The federal NDP is seeing some good news this month, with several polling firms showing them up in the polls.
Three polling firms—Research Co., Mainstreet, and Abacus—all released their most recent polling results on the same day last week, and it prompted to check out all the rest of the polling done in June.
I included only those surveys with subsequent published results.
(For example, Counsel Public Affairs had the party at 18%, but they don’t have any other previous results that were recent, so it’s difficult to gauge the significance of that 18%—is it up, down, the same?)
| Current | Previous | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Léger | 22 | 19 | +3 |
| Abacus | 22 | 17 | +5 |
| Angus Reid | 21 | 18 | +3 |
| Research Co. | 20 | 20 | 0 |
| EKOS | 17 | 18 | -1 |
| Mainstreet | 17 | 13 | +4 |
In 4 of the 6 polls, the NDP were up in the polls, with an average bump of 3.75 points between those 4 and 2.33 points if you factor in all 6 polls.
Not only that, but these are among some of the highest polling numbers for the party in over a year.
For example, this is the second highest placement in a Léger poll since last year. The party hit 23% once in December.
It’s the highest spot in an Abacus poll in the last year, beating out the next highest placement in an Abacus poll by 2 points.
Same goes for Angus Reid: NDP’s highest ranking since last spring, and beating out their 19% ranking 3 months ago.
And even though Mainstreet has them lower than the other firms, at 17%, this is still their best showing in a Mainstreet poll since early 2020: their next highest was 15%.
But how does this compare to the other parties? You can’t win government with 19.8% support.
Clearly, the NDP aren’t anywhere close to first place. They’re still quite aways from second place even.
What about change in polling results?
In this one, it’s obvious that June is being much kinder to the NDP than it is to the other parties. Not only do the NDP have the most polls where it’s improving in the numbers, but those numbers are greater increases than increases seen by any other party.
Now, polls can be fickle. Just because the NDP are performing better relative to their past performance better than the other parties doesn’t mean it’s a trend. This is only one month. We’d have to see more of this before we can definitively say that the NDP are on the rise.
Even so, what’s causing this rise?
Well, it might be the the party leader.
As I reported last month, Angus Reid had Jagmeet Singh as the most favourable leader of the four main parties in May, at 46%. However, in their most recent survey, he’s still polling as the most popular, and even increased slightly to 48%.
Justin Trudeau, on the other hand, placed at 43% last month and 44% this month.
Singh’s favourability jumps among young voters: 51% among men 18–34 and 63% among women in the same age group.
Granted, that’s just one polling firm. Only one other of the six included favourability ratings for party leaders. In the Abacus poll this month, 39% of respondents saw Trudeau in a positive light, compared to 32% for Singh.
That being said, Singh had a 26% negative rating, compared to 39% for Trudeau. So, a 7-point spread for positive rating and a 13-point spread for negative rating.
But, like I mentioned, Singh has a lot to do still if he wants to make some gains before the next election, which could be as early as this autumn.
It’ll be interesting to see how much the various campaign platforms resonate with voters once they start rolling out after the election is called.
