What makes Poliwave different

01The simulator on the site is the production model

Every electoral forecaster has an internal model. Most keep theirs private and surface only the final numbers. Poliwave's model runs in your browser. The Canadian seat calculator, the UK seat calculator, and every per-jurisdiction simulator on the site are not toy versions of the production engine. They are the production engine, exposed directly to users with every parameter editable.

This means a reader who wants to verify the published federal projection can type the same polling numbers into the seat calculator and produce the same result. Anyone who wants to test how the projection responds to a different polling scenario can change the inputs and see the new numbers in real time, with the same constituency-by-constituency detail the official forecast provides. The model is not behind a paywall, an API key, or an institutional firewall.

Run the model yourself

02Every input that drives a projection is visible and editable

A Poliwave projection is the output of a documented set of inputs: polling targets at four geographic levels (subregional, subnational, regional, national), vote-flow matrices between parties, vote-intake transfers, optional tactical voting rules, demographic adjustments, regional corrections, and per-constituency overrides. Every one of those inputs is visible in the simulator UI. Every one of them is editable.

Other forecasters bury their inputs. Poliwave's are first-class UI elements. If you disagree with the polling weights, change them. If you think a particular demographic effect is too large, change it. If you think a constituency has a strong incumbent the model isn't capturing, set a constituency boost. Every change is transparent, every result is reproducible from the inputs you set, and every scenario produces a shareable URL anyone can open to see the same numbers.

03Every formula in the pipeline is published

The methodology page documents all fifteen stages of the projection pipeline with their actual equations. The core swing formula, the geometric mean of a log-odds proportional prediction and a uniform one that floors a vanished party at zero instead of pushing it negative, the three-branch historical reconstruction logic for parties that did not contest a constituency in the prior cycle, the confidence-weighted baseline shrinkage, the three families of vote redistribution, the demographic deviation-and-current-support adjustment, the hierarchical reconciliation against user targets, the correlated-error Monte Carlo with population-scaled variance, all of it is on the page in math and prose. The page also documents the model's known limitations, including the cases where the reconciliation can fail to match user inputs exactly and the cases where the tactical-voting rules can miss the actual voter behaviour.

Read the methodology

04Every past projection sits next to the actual result

The accuracy page lists every election Poliwave has projected, with the projected seat counts next to the actual outcome. There is no curation. There is no cherry-picking. Misses are on the page with the same prominence as hits, because an honest track record is the only kind worth publishing. On the 2025 Canadian federal election, Poliwave produced the smallest aggregate gap between projected and actual seats for the top four parties among Canadian forecasters, with constituency-level accuracy within one percentage point of the long-established national benchmark.

Those results were produced with the Excel model that preceded this website; the first interactive web simulator went live in August 2025, after every election currently on the accuracy page. The web pipeline follows the same approach and is a direct descendant of that model, but it has not yet been scored against a general election of its own. That is stated here rather than left for a reader to work out.

See the full track record

05A deep historical archive sits under every projection

Every projection is anchored on the prior election under the current constituency boundaries, and the model can use earlier cycles when their results have been transposed onto current boundaries. The underlying historical archive covers Canadian federal general elections back to Confederation in 1867, and each province back to its own first election after joining, constituency-by-constituency and candidate-by-candidate. The archive is browseable directly on the site, with full poll-by-poll detail for recent elections.

Browse the archive

06No ads, and the core features are never paywalled

The entire site runs without advertising. There are no display ads, no sponsored content, and no affiliate links. The core features are never paywalled: every projection, every constituency page, every historical record, every poll-tracker, and every data download is free to use by anyone, with no account required. A handful of power-user tools, Monte Carlo simulation, cloud saving and sharing, the redistricting draw tools, and poster export, sit behind an optional Pro tier that helps fund the site, but they are conveniences layered on top of the free forecast, not the forecast itself.

That keeps Poliwave honest where it matters most. A forecaster with advertisers has incentives to keep eyeballs on the site; a forecaster who paywalls the forecast has incentives to hold the best numbers back. Poliwave does neither. The same projection a paying client would see elsewhere is the projection every visitor sees here, on the same page, with the same level of detail. Pro unlocks extra tooling, never a better number.

If you want to support the project, there is a Stripe donation link in the footer. It is entirely optional and has no effect on what you see on the site.

＋What this enables

Transparency is not a slogan; it has concrete consequences. A journalist who wants to cite Poliwave can verify any specific constituency call by opening the simulator and reproducing the result. A researcher who wants to use the historical archive can do so without scraping or licensing. A reader who is skeptical of any single projection can change the inputs and see how the result moves, which is the most honest answer the model can give to "how sure are you?" An academic who wants to compare Poliwave's swing math to a published technique has the formulas in front of them on a single page. None of this requires permission, payment, or a phone call.