New Brunswick historian and political scientist Patrick Webber who has an abiding interest in the smaller/newer parties of Atlantic Canada (he has an article in the current issue of ACADIENSIS) has done a riding by riding study of the advance polls results a week before the June 2009 election in NS.
He finds, overall, that the Libs bled 10% of their support to NDP between then and election day, while Green vote went UP not down - a total surprise, as tiny parties traditionally lose half their support as polling day approaches.
Looking at it on a riding by riding basis, he found the Liberal loss of support to the NDP, in that last week, moved a few seats to NDP from PCs, so ironically the Liberals got what they felt they badly needed - to come out slightly ahead of PCs to become the Official Opposition.
But being the Third Party in the House never hurt John Hamm in 1999 though....
I'm sorry, but unless he had some serious methodology, like what i simply don't know, then the data he's scrutinising is useless. The people who vote at the advance polls are not anywhere like the rest of the population. For example, well organised campaigns run a full GOTV for the advance polls, while others may not even try. Every campaign tries to get their own volunteers and members to vote early, so those, like the Greens who don't have much of anything happening don't do a thing to GOTV to the advance polls. You simply cannot make a direct comparison between eday vote, and advance poll vote. Of course he showed the green vote bouncing. Their advance poll efforts were non-existent compared to the other Party's, so it looked like a bounce on eday.
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