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Liberals drop in P.E.I. polls, but Maritimes remain a Grit stronghold

Liberals drop in P.E.I. polls, but Maritimes remain a Grit stronghold

Despite a drop in support in one Atlantic province, the Liberal Party — both federally and in the Maritimes as well as in Newfoundland and Labrador — looks set to dominate the eastern part of the country.

A poll commissioned by the Guardian newspaper in Prince Edward Island and carried out by Corporate Research Associates (CRA) put Wade MacLauchlan’s Liberals in the lead, again, but with a 14 point drop in support since the most recent survey.

The Liberals are at 44 per cent in support, according to CRA, with the Progressive Conservatives following with 35 per cent.

It’s unlikely the Conservatives will manage to swing a victory when the province heads to the polls on May 4, suggested CRA chairman and CEO Don Mills, although their support across the province has gone up by nine points since a February poll.

The shift in support will likely make things, at the very least, more interesting than expected.

“We thought in February that it was going to be a cakewalk for the provincial Liberals to win another mandate,” Mills said in an interview with Yahoo Canada News.

But a few things have happened over the past months, Mills noted, including a “damning story” in the Globe and Mail about an e-gaming operation that went right to the premier’s office, precipitating a drop in support for the party.

It’s still the Grits’ election to win, Mills said, but “the momentum has swung and is swinging towards the Conservatives. This could be a very close election.”

In a piece for the CBC, Eric Grenier of political analytics website ThreeHundredEight.com suggested the drop in support for the Liberals in P.E.I. could be the sign of a worrying trend for the LPC.

“The gap between the parties shrank from 32 points to just nine. It makes for a tense final week, with the voting takes place on May 4,” Grenier noted.

“The federal Liberals under leader Justin Trudeau are experiencing a similar softening in support in Atlantic Canada.”

Grenier said Liberal support in Atlantic provinces has softened in the past few months.

“The Liberals are now averaging just 44.5 per cent support, their worst performance in the region in almost two years. The Conservatives, at 26 per cent, are putting up their best numbers since then,” Grenier wrote. “And the NDP, at 20 per cent, is at its highest level of support since last fall.”

Mills, though, said the Liberal Party is the party to beat in the Atlantic, both at the provincial and federal levels.

“We put out our federal numbers in early March, which show that the Liberal support is pretty high relative to Conservatives on the national basis,” he added. “We won’t know if there’s been any change in that until we go back into the field in May, but there wasn’t much change from our previous polling period in November.”

The CRA poll surveyed 579 P.E.I residents and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.