Projection Update: Signs of Liberal life, or a mirage?
Conservatives still hold wide lead in the Poll Tracker.
The last week of polling has caused a little whiplash, as a couple of new polls show a narrowing (but still wide) gap between the Conservatives and the Liberals, while others show no change at all.
For the time being, we should take a cautious approach to these diverging trendlines. The consensus, and the Poll Tracker I’m running for the CBC, suggest that little-to-no-change is more likely than a radical shift in voting intentions. But we should keep an eye on the next set of numbers and watch if those few stand-out polls are picking up something new or not.
The Conservatives are up a little from last week and now lead with 45% support. The Liberals are also up slightly, but they remain 23 points behind at 22% support, while the NDP has dropped again and are now below the threshold of 18%.
The Conservatives are on the rise as four of the five polls published in the last week have them either at 45% or 47%. The direction of Liberal support is less clear as Abacus Data, Léger and Nanos Research have the party at 20% or 21% while EKOS Research and Mainstreet Research have the Liberals between 26% and 28% — quite a significant difference, especially in terms of what it would mean electorally.
What could be behind this difference? David Coletto of Abacus Data puts forward a plausible theory, arguing that online panels (used by Abacus and Léger, among others) generally show more stable trends as panelists are incentivized to take part through rewards. This might make them less motivated to participate solely due to their partisan enthusiasm. The automated IVR method used by EKOS, as well as the SMS polling used by Mainstreet that invites respondents to take an online survey via text message, might find more buy-in from voters who are feeling motivated and enthused by their party of choice. A Liberal leadership race might be just the kind of thing to wake up previously dormant Liberal voters.
We can also look at the 2021 federal election for an example of how IVR polling can be far more volatile than online polling. The trendlines from the IVR pollsters in 2021 looked like a roller coaster, with parties swinging wildly throughout the campaign. The online polls were flatter. But they did both follow the same overall trend — it was merely that the IVR polls exaggerated the real ups-and-downs that were taking place. We could be seeing something like that here. Perhaps the Liberals are getting a bit of a bump from Trudeau’s resignation and the campaign to replace him, but perhaps that bump is not as big as EKOS and Mainstreet suggest. (We also don’t quite know what to expect from Mainstreet’s SMS polling, as it is being used for the first time in public federal voting intentions polls.)
The seat projection has improved a little for the Liberals this week. They still have some overlap with the Bloc Québécois for official opposition status, but less than last week. The projection is 53 seats for the Liberals and 41 for the Bloc. The Liberals were at 49 last week. The Conservatives’ range has dropped a handful of seats to between 205 and 236.
The NDP could be in some trouble, as every poll published in the last week has them at or below 18%. They’ve now dropped to 22 in the seat projection, or between 17 and 35 seats. They now have no overlap with the Liberals or Bloc in the likely seat range, whereas last week their ceiling was higher than the Liberals’ floor.
You can see below that the Liberals have recovered in the seat projection, pulling away from the Bloc at the expense of the NDP.
Much of this is due to Ontario, where the Liberals have picked themselves up from the mat just enough to reduce the NDP’s chances of winning Liberal seats. But this movement has had little impact on the Conservatives’ seat projection. Even their minimum projection, which takes into account the possibility of massive polling (and modelling) error, still gives them 180 seats, eight seats above the majority threshold.
You can see all the findings from the Poll Tracker here and seat-by-seat projections here.
Can Mark Carney win in Edmonton?
Every so often in these updates, I’ll drill down into what one small region of the country looks like in the seat projection. This week, let’s take a look at Edmonton, where Mark Carney launched his leadership campaign — and where he could potentially run for a seat. Would he have a chance of winning one?