OTTAWA—The federal Liberals and Conservatives are running at a statistical tie nationally with less than three months to go before the national election, according to the latest numbers from Forum Research.

Forum’s July horse race numbers put the Conservatives at 34 per cent of decided and leaning voters, while the Liberals enjoy the support of 31 per cent of respondents. The numbers are essentially unchanged from Forum’s June numbers, but a far cry from the strong lead the Conservatives saw between March 2018 and April 2019.

The New Democrats and Green party remain deadlocked at 12 per cent each, while the Bloc Québécois and the upstart People’s Party of Canada both command 5 per cent of decided and leaning voters.

A big part of the Conservatives’ national lead is their very strong performance in the Prairies, according to Forum Research President Lorne Bozinoff.

But the Liberals continue to enjoy a lead in vote-rich Ontario (36 per cent to the Conservatives’ 31 per cent) and Québec (34 per cent to 23 per cent), making Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s path to the prime minister’s office more difficult.

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Based on Forum’s projections, if an election were to be held today, the Conservatives would win 152 seats in the House of Commons and the Liberals would take 150. The NDP would retain 22 seats and the Green party would take three — a modest number, but still a historic breakthrough for Elizabeth May’s party. The Bloc Québécois would finish with 11 MPs, while Maxime Bernier’s PPC would fail to pick up a single seat.

That would mean a minority parliament, with the balance of power resting with the progressive New Democrats and Greens. It would also mean Scheer’s odds of forming government would be much longer.

“It’s hard to see (the Conservatives) getting enough to get a majority with another party, given that it is the three progressive parties that really will be holding the balance of power,” said Bozinoff of his projections.

The close race in the lead up to the election has political observers and partisans expecting the parties’ campaigns to matter even more than usual.

British Columbia remains difficult to project, both for pollsters and for politicos. Forum puts the Conservatives’ support in the province at 38 per cent to the Liberals’ 23 per cent, but the potential for four-way vote splits among the major parties makes the province’s lower mainland a bit chaotic electorally.

“That’s the wild card in all this,” Bozinoff said.

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“Everything else, the changes are within a trend, they’re up or down a point or two in all the other regions. But when you look at B.C., we see these wild swings. So I don’t think they’re paying a lot of attention to the election right now, I think there’s a lot of parked votes right now…I think for the rest of the summer, B.C. is going to be a toss-up or a wild card.”

The Forum poll was conducted between July 26 and July 28, surveying 1,733 randomly selected Canadians by phone. The results are considered accurate within plus or minus three percentage points, although regional numbers have a higher margin of error.

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