Liberals take a slim lead as the Greens and NDP battle for third

Campaign Research has conducted a national public opinion poll of 1,896 Canadians on their views of the upcoming federal election. The Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) rose to a nominal lead of 1% over the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). This is the first time they have polled higher than the CPC in the last year. The Green Party and NDP are now tied at 14% each as they struggle for third place. However, momentum appears to be with the Green Party.

A noticeable shift in voter intent occurred in Ontario. While last month the CPC led the LPC narrowly (36% to 34%) in the province, this has reversed, and the Liberal’s held a sizable lead of 7% (31% to 38%) representing a combination of Liberal gains and Conservative decline.

British Columbia continued to be hotly contested with all four major parties being competitive and the LPC, CPC and GPC locked in a statistical tie (27%, 26%, 24%), with the NDP close behind (20%)

Campaign Research also asked Canadians if they would consider supporting the “other” political parties – this allows us to perform a Voter Gap Analysis. These questions rendered a more comprehensive analysis of what the potential “floors” and “ceilings” are for each political party. It also allows us to look closer at each party’s “hard” and “soft” supporters.

The results found that while the LPC had a somewhat higher voter “ceiling” than the CPC at 41% vs. 37%. It should be noted that the Liberals’ maximum possible vote share is currently almost the same as their share of the popular vote in the last election (39.5%), while the Conservative’s have more room to grow relative to their performance in the 2015 election (32%). The GPC and NDP also have virtually the same ceiling at 32% and 33% respectively. Given that the GPC only received 3.5% of the popular vote in 2015 federal election, this represents a massive opportunity for them to grow.

It is also important to note that the CPC had 20% voters as their hard supporters, that is voting for the CPC and not considering any other party, the LPC had only 13% of voters as hard supporters, that is voting LPC and not considering any other party.

Justin Trudeau’s “job approval” rating continued to recover as the SNC-Lavalin affair fades into the background, with more than a third (34%) of Canadian’s approving of the job he is doing for the first time since the controversy broke. Even so, Trudeau’s approval rating is far below where it was in June of last year (41%). Andrew Scheer’s job approval sharply fell from 32% to 26% over the previous month, mainly due to Ontario, where his approval fell by 8% to 22%. Elizabeth May continued to be the most popular leader and further improved on her already high rating.

The Prime Minister’s “job disapproval” continued its slow decline down to 52% compared to a high of 58% in April, while this shows that a majority of Canadians still disapprove of his performance, it does further suggest that the SNC-Lavalin affair is slowly fading into the past. Andrew Scheer saw a much larger change with his disapproval rating, increasing by 6%, primarily driven by Ontario (47%) and BC (45%). Perhaps Scheer’s disapproval has also been impacted by the significant media campaign directed at him. Elizabeth May was the only federal leader to enjoy a positive net approval rating (20%).

After months of being tied, Justin Trudeau gained a small edge over Andrew Scheer on the question of “Who would make the best Prime Minister” receiving 24% to Scheer’s 20%. Even so, the two leaders were much closer than they were a year ago. While Elizabeth May led Jagmeet Singh by a small margin of 2%.

“While the LPC made gains this month, it is important to remember that aside from the immediate aftermath of SNC-Lavalin, the two parties have remained in a dead heat for the last year. Most interesting is what impact a strong GPC will have on the Liberal’s hopes of re-election. While the CPC remains for the moment at least the only strong national right-of-centre party in Canada, the other side of the spectrum is seeing three competitive national parties and whether the left-of-centre vote will remain split or coalesce around one of them may well decide the election.” – said Eli Yufest, CEO of Campaign Research Inc. Eli can be reached at eyufest@campaignresearch.ca or (647) 931-4025 x 109

METHODOLOGY

This online study was conducted by Campaign Research as part of its monthly omnibus study between July to 9 to 12 2019 through an online survey of 1,896 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 +/- 2.3%, 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?"