Tories could benefit from summer election: analysts
Trudeau gaining in traditional CPC spots
• Numerous polls in recent weeks suggest support for the Conservatives under Erin O’toole has taken a sharp dive, but election analysts say the party could still regain some ground if an election was called this summer.
A review of six recent polls by the National Post shows the Liberal Party dramatically widening its lead over the Conservatives compared to earlier this year, regularly polling around 10 percentage points higher than the Tories among voters. The Conservatives are now scraping the very bottom of the range where they have historically polled, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau closing the gap even in some Tory strongholds like Alberta.
Still, observers say there is room for O’toole to claw back at least some of that lost territory as public attention begins to shift away from the pandemic and toward broader issues like economic growth. Recent elections have seen dramatic swings in support for party leaders, including the implosion of NDP leader Tom Mulcair in 2015, which allowed Trudeau to win power for the Liberals.
“There’s certainly some precedent for that in other election campaigns,” said Andrew Enns, executive vice-president at Léger. “The one beauty of an election campaign is all of a sudden the leaders, especially the main party leaders, get basically equal billing in media and on TV.”
The Conservative leader is still widely unknown by the Canadian public, meaning that opposition to him might not be as deeply routed as it was with past leaders, experts said. But O’toole’s more muted profile also poses a steep challenge as he
aims to win over public trust over a potentially short period of time.
“Canadians will get to meet and know Erin O’toole, but I’d argue across the country probably 50 per cent of Canadians would have a hard time pulling him out of a lineup,” Enns said. “It’s not the ideal situation going into a campaign.”
Four recent surveys (Ipsos Group, Mainstreet Research, Abacus Data and EKOS Research Associates) pegged public support for the Conservatives between nine and 12 percentage points below the Liberals, the widest gap since support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau surged early in the pandemic. Each poll puts Conservative support well below 30 per cent, which has typically been the floor of support for the party.
Ipsos sees Conservative support at just 38 per cent in Alberta, compared to the 69 per cent of the vote the party won in the 2019 election. The Liberals have 29 per cent support in the province, the pollster said.
“The Conservatives appear
to be in trouble,” EKOS said in its June 17 poll results, saying the party will have to “hope for some sort of late pandemic pratfall or that they can recapture those who have shifted to the People’s Party and ‘other’ categories.”
A recent Léger poll, meanwhile, placed the Conservatives at exactly 30 per cent, trailing the Liberals by just four per cent among decided voters. Angus Reid Institute also put the CPC at 30 per cent, just three points back. The six polls were taken in the weeks between mid-june and early July.
The new polling data comes amid growing speculation that Trudeau could trigger an election this summer, sending Canadians to the polls sometime in the fall. The Liberals have not yet publicly stated an intention to call an election.
A summer election campaign would likely centre on the broad issue of resetting the economy post pandemic, an area where O’toole has sought to make gains over the Liberals, but has thus far
failed to distinguish himself, according to some observers.
“We haven’t seen much indication that the arguments and the attacks that the Conservatives have been using so far have had much of an impact,” said Éric Grenier, elections analyst and founder of politics
website The Writ. “So, it’s an open question whether they can settle on a line of communication that will actually work during an election campaign to move any votes.”
The Trudeau government, meanwhile, has been touting its massive spending plans, outlined in the April budget, as an effort to get Canadians back to work.
A recent Nanos/ctv News poll suggests the economy would be the top priority among voters if an election was called, with 28 per cent citing it as their biggest concern.
Economic concerns placed well higher than the next-largest subjects, the environment (17 per cent) the deficit (16 per cent) and health care (13 per cent.)
Still, Grenier said, elections tend to be fought over how much the voting public tends to like or trust a given party leader, rather than over broader questions of the economy, climate change, or the government’s response to COVID-19.
“Issues can be really important, but if you don’t have a likable leader, if people don’t see your leader as a potential prime minister, it doesn’t matter as much what their position is on a particular issue,” he said.
In the poll by Abacus Data, O’toole had negative impressions among 40 per cent of respondents, compared to just 19 per cent positive.
Trudeau had negative impressions of 41 per cent, but positive impressions among 38 per cent.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh had 35 per cent positive impressions and just 26 per cent negative.