Federal Conservative Party Regains Lead in Voter Intent

The latest National Campaign Research Poll conducted among 1579 Canadians revealed that voting intent for the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) decreased to 34%, down 5% since the beginning of the year. Moreover, the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) experienced a 4-point increase to 36%, regaining a slight lead. The New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) is up 2% since the beginning of the year and captured 18% of voter intent. The LPC can attribute much of their support to millennials, as well as those living in the Atlantic, Quebec, and the City of Toronto. In Ontario, the CPC maintains a lead of 4% over the LPC with the NDP at 19%.

The decline in LPC support correlates with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s job performance ratings. His “disapproval” rating with respect to his job performance had increased 3% to 45% from the beginning of the year. Consequently, his “approval” rating was 41%, dropping 4 points from February 2018. More specifically, Canadians in the Prairies, Alberta, British Columbia showed disapproval, along with those aged 55 or older.

Despite the slide for the Prime Minister and the LPC, more Canadians believed he would make the best Prime Minister among all of the current leaders of each political party. The Prime Minister (33%) stood 10 points ahead of Conservative leader Andrew Scheer (23%). Nearly half of Canadians, when asked if they approve or disapprove of Andrew Scheer’s job performance as Leader of the CPC or Jagmeet Singh’s job performance as Leader of the NDP chose the “Don’t know/ Unsure” option (45% and 51%, respectively).

While the LPC held a strong lead over both the CPC and NDP earlier in the year and for the last 2 ½ years, it now appears that Prime Minister Trudeau and the LPC find themselves slightly behind and facing a significant challenge from the CPC.

“Prime Minister Trudeau is still seen to be the best choice for prime minister at this point, but his personal job performance numbers and the LPC ballot support has slipped while the CPC and Andrew Scheer continue a steady increase in their support. If the NDP are able to grow their support, as their provincial counterparts did in the recent Ontario provincial election, the LPC could be facing significant problems with re-election next year” said Eli Yufest, CEO of Campaign Research Inc.

METHODOLOGY

This online study was conducted by Campaign Research as part of its monthly omnibus study between June 15 and June 18 through an online survey of 1579 randomly selected Canadian adults who are members of Maru/Blue’s online panel Maru Voice Canada and were provided with various incentives to respond. The panelists were selected to reflect Canada’s age, gender and regional distributions in line with 2016 Statistics Canada census data. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size has an estimated margin of error (which measures sampling variability) of +/- 2.5%, 19 times out of 20.

The results have been weighted by education, age, gender, and region (and in Quebec, language) to match the population according to 2016 Census data. Certain areas or groups may be oversampled but have been weighted to reflect their proportion of Canada’s population. This is to ensure the sample is representative of the entire adult population of Canada. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.

The following screening question was asked in order to determine eligibility for participation in the study

"Are you 18 years of age or older and eligible to vote in federal elections?"