Election Writ 4/12: How much can the polls move in two weeks?
Looking at where the polls were in 2019 and 2021 with two weeks to go.
The polling trends have stabilized over the last two weeks. Could they get unstuck over the next two weeks?
They certainly could — especially when we look at how much things swung in the final two weeks of the campaigns in 2019 and 2021 after the leaders debates.
There will be no Election Writ tomorrow. Have a good weekend!
The averages in the Poll Tracker have hardly fluctuated over the last few days. The Liberals stand at 44.3%, the Conservatives at 37.5% and the New Democrats at 8.3%. While this is the highest we’ve seen the Liberals so far, it is only 0.1 percentage point higher than the previous Liberal peak recorded on April 5, exactly one week ago.
With these numbers, the Liberals are projected to win 198 seats if an election were held today. The Conservatives would win 121 seats, the Bloc Québécois would retain 18 and the New Democrats would hold on to five seats. The Greens are also projected to win one seat.
The seat projection ranges put the Liberals comfortably over the majority threshold with a floor of 178 seats and a ceiling of 215. The Conservatives are hovering around their 2021 performance with a range of between 105 and 133 seats, while the Bloc’s range stands at 14 to 23 and the NDP’s at between two to 14. There’s no overlap between the Liberals and the Conservatives and there is only the slimmest of overlap between the Bloc and NDP in the fight for third place.
These projections have been locked in around these numbers for the last two weeks and I’ve been getting questions nearly every day about whether or not things could change. My answer is always pretty simple: yes, of course they can. But we do seem to be in a position were there needs to be an outside catalyst for such a change to occur.
If Mark Carney was trailing Pierre Poilievre in his personal ratings, on preferred prime minister or on a major election issue, I’d suggest that there would be reason to believe that the Liberals’ support could soften — it’s usually the case that a leader’s numbers act as a drag (or a balloon) on a party’s numbers. But every indicator suggests that there isn’t an underlying vulnerability in the Liberals’ support. Carney has better personal numbers than Poilievre (and Jagmeet Singh) and polls show that a plurality or majority of Canadians think the Liberals will win and, knowing that, it isn’t changing their voting behaviour. Even the demographic crosstabs argue in favour of a turnout boost for the Liberals, not the Conservatives. There is nothing in the polling data that points to a high likelihood that the Liberal numbers will fade in the final stretch.
So, that means something has to happen to move the numbers. The two debates taking place on Wednesday and Thursday will be opportunities for that.
But could the debates have a big enough impact on public opinion to change the course of this campaign?
Judging by what happened in 2019 and 2021, the answer is yes.