Western Context

Here at Western Context our goal is to provide you with the context and information you need to put yourself on the right side of the news, and that includes polls. With 2019 being a huge year for elections both in Alberta and Canada as a whole, we will fill the gaps that the media misses when they report on polls.

On this page you will find a brief explainer of why polls can be wrong and our ranking of polls in terms of their perceived accuracy. Polls are a tool that look at a certain population at a specific point in time. Polls are also heavily reported on in the media today without many of the caveats of the poll broadcasted.

Polls can be wrong if:

• the poll doesn’t accurately sample the population (i.e. more male than female, more old than young, or more of one region than another)
• the sample size is too small (this creates a wide margin of error)
• the poll is no longer valid (either the firm waited too long to release the report or population sentiment might be different to when the poll was taken).

Below you will find a table of recent polls pertinent to the Canada 2019 election. This table will be updated weekly or when a new poll is released. When updated the table will update ratings for each poll relative to the current date. Polls will start off as green or yellow depending on their characteristics and when they were released and will shift to red once the poll should be ignored.

Green polls have good methodology, sample size, and has been taken recent enough that it can still reflect public mood.

Yellow polls either have less reputable methodology (eg: rolling averages), or were green but time has passed and they are no longer as current as green polls.

Red polls have an invalid sample size, questionable origin, questionable methodology, or were published too late to be of any use. Alternatively, polls that were originally green and yellow can turn red after enough time has passed, and should no longer be considered current polls to draw information from, but are left up for posterity.