Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Federal Polling Lately - the trends show the Trudeau honeymoon is running out

After the selection of Justin Trudeau on April 14th as their leader the federal Liberal party saw a significant increase

Three companies polled shortly before Trudeau was leader and at least twice more since then.   When I look at the results there seems to be a clear trend

Forum
        CPC  NDP  Libs Bloc Green Lib lead
Jun 18  30   20   38    6    4      8
May 22  27   20   44    4    3     17 
Apr 15  30   19   43    5    2     13
Apr  2  29   25   33    6    4      4
Mar  7  31   27   30    6    5     -1

EKOS
        CPC  NDP  Libs Bloc Green Lib Lead
July 9  28.4 23.4 30.4  6.3  8.5    2.0
May 26  26.3 20.9 34.7  5.4  9.2    8.4
May  2  26.2 23.9 38.6  4.2  6.3   12.4
Apr 10  28.8 23.3 29.1  6.4  9.0    0.3
Feb 10  29.3 26.3 24.6  7.2  9.5   -4.7

Ipsos 
        CPC  NDP  Libs Bloc Green Lib Lead
June 25 30   28   33    6    3      3
May  28 30   27   36    4    4      6
Apr  30 32   25   35    5    3      3
Apr   3 31   27   32    6    4      1

Each pollster had their highest Liberal results during May.  All them show a significant increase after the selection of Trudeau which continued upwards till sometime mid to late May and then a steady drop since then.

The polling shows a clear honeymoon pattern to the support for Trudeau. 

What is interesting is that the support levels for the  Conservatives are actually quite steady with all three companies.

The question then becomes, where are the Liberal numbers headed and who is benefiting from the end of the honeymoon?  All of them still have the Liberals in the lead but the margin is narrow enough in the case of Ipsos that third place is possible for them.

If the three major parties remain close through to the election, what is going to matter more than anything during the 2015 election is how well the parties are organized on the ground.  Here in BC there is no indication of any life from the federal Liberals after the leadership race, I have not heard of any serious work being done to build the party on the ground. 

In western Canada there will be 104 seats in the next election but the Liberals only have any organizational strength in a handful at most.  Moderately better polling than the 2011 election results is not going win any more seats for the Liberals in the west.   Without taking more than four or five western seats, the Liberals can only become the official opposition if they win a lot of seats in Ontario and Quebec - they need to directly take 30-40 seats from the NDP.  

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