Election Writ 4/9: Third parties dropping to historic lows
Why the 1958 and 2025 elections have something in common.
It’s a two-horse race — even if it looks like one of those horses could run away with it.
But, as support for the New Democrats, Bloc Québécois and other parties plummets, this contest is turning into the kind of two-party race we haven’t seen in nearly 70 years.
Before we get into that, today’s numbers.
Also in today’s newsletter: Is Saskatoon a battleground or not?
There hasn’t been much of a shift in the Poll Tracker over the last few days, with the Liberals holding at 44%, the Conservatives at 37.1% and the New Democrats at 8.5%. The Liberals are projected to win 201 seats on these numbers, leaving the Conservatives with 116, the Bloc with 20 and the NDP with five.
The day’s polls are pretty clear on where the Liberals stand — surveys by Liaison, Nanos, Mainstreet, Léger and Research Co. all put the Liberals between 43% and 45% support. There’s less agreement on where the Conservatives are as the trackers have the party between 38% and 41% while Léger and Research have them at 37% and 36%, respectively. The gap between the two parties ranges from three to eight points in these polls. Those margins would put the Liberals comfortably in majority territory.
There aren’t really any consistent trends across these pollsters, which echoes my analysis from yesterday. Two of the trackers (Liaison and Mainstreet) have the Liberals up compared to their previous three-day roll, but two of them (Nanos and Mainstreet) also have the Conservatives up. There’s not much to see in these numbers. And Léger, one of the pollsters I pay attention to the most, shows a steady trendline compared to its poll conducted during the first week of the campaign — again, exactly what we found yesterday with the Angus Reid Institute and Pollara polls.
The Léger poll does not suggest that the Liberals are poised to bleed support back to the New Democrats and Bloc Québécois. It finds that a majority of voters now think Mark Carney’s Liberals will win the election and that supporters of both the NDP and Bloc would prefer a Liberal government, either majority or minority, to one headed up by Pierre Poilievre.
This highlights the mountain both of these parties have to climb to get their numbers back up — something the Conservatives desperately need to see as well. Supporters of these two parties are relatively comfortable with the prospects of a Liberal victory, particularly when the alternative is a Conservative one. It’s why the emergence of this two-party race is not helping the Conservatives, even if they are one of those horses.