, with most rural ridings being a Conservative slam dunk. That's just my own theory though.

Supply management is great for those farmers that have quotas. Not everyone paid for them - most were inherited when the system was put into place. The concerns raised here are all valid. It's just a matter of time till supply management is gone. To the majority that inherited their quota, this shouldn't matter. But there is a growing number of producers who have purchased quota over the years, spending millions of dollars. Those people should be compensated, but will they?

What happened to NDP? Mulcair saying he'd block that trade deal really helped their cause. /sarcasm Most unionized industries are heavily dependant on exports. What on earth was he thinking?

While they are not directly connected, they both came about the same way. Conservatives are racists and hate muslims. Here is your proof. I never said that, nor would I ever. But the hijab issue is a despicable thing to raise as an election wedge issue.

The hijab issue is not necessarily connected to the refugee issue. The hijab issue should not even be an issue - people are identified before they swear the citizenship oath.

If nothing else, it's going to be the most interesting election we've had in years

Best step away from the Mike's Hard, son.

It's not an unheard of political strategy, but to do it based on that particular issue is despicable.

You keep quoting the phrase 'vast majority of Canadians.' Some links to support that would be good.

I dare say there's more relevance here than you'll find in most of the leaders' debates.

Okay, so let's say one views the niqab as a symbol of oppression. If they allow it, the concern would be that judges might also allow some people to beat their wives - or some other extreme action. That's where the reasonable limits clause applies. A niqab is reasonable, obviously beatings are not, regardless of what anyone's personal beliefs are.

What pisses me off is Harper will spend millions of tax-payers money fighting this in the courts. It's a non-issue, so stop wasting my frickin' money!!! No problem - he can just take some of the 15 billion from the Saudi arms deal. But never mind all that, we're still protected from terrorism and Comrade Harper is always right. The fact that this is an election issue that is actually shifting the polls is disturbing to say the least.

Since when do a few polls represent the vast majority of Canadians?

Oh it's silly all right - but somehow its been spun into an election issue. Two women. And all the have to do is swear the oath to a female official. Why is this even news?