Harper gains on Trudeau in prime ministerial rankings but Tories still trail in popularity

Two new opinion polls this week, provide the Harper Conservatives with some good news and some bad news.

Let's start with the good news.

According to Nanos Research's weekly brand rankings, more and more Canadians are picking Stephen Harper as their number one choice for prime minister.

"For the fourth week in succession, the percentage of Canadians that rank Harper as their first choice for Prime Minister has risen. For the first time since January 18, 2014, Harper has numerically surpassed Trudeau on this measure although the numbers remain tight on the preferred PM tracking," pollster Nik Nanos wrote as part of an email release.

"Thirty percent of Canadians said that Harper was their first choice as PM, compared to 28 percent for Trudeau and 18 percent for Mulcair. Harper on the PM tracking is up five points in the last four weeks. While Trudeau has been trending downward on this measure over the same period."

Perhaps, Harper's leadership on the Ukraine file has something to do with that?

[ Related: Who has poorer judgement - Trudeau or Harper? ]

That's where the good news ends, however.

Nanos develops its brand rankings based on four different questions about the federal parties and their leadership. One of the questions the pollster asked was if respondents "would consider or not consider voting for each of the federal political parties".

49 percent of Canadians would consider voting Liberal, 40 per cent of Canadians would consider voting for the Conservatives and 38 per cent of Canadians would consider voting NDP.

[ Related: Justin Trudeau shocks with "F-bomb" at charity boxing event ]

Another poll, this one from Forum Research, should also be troubling for the Tories.

It claims that if an election were held today 39 per cent of Canadians would vote for the Liberals, 29 per cent would vote for the Conservatives and 22 per cent for the NDP.

But here's the interesting part of this survey: The pollster notes that 15 per cent of those who voted for the Tories in 2011, intend to vote Liberal in the 2011 election.

"The 'stickiest' vote is Liberal ‐ more will vote the same party as last time (83 per cent) than is the case with the Conservatives (75 per cent) or NDP (64 per cent)."

[ Related: Controversy sticking to Eve Adams, Dimitri Soudas despite their best efforts ]

Now, the common refrain from Conservatives is that you shouldn't believe mid-term opinion polls -- that a federal election is a long way off and that Canadians aren't even paying attention to politics.

That's indeed what right-leaning analyst Gerry Nicholls told Yahoo Canada News.

"First off, we need to take public domain polls with a grain of salt; the poll numbers you see in the news often don’t tell the whole story," Nicholls said.

"The polling miscues in the recent Alberta election is a case in point."

But Nicholls contends that the Tories shouldn't turn a blind eye to the trend either. The trend being that Justin Trudeau's Liberals remain the popular choice of Canadians.

"Still, the Conservatives should be concerned about their polling funk; concerned but not panicked," he said.

"With more than a year before the next election, they have lots of time to turn things around."

They do have time to turn things around but better get moving.

Ever since Trudeau took over the Liberal leadership — one year ago — the Tories have been number two in the opinion polls.

Catty attacks about Trudeau's judgement and his foul language are simply not working against him. In fact, the Tories are losing supporters to Trudeau's Liberals.

Yup — I think it's time they start getting concerned.

(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)

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