OTTAWA — The Conservatives have restored a double-digit polling advantage over the Liberals after seeing polls tighten in the weeks after the resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll.
The poll shows Conservatives rebounding to 43-per-cent support, up five per cent from a Leger poll last week. The Liberals have slid to 30 per cent, losing five per cent in support. The NDP slipped one point over the week, to 13 per cent. The latest survey was conducted between Feb. 28 and March 2.
Leger vice-president Andrew Enns said he wasn’t surprised to see the Conservatives gain back ground with so much happening politically and the heady weeks in which the Liberals saw their support finally start to grow again after the widely unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Jan. 6 that he would be resigning.
“We’re in the midst of a turbulent public opinion environment right now with a lot of competing issues, topics and conversations. That can generate some significant swings in opinion in short time frames,” Enns said
Enns attributed the bounce in popularity for the Conservatives to more skepticism about Liberal leadership frontrunner Mark Carney, in part thanks to attacks by Conservatives.
“With the attention that Mr. Carney got over the last couple of weeks, when our poll and others showed a significant change in the electoral dynamic with him as leader, it likely brought some increased attention from Canadians in terms of ‘wait a second, who is this guy?’” Enns said.
In a hypothetical scenario where Carney is the leader of the party, the polls show the Liberals 33 per cent with the Conservatives at 41 per cent support.
The Liberals will select a new leader on Sunday and Carney is widely expected to be the winner of the leadership contest. The new leader would replace Trudeau as prime minister, although Trudeau said on Tuesday that the exact timing for that had not been agreed upon yet.
While the Liberal and Conservative numbers headline the poll, the ongoing decrease in support for the New Democrats could mean the looming election is shaping up to be a two-horse race.
“The NDP are getting swept away in the wake of the two front-running parties. If I’m Mr. Singh, it’s got to be a bit disheartening. I have to think that he’s trying to find a way to get into this conversation,” Enns said.
The NDP also drops from 13 to 12 per cent support in the hypothetical scenario where Carney is Liberal leader.
The Conservative gains came from a bump in support in Quebec, where they are now tied with the Liberals at 29 per cent, and in British Columbia where the party is at 49 per cent support. According to Enns, however, these numbers are not significant enough for the Liberals to worry too much.
“I still think that a 13-point gap is still better than 24 points, where they were toward the end of last year. It’s a reminder that the Liberal Party of Canada still has a lot of work to do,” he said.
According to Enns a possible factor in the loss of support for the Liberal party was Carney’s performance in the Liberal leadership debates where he struggled in French and was generally seen as low key.
“For those Canadians that did tune in, they were probably a little underwhelmed with his performance. I think expectations, probably a little bit higher, because there was reporting of his doing very well in the polls. And so there was a sense that there would be maybe more to it,” he said.
“It’s a reminder from the Liberal side of things that there’s still work to do, even with the front running candidate,” Enns said.
Leger’s poll was an online sample of 1,548 Canadians conducted between Feb. 28 and March 2. The sample is weighted to reflect Canada’s demographic makeup, but a similar random sample would produce a margin of error of 2.49 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
National Post
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