Tories can't win back disenchanted voters, poll suggests

A poll released Tuesday by Abacus Data suggests there's a slim chance for the Tories in the next provincial election, and the party has likely already lost a majority of its former supporters.

Abacus asked the question "Is there anything the PC party can do that would make you support it again?" to people who had voted Progressive Conservative in previous elections, and who now are either undecided or have put their vote behind another party.

Of those polled, 65 per cent said there was nothing the Tories could do to win them back to the party.

The finding was included in a poll that Abacus conducted between Feb. 17 and Feb. 25. The company surveyed 653 voters overall, for a margin of error of 3.9 per cent, 19 times out of 20. Some questions in the poll involved a smaller sample.

According to the survey, most respondents who have left the PC camp identified a need for change, poor decisions made by the Tories or the party's general weakness as their reasons.

The report said the most troubling thing for the Tories is that only 15 per cent of eligible voters think the party can win the next general election.

"Even among PC supporters, a majority think the Liberals will win the next election," the company said in a statement.

Bruce Anderson, chair of Abacus Data, told CBC News it isn't necessarily a negative view of Premier Paul Davis that is the issue.

"If we look at the attitudes toward the premier personally, the numbers are not great for the conservatives but they're not horrible," Anderson said in an interview to be broadcast in full this weekend on On Point with David Cochrane.

"They're not the kind of numbers that you would normally say sets the stage for ousting the incumbents, but the horse race numbers really do say that the Liberals have a large and growing lead."

Nothing personal?

Abacus found Davis had a 32 per cent favourable impression — down 14 points since the last poll.

Liberal Leader Dwight Ball has a 47 per cent favourable impression.

Overall, the numbers aren't great for the Tories, and suggest that Davis and his cabinet are having trouble garnering public support on different issues, even ones that the public endorses.

For instance, Anderson said, Abacus polled people about the PC government's decision to challenge Ottawa on the fisheries deal attached to CETA, as well as the move to reduce the number of seats in the House of Assembly.

"Both of those, more people said they were with the government than against it — by substantial margins — but even when you see those two kinds of things in the context of a massive lead for the Liberals, it's sort of suggesting that the Conservatives are having trouble getting people's attention, drawing people back towards them," he said.

Meanwhile, respondents who identified as voters from all three political parties predicted a Liberal win in 2015.

"Even among PC supporters, a majority think the Liberals will win the next election while just over one in three think the PC Party will win," the report said.

Poll in line with recent political trend

The PCs, which won a third straight majority government in the 2011 election, have been trailing in public opinion polls since the summer of 2013.

Davis, who took over as party leader and premier last September, admits he has been dealing with one challenge after another, including plunging oil prices that have erased hundreds of millions of dollars of anticipated revenues.

The latest Corporate Research Associates quarterly poll, released in December, showed that voter satisfaction with the Tories has been eroding, and that about 60 per cent of respondents said they were planning to vote Liberal.