Canada PoliticsLiberal surge in new poll has Stephen Harper grinning
The NDP is falling, the Liberal Party is surging and somewhere Stephen Harper is grinning.
That is the narrative, at least, of a new Ipsos Reid poll conducted for Postmedia News and Global Television.
According to the survey released late Thursday, if an election were held tomorrow, 34 per cent of us would vote for the Conservatives, 30 per cent would vote for the NDP, and 26 per cent would for the federal Liberals.
What's most intriguing about this poll, however, is the trend lines. Since June, the NDP have dropped eight points while the Liberals have gained eight.
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Ipsos CEO Darrell Bricker, told PostMedia that these numbers bode well for the Conservatives.
"It kind of put to rest the old assumption that most of the switching in this country is between Liberal and Tory voters. In fact what we're seeing with the Tory coalition is that it's pretty resilient," Bricker said.
"The better the Liberals do, the worse the NDP does, and the more likely Stephen Harper is to win."
Bricker attributes the Liberals' success in the poll to Justin Trudeau's leadership bid. He cites the Liberal gains in Ontario and Quebec and notes that women and seniors, in particular, are coming back to the party in droves.
Polling analyst Eric Grenier says the Trudeau induced Liberal boost is atypical in Canadian politics.
"Though the polling data is rather thin, the examples of the 2006 Liberal and 2012 NDP leadership races suggest that no major candidate was able to give his party the sort of boost demonstrated [by Trudeau]," he wrote in a recent article for the Globe and Mail.
Grenier notes that Mulcair's inclusion into the NDP leadership race last Fall was actually followed by a poll showing the NDP dropping nationally by 1.5 percentage points.
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NDP MP Charlie Angus, however, doesn't seem too concerned about the numbers. He posted his 'analysis' on Facebook:
"The NDP polling is the same as it was during the Orange Crush. Throughout the media have been predicting our demise. I remember walking out of Parliament after viewing Jack's casket and the first question of the media was whether this was the end of the NDP. I responded by saying, 'You guys were predicting the death of the NDP throughout Jack's life. Nothing has changed. We keep rolling on.'"
The poll was conducted by telephone and on-line with 2,009 Canadians between Nov. 6 and Nov. 8. It's considered to be accurate within plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 95 per cent of the time.
