Weekly Writ 2/26: The polls have shifted
Carney's Liberals have taken a wide national lead and are closing the gap — wait, in Alberta?!
Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.
There are no more holdouts as some of the last pollsters that were showing a tight (or tightish) race between the Liberals and Conservatives have now swung over to a wide Liberal lead.
And one of the places that has seen the most movement is … Alberta?!
The latest national polls come from the Innovative Research Group and the Angus Reid Institute. We also have updated rolling polls from Nanos Research and Liaison Strategies. Innovative and Nanos have the Liberals ahead by seven points, while Liaison has the gap at 12 points and the Angus Reid Institute puts it at 13.
While Liaison has been giving the Liberals a comfortable lead for a few weeks and we’ve recently seen similarly sizable margins in polls from Research Co., Mainstreet Research, EKOS Research and Léger, the swing recorded in the Innovative, ARI and Nanos polls is notable.
Since the end of January, the ARI has the Liberals gaining four points and the Conservatives falling by six. In just one week, the four-week rolling poll by Nanos has the Liberals three points up and the Conservatives three points down. Innovative has the Liberals up four points since its previous late-January, early-February poll, with the Conservatives down one, while Liaison has the Liberals up three points and the Conservatives down two points since last week.
It’s a big change. If we only looked at these four pollsters, their previous surveys averaged 40.5% for the Liberals against 36.6% for the Conservatives. Now, the average from these four pollsters is 43.8% to 33.9%. That’s a total net swing of six points between the two parties. To this list we could add Abacus Data, which about two weeks ago gave the Liberals a seven-point lead after showing a two-point gap as recently as mid-January.
The polls have certainly shifted — and the uncertainty about what a snap election would produce has reduced. A few weeks ago, the Liberals could have been cautioned that a few pollsters were still indicating a close race, even if others were showing the party in majority territory. Now, all the polls are showing the Liberals in majority territory. The only caution is the uncertainty in how public opinion could shift over the course of a five-week campaign.
There might also, however, be a question about how real or sustainable these numbers are — particularly when one of the biggest shifts has occurred in Alberta.
Before we get into that, and what kind of seat numbers each of the parties could expect with these polls, here’s a rundown of what else is in this week’s edition of the Weekly Writ:
A look at the byelection results in the Quebec riding of Chicoutimi and what it means for the upcoming provincial election. Plus, Danielle Smith sets the date for a referendum and Alexandre Boulerice has been given the green light to run in Gouin.
Polls on the provincial scenes in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta. Is Doug Ford losing ground in Ontario, and have the Liberals caught up in Quebec?
#EveryElectionProject: Christy Clark’s outsider upset win in 2011.
No regional results were publicly available from the Innovative or Nanos polls, but the numbers from the Angus Reid Institute and Liaison surveys, in addition to an Alberta-only poll conducted by Mainstreet Research, point to significant movement in Alberta that could swing as many as a dozen seats (or potentially more) to the Liberals — if the numbers are indeed the real deal.