Last week, Ipsos Canada released their latest election poll, and things don’t look that great for Erin O’Toole’s Conservative party.
The poll was conducted for Global News and it asked over 1,500 Canadians online and over the phone who they’d vote for if an election were held tomorrow.
About 25% of the participants said they’d either not vote or weren’t sure who they’d vote for. Of those who had already decided who they’re voting for, the largest share went to Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party, which got 38%. The CPC got 26%, Jagmeet Singh’s NDP got 20%, Yves-Francois Blanchet’s Bloc got 8%, and Annamie Paul’s Greens got 7%.
This isn’t the Liberals’ best showing, but it’s still pretty good. Actually, this is the highest the party has placed in any poll since the end of April, when Innovative Research had them at 40%.
The party has consistently been leading the polls for months. In fact, you’d have to go back to last February—before the pandemic hit—to find any polls showing them in second place.
The Conservatives, on the other hand, are at their worst showing since last July, when they had hit 25%. That was before the party held their leadership race and Erin O’Toole became leader.
There are a couple of other things to note about the CPC’s placement. They are 12 percentage points behind the Liberals. The spread between the two parties hasn’t been that high since the end of April, when it was 13.
In fact, over the last year, the average spread between the two parties has been 5.9, basically half of what it is now. There have been only 2 times since last summer when the spread has been higher than that and 111 times when it’s been lower.
Not only that, but the spread between the CPC and the NDP is only 6, the lowest it’s been since the beginning of May. This is highly unusual and should be concerning for O’Toole. Out of 126 polls taken since last July, only 2 have had the spread between the CPC and the NDP lower than 6. The average spread has been 12.2, more than twice the spread of this most recent poll.
Plus, the last three times the Conservatives polled at 26%, the Liberals were under 38%. That means the Liberals are doing better relative to the Conservatives.
If we average out the results of all the polls published in June, here’s how the parties perform:
| June average | Ipsos result | |
|---|---|---|
| Liberals | 35.3% | 38% |
| Conservatives | 28.0% | 26% |
| NDP | 19.2% | 20% |
| Bloc | 7.0% | 8% |
| Greens | 6.1% | 7% |
So, the Conservatives are the only party in this poll who placed lower than their June average. Even the scandal-ridden Greens did better last week relative to their average for the month.
With rumours of a federal election being just around the corner, O’Toole has a lot of work to do if he wants to win even a minority government. Currently, he’s going in the wrong direction.
On the other hand, if Trudeau can convert this poll placement into seats, he could easily win a majority government. And if Singh can erode some of that support, perhaps we could see another Liberal minority, but with the NDP as the Official Opposition.
UPDATE (6 July 2021): Abacus Data released a new poll after I had written this story, and it shows that the CPC are even worse off than the Ipsos poll showed, dropping from 26% to 25%.
UPDATE (7 July 2021): Nanos Research released a new poll yesterday, and it shows that the CPC are even worse off than the Abacus poll showed, dropping from 25% to 24%.
