playground

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 1, 2021

Liberals fall, Conservatives steady as election race remains neck-and-neck: polls show

The Liberals’ support is continuing to crumble as the election campaign reaches the halfway point, a new poll suggests, with the party now falling behind the Conservatives for the first time while staying in a statistical tie.

The Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News found 32 per cent of voters would cast a ballot for the Conservatives, a number unchanged from last week. But the Liberals saw their potential vote share go down two points, to 31 per cent.

The NDP, meanwhile, is continuing to gain ground, with 23 per cent of voters surveyed supporting them — up two points from last week — suggesting the party is peeling away progressive support from Justin Trudeau.

“The Liberals should be very worried about where they are in the campaign,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, “because all they’ve done since the start is lose momentum and lose support.

“What we’re seeing based on these numbers is a majority is very, very far away. And the Liberal Party will be fighting to even win the plurality of seats in this election campaign and may even come second to the Conservative Party.”

The poll, which surveyed over 1,500 Canadians online last week, suggests the Green Party is continuing to struggle and would earn only four per cent of voter support. The Bloc Quebecois would receive 30 per cent of the vote in Quebec, or equal to seven per cent nationally.

Eleven per cent remain undecided, while three per cent said they would not vote at all.

The results show the Liberals have lost their advantage over the Conservatives within the valuable 55-and-over voting bloc, which tends to be the most reliable on election day. Forty per cent of older voters surveyed said they will vote Conservative, while 33 per cent chose the Liberals — a flip from just two weeks ago.

The Liberals are also facing dead heats in the battleground provinces of Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, the last of which now sees the governing party in third place behind the NDP and the Conservatives. (Global)