Is Canada going to have a new prime minister on September 20?
Results of two surveys released as Philippine Asian News Today went to press Wednesday (September 8) show the Conservative Party of Canada led by Erin O’Toole leading the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Global News reported that while the federal election race remains tight, a new poll suggests that Conservatives’ momentum appears to be building.
Meanwhile, the Liberals and NDP campaigns appear to be stalling.
The Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News found that 35 percent of decided voters would vote for the Conservatives, up three points from the previous week.
The Liberals would get 32 percent of the vote, up one point.
The NDP went down two points to 21 percent.
“I think what we’re seeing here is a bit of a consolidation of the vote on the right behind the Conservatives,” Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, said in the Global News report.
“(People are) starting to believe that the Conservatives actually might be able to beat the Liberal Party this time,” Bricker also said in the same report.
Global News noted that the Liberal Party battles a wave of disillusionment with Trudeau and his timing of the election in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NDP under Jagmeet Singh has been on the rise throughout the campaign, but the party’s support appears to have hit a wall.
“So far, it looks like the progressive vote remains split,” Bricker said in the Global News report.
Global News also noted that further adding to the progressive split is an uneasiness among Liberal and NDP voters, less than half of whom said they are certain of their choice.
A slight majority of Conservative voters or 53 percent said they are confident about their vote.
The poll, which surveyed 1,500 Canadians online, found the Green Party would earn just two percent of the vote, down two points from last week and tied with the People’s Party of Canada.
The Bloc Quebecois is sitting firm at 34 percent support in Quebec.
Among the party leaders, the NDP’s Singh remains the most well-liked among those surveyed, with 45 percent supporting him.
Trudeau was seen the most unfavourable, with 56 percent saying so.
Global News reported that despite only 33 percent saying they view O’Toole favourably, the Conservative leader saw the biggest decline among those who don’t know enough about him, dropping six points to 18 per cent.
“The clear winner in terms of building a new following in Canadian politics around leadership in this election campaign so far has been Erin O’Toole,” Bricker said.
Meanwhile, CTV News reported that the Conservatives and Liberals appear to be locked in a dead heat with neither of them poised to win a majority government.
According to Nanos Research’s nightly tracking data conducted for CTV News and the Globe and Mail, which was released in the morning of September 8, the Conservatives have 32.6 percent support among Canadians.
This means that O’Toole’s Conservatives are in statistical tie with Trudeau’s Liberals at 31.6 percent.
Nik Nanos, founder and chief data scientist at Nanos Research, said in the CTV News report that the party leaders might have the opportunity to shift the momentum on their side at two upcoming official debates.
Trudeau, O’Toole, Singh, Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, and Green Party Leader Annamie Paul are expected to square off at the French debate on September 8 and the English debate on September 9 in Gatineau, Quebec.
People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier will not be allowed to participate in the debates because he didn’t meet the criteria established by the independent leaders’ debate commission.
CTV News noted that for Trudeau, specifically, who called the election during the summer in the hopes his party could pick up more seats to form a majority government, Nanos said he expects the Liberal leader to focus on his closest rival O’Toole during the debate.
“I would expect that he’s probably going to clearly have his sights set on Erin O’Toole, because Erin O’Toole’s brand has improved over the course of the campaign,” Nanos said on the September 8 edition of CTV’s Trend Line podcast.
As for the Conservatives, CTV News reported, Nanos said it’s important for O’Toole to present himself as prime ministerial during the debates.
Nanos thinks Trudeau and Blanchet will be O’Toole’s main targets on the debate stage.
“A lot of his pickup has actually been from disaffected Liberals. So I would expect him to go after Trudeau in the hope of getting more blue Liberals to swing over into the into the true blue call,” Nanos said.
“I would expect him also to go after Blanchet because there’s crossover between some of those Bloc Quebecois supporters and Conservative supporters in Quebec,” Nanos said in the report.
Nanos said he expects Singh to go after Trudeau and O’Toole during the debates.
“He’s going to target O’Toole to compare and contrast Singh’s vision for Canada compared to O’Toole’s vision for Canada,” he said. “I expect him to take on Justin Trudeau and the Liberals for not moving fast enough, not delivering on their promises, not moving forward in a progressive sense.”