Race `neck and neck' at the home stretch
NEW POLL PUTS CONSERVATIVES EVEN WITH LIBERALS WITH TWO WEEKS TO GO
Erin O'Toole's momentum seems to have stalled with Conservative and Liberal support deadlocked as parties enter the critical final two weeks of the federal election, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll.
“We have a neck-and-neck race,” Leger executive vice-president Andrew Enns said in an interview.
The Conservatives and Liberals are both scoring 33 per cent among decided voters, according to the Leger poll which surveyed 3,000 Canadians via an online panel between September 3 and 6.
That's good news for Justin Trudeau's Liberals, and potentially eyebrow-raising for O'Toole's Conservatives.
“The Conservative momentum that we saw one week ago that had them up four points (34 per cent) on the Liberals (30 per cent) in our last poll seems to have kind of levelled off. And the Liberals have kind of regained a bit of their campaign footing,” Enns said.
“The O'Toole campaign got caught up in the gun control debate and that wasn't as cleanly handled,” he said. “I think that maybe ultimately took the
momentum away from the Conservatives and gave a little bit of air and oxygen to the Liberals.”
Jagmeet Singh's NDP has also seen its support drop three points to land at 21 per cent in the last week.
Enns says that may be a sign that New Democrat voters may be slowly shifting over to the Liberals as the chances of the Conservatives potentially forming government after Sept. 20 have increased since the election was called.
“I think the Liberals are certainly cognizant that the easiest votes for them to get out right now would be some of the votes that Jagmeet Singh has picked up since the campaign began. He's had a decent campaign,” Enns said. “I think the Liberals are taking note of that and making that effort to try to get some of that dollar back.”
Among the other parties, Annamie Paul's Green Party and Maxime Bernier's People's Party of Canada are both polling at three per cent nationally while YvesFrançois Blanchet's Bloc Québécois is polling at six per cent (but 27% in Quebec).
The tight race between Conservatives and Liberals is in full display in the battleground province in Ontario, where the latest Leger numbers put Trudeau's support at 36 per cent and O'Toole's at 35 per cent.
The NDP is also polling much stronger in the province now (22 per cent) than they did at the end of the 2019 federal election (16.8 per cent), which Enns said could cause some trouble for Trudeau come election day.
“In Ontario, the numbers over the last couple of weeks have been pretty steady,” Enns said. “I think what's striking in Ontario is that NDP vote ... which is hanging in there, which is probably trouble for the Liberals. The Liberals in 2019 pulled 41 per cent in Ontario, so they won't be super happy at 36 per cent.”
A closer look at Ontario reveals another interesting dynamic: a Conservative surge of support (43 per cent) in the suburban “905” area code region of Brampton, Mississauga and Halton.
“That's going to translate into some new seats for (Conservatives), and all those new seats come at the expense of the Liberals in that area,” Enns said, adding that Trudeau's party remains very strong (44 per cent) in Toronto.
Will the two last debates in this election, Wednesday's French language debate and Thursday's English one, move the needle at all for any party?
It will be difficult, Enns says, as the latest poll shows that a whopping 68 per cent of Canadians say they are not likely to change their current ballot choice before the end of the election, and only 54 per cent say they are likely to watch any of the two clashes between party leaders.
“I think we're still battling with a little bit of an engagement deficit in terms of this election,” Enns said. “So far in the last couple of days, all I've been hearing and reading about is the back to school.”
If anything, the French TVA debate last Thursday did little to affect voting intentions either in Canada or in Quebec, where Liberal (34 per cent) and Conservative (21 per cent) support bumped up one point, whereas the Bloc Québécois (27 per cent) and the NDP (12 per cent) dropped by one.
That means that since the beginning of the election, Liberal support has dropped seven points in Quebec, whereas the NDP and Conservatives have made significant gains of six and four points respectively.
“The Tories in 2019 pulled 16 per cent in that election (in Quebec). So sitting at 21 per cent has to have them fairly pleased,” Enns said. “They will look at that and say that might get them a few more seats than the 10 they got in 2019.”