2015 Canada Federal Election Survey Results

This data set is created to allow researchers to analyze the 2015 Canadian Federal Election using the Dyad Ratios Algorithm on Wcalc software created by James Stimson (http://stimson.web.unc.edu/software/). (See for example Stimson, J. A. (1991). Public opinion in America: Moods, cycles, and swings (Vol. 12). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Or Stimson, J. A. (2004). Tides of consent: How opinion movements shape American politics. Cambridge University Press.) The software Wcalc can be found here: http://stimson.web.unc.edu/software/. Each major political party in 2015 has a separate excel file containing the party's level of support in surveys. Data for the party support in polls was gathered from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_in_the_Canadian_federal_election,_2015

Each file contains the date the survey was completed (month-day-year), the total sample size minus, percentage of the responses supporting the party in the table, and a recoded variable name. The recoded variable name corresponded with the survey firm and the question asked. The following firms are included in the datasets:

The excel sheets for each party support are saved as a text file. Wcalc was used to run a time series of the data. When creating the time series, daily was selected and smooth on raw data series. Wcalc produced an excel file with an average of the days, and a log file interpreting the results (see Wcalc files for the results). This was repeated for each party. The resulting CSV files show party support overtime and the log files show the Iteration History and the factor loadings. 

Also included in this package is the code for the program R, which can also be used to run the Dyad Ratios Algorithm (see Extract.r.zip and ExtractDoc.pdf; Shared with permission of Dr. James Stimson).