Pool picks: What me and my friends are thinking about Tuesday

If your office is like my office, the e-mail probably went around today to get in the election pool. Pick your seat counts for Tuesday's election, drop in a couple of bucks, and see what happens.
I'm in two pools. One I entered earlier this week in the national newsroom at Canwest News Service. Not everybody in that newsroom writes about politics. We've got folks who are entertainment writers, sports writers, lifestyle writers – you name it. And the politics types don't do any better in these pools than anyone else. (Yeah, yeah — I can hear your wisecracks from right here on my couch …) So, for the record, here's the picks I made Tuesday:
Conservatives: 119
Liberals: 113
Bloc Québecois: 45
NDP: 28
Green: 1
Independent: 2
Now, as I said, that was where I was earlier in the week. I was, at the time, looking at the campaigns and seeing a bit of momentum coming to the Liberals and the Bloc.
But now, at the end of the week — late Friday — I've come to a different view.
So, I jumped in the pool run out of the Hot Room in the Parliament Buildings.
The Hot Room is what we call the offices of the working press on Parliament Hill. It's on the third floor of the Centre Block. While the big news organizations on the Hill, like us, CBC, CTV, Canadian Press, and the Toronto Star have their own offices in buildings a block or two from Parliament Hill the Hot Room is the professional home base for journalists, like my friend Steve Maher of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, who are the only representative of his paper in Ottawa. Then, there's others, like Maclean's uber-blogger Kady O'Malley, who could, I suppose, hang out with Wells, Geddes, Wherry, and Petrou back in the Maclean's offices in the National Press Building across the street from Parliament Buildings, but prefers to be two steps from the House of Commons by setting up shop in the Hot Room.
Now, getting in the Hot Room pool isn't cheap. We had to pay all of $5 to enter. (Come to think of it, I haven't actually paid yet, but I digress …) But 17 of the journalists who work in the Hot Room plus me were ready to pay that steep entrance fee to make a guess at Tuesday's results.
Now by the end of this week, as I looked at some of the last polls we'll see, there are a few things that have changed my thinking about how it might turn out on election day. Here's the key themes:
• In 2004 and 2006, NDP support was literally losing a point a day every day of the last week of the campaign. Not so this time. Nik Nanos had the NDP at 22 per cent in the latest iteration of his rolling poll. On Sunday, Nik had the NDP at 19 per cent. Extra points to the NDP for a little 'mo.
• As part of my job, I get to talk to a lot of pollsters and there seems to be a certain feeling that the Green vote, which some thought might be a little soft and would drift back to one of the mainline parties, could, in fact, be a little firmer. I'm not as bullish as the folks at Harris-Decima, who had the Greens today at 12 per cent, but I think eight per cent of the popular vote is do-able on Tuesday, maybe even nine. Now why is that important? Well, Greens seems to draw from folks who either voted for or considered voting for all three (four in Quebec) mainline parties. But at this point, Greens are really drawing away support disproportionately from the Liberals. So stronger Green results means, in my calculus, fewer Liberals. Kind of ironic, wouldn't you say, given the deal Stéphane Dion and Elizabeth May struck?
• Tory support is crumbling in Quebec. But Ontario may hold some nice surprises — see “Green support” above.
• It's the economy, stupid. GDP growth is exceeding expectations; job numbers today were through the roof. No really, they were — through the friggin' roof. We have a growing budgetary surplus. The IMF says we'll lead the G7 next year in economic growth. Oh, and more thing, our banking system is the soundest in the world. Now, it's true that a lot of the groundwork for all that good stuff was laid years ago by Liberal governments. But it's Harper's town now and he ought to get a little cred for that.
OK. There's some gut instinct stuff, too, when it comes these guesses, but with that pre-amble, here's what I bet all of five bucks on:
Conservatives: 128
Liberals: 84
NDP: 43
Bloc Québecois: 50
Green: 1
Independent: 2
My Green pick, in both cases, incidentally, is Adriane Carr, the party's deputy leader, running in Vancouver Centre. I've heard from the parties that this is a mighty tight four-way race and that someone could win this thing with 27 per cent of the vote. I think it just might be Carr. I don't think it's gonna be Hedy Fry.
As for the two independents — André Arthur is looking to be re-elected in the Québec City-area riding of Portneuf-Jacques Cartier but, as he's seen as a Conservative sympathizer, he might not get in if the Tory vote is crumbling. I'm almost certain, though, that voters in the Nova Scotia riding of Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley return Conservative-turned-Independent return Bill Casey.
So now you probably want to know, what did the other journalists in the Hot Room bet on? (Not that they have any unique insight, but still…) Well, I'll let other entrants declare their own picks on their own blogs but I'll give you some summary info.
There's 18 entrants. The average breaks down this way (with their standings at dissolution in brackets):
Conservatives: 120.4 (127)
Liberals: 101.3 (97)
Bloc Québecois: 48.5 (48)
NDP: 35.3 (30)
Independent: 1.3 (4)
Green: 0.7 (0)
Every single one of us — except one — predicts that the Tories will form the government. The one who doesn't put down 81 in the Conservative column and 147 in the Liberal. Now that's got to be a typo so let's call it unanimous from the Hot Room that's a Tory government.
In fact, let's call it unanimous for a Tory minority. No one is picking a Tory majority.
Highs and lows:
Conservative: 147 and 81 (102 if you throw out that typo)
Liberal: 147 (123 if you throw out the typo) and 70.
Bloc: 56 and 37
NDP: 48 and 25
Green: 3 and 0
Independent: 2 and 1