Election Writ 4/8: Flatlining trends
Let's face it, things aren't really moving all that much.
When you get past the day-to-day fluctuations in the tracking polls and the apparent disagreement between some surveys, you come to a simple conclusion: the polls aren’t really moving much at all.
Six new polls were published in the last 24 hours and they all show the same sort of race. The Liberals lead in all six of these polls by between five and 10 points and the trendline has been pretty flat.
Also in today’s newsletter: A look at some better polling for the Bloc and how the numbers look in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Plus, there’s a new provincial poll out of Nova Scotia and the Campaign Bus stops in Sault Ste. Marie.
The Poll Tracker is not showing great movement, finding the Liberals leading with 44% and the Conservatives trailing with 36.9%. The NDP is further back with 8.7% and seems to have hit its floor.
The Conservatives have dropped below the 37% threshold in the Poll Tracker for the first time in nearly two years because today’s set of polls weren’t very good for them.
The trackers from Liaison, Nanos and Mainstreet aren’t showing much variation, with the Liberals between 43% and 45%, the Conservatives between 38% and 40% and the NDP between 7% and 8%. A net swing of six points to the Conservatives’ benefit picked up by Nanos over the last three days looks more like a reversion to the mean than real movement — Nanos was giving the Liberals an 11-point lead a few days ago.
A trio of other polls, however, were quite poor for the Conservatives. The Angus Reid Institute put the Liberals ahead by 10 points (46% to 36%), Pollara Strategic Insights put them ahead by eight points (44% to 36%) and Innovative Research Group has put them ahead by six points (41% to 35%).
That the IRG is now putting the Liberals ahead is another knock against the notion that this could be a close race. IRG had been alone on Neck-and-Neck Atoll with Abacus Data, as its previous survey awarded the Conservatives a one-point lead. As it stands, Abacus is now the only pollster that doesn’t have the Liberals ahead by at least four percentage points.
Does this trio of non-tracking polls denote a positive trend for the Liberals, a negative one for the Conservatives or a bit of both?