Support for Tories Slides as Liberal Race Hardens, Poll Analysis Shows

OTTAWA – Polls suggest that conservatives and liberals are locked in a tight race for the final sprint until Election Day, as Erin O’Toole made his most direct attack on Justin Trudeau since the start of the federal campaign.

According to the latest numbers of The signal, a statistical model that analyzes public poll data to predict the outcome of the election, O’Toole’s Conservatives control 32.7 percent of the national popular vote with one week remaining in the campaign.

But the Liberals are very close to second at 30.7 percent. The New Democrats are stable at 18.3 percent, while the far-right People’s Party is at seven percent and the Greens at 3.3 percent.

If elections were held today, Signal projects that no party would win the 170 seats necessary for a majority in the House of Commons. In contrast, the Liberals would win 139 seats and the Conservatives would win 134. The NDP, meanwhile, would win in 36 constituencies, while the Bloc Québécois would win 27 seats.

The Greens and the Popular Party would each win a seat, according to Signal.

When Trudeau called the elections, the Liberals held 155 seats in the House of Commons and the Conservatives 119.

The Signal is developed by Vox Pop Labs in association with Star. It uses a computer modeling program to analyze federal polls in a way that takes into account the “house bias” of various polling companies over several years, as well as the differences between your poll results and the actual results of the Canadian elections.

Clifton van der Linden, CEO of Vox Pop Labs and professor of political science at McMaster University, said the latest Signal projections account for all national polls released through Sunday. It shows the Liberals slowly advancing in Ontario, he said, where the party is now in the lead at 35.6 percent to 33.7 percent for the Conservatives.

At the same time, the Conservatives have seen their national support reduced thanks to increases in support for the Bloc in Quebec and the People’s Party in Ontario and the other provinces, van der Linden said.

The Signal has also gained a significant boost in support for the NDP in British Columbia, he added, and the party saw a “mini orange wave” in the province that lifted it from about 25 percent when elections were called, to pass the Liberals and closing in on Conservatives with 29 percent in the most recent data.

But it is the nationwide situation between conservatives and liberals that makes the contest “very close” with a week before Election Day, van der Linden said.

“It’s a mix of a shift in support for Liberals in Ontario and Conservative votes drifting off,” he said.

That dynamic is taking place as O’Toole emerged Monday morning, exactly one week before Election Day on September 20, to make his sharpest attack yet on Trudeau’s record as head of a liberal government. Speaking in Ottawa, O’Toole criticized Trudeau for ethical errors like the SNC-Lavalin scandal and accused the liberal leader of prioritizing his quest for power above all else.

“I would say that he speaks everything and nothing, but this is worse: a person so blinded by his own ambition that he cannot see the rot in his own party, a man who is not a feminist, nor an environmentalist, not a public servant, a man that he focuses solely, directly on himself, ”said O’Toole.

Trudeau later responded at an event in Vancouver that liberal criticism of O’Toole during the campaign has focused on politics, such as the Conservatives’ sweeping change on gun control, rather than “contesting” his character.

“I’m going to continue to focus on Canadians, what Canadians tell me about what they need for their families,” Trudeau said.

Early voting began on Friday, when approximately 1.3 million Canadians cast their votes, according to Elections Canada. In the 2019 federal elections, nearly 4.9 million people voted during four days of early voting.

Meanwhile, as of Monday, nearly 1 million people had requested kits to vote via a special ballot and 448,103 voters had cast their votes this way, according to Elections Canada.

About 660,000 people voted on a special ballot in 2019, up from around 619,000 in the 2015 election.