A significant number of NDP rank-and-file members think Guy Caron is the leadership candidate most likely to help the party gain seats in Quebec, while many of them worry Jagmeet Singh would lose seats there, according to new polling by Mainstreet Research.

Grassroots New Democrats appear to have far more confidence in Caron’s prospects in Quebec — despite the fact that Singh out-performed all the other leadership candidates combined in second quarter fundraising in that province.

Mainstreet surveyed 1,804 NDP members across Canada from August 3 to 6 about how each of the candidates might perform in Quebec as party leader, and found that 39 per cent of respondents think Caron, a rural Quebec MP, would be the most likely to help the party gain seats there.

A further 20.6 per cent think Caron would hold the Quebec seats the party has now, while roughly five per cent think he would lose the party seats.

The party membership seems more concerned about Ontario MPP Jagmeet Singh’s prospects in the province the NDP won over in its 2011 electoral breakthrough. Twenty nine per cent say they think Singh would lose seats in Quebec; just 11 per cent say he would gain seats there, while 17 per cent say he could hold current Quebec seats.

Charlie Angus is seen by 30 per cent of party members as the candidate most likely to hang on to the NDP’s current Quebec seat count, followed by Niki Ashton at 26.6 per cent.

Mainstreet’s polling, which used several years worth of NDP donor data to collect its sample of party members, has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

One caveat to keep in mind when reading the numbers is that Singh’s campaign strategy relies on signing up a large number of new members to support him in the October vote, so the newly-minted supporters his team signed up since May wouldn’t be represented in the sample.

That said, the polling does indicate how the party’s existing rank-and-file membership feels about the candidates. The NDP has roughly 60,000 members, according to a party tally from last year.

A closer look at party members who’ve already picked a candidate brings the picture into sharper focus: 60.4 per cent of decided party members say they think Caron would gain seats in Quebec, 55.4 per cent think Angus would hold the line there, and 50.3 per cent think Singh could cost the party Quebec seats.

Pollster Quito Maggi suggests part of the anxiety over Singh, a turban-wearing Sikh, has to do with concerns about how Quebec has dealt with racial and religious issues in the recent past — through the former PQ government’s highly controversial ‘charter of values’ proposal, for example, and through the fraught debate over the ‘reasonable accommodation’ of religious and cultural minorities.

Maggi said the other candidates probably will try to leverage the notion that a Singh-led NDP could falter in Quebec as a “wedge” to shore up support among existing members.

But that doesn’t mean Singh’s opponents can rely on casting doubts among party faithful to put any kind of dent in his campaign, he added.

“I don’t think it’s going to play a big factor in the leadership,” Maggi said.

Even if candidates convince most current NDP members that Singh faces headwinds in Quebec, “it’s still not going to be enough to dissuade people from signing up for Jagmeet,” Maggi added.

“Jagmeet will flood the membership in maybe a dozen ridings, in and around Montreal, and that’ll be enough. I believe he’ll be very competitive in the leadership vote, even in Quebec.”

Singh already has shown that he’s making inroads in the province, despite the membership’s worries. He raised $27,970 in Quebec in second quarter fundraising – more than Caron’s $10,255, Angus’s $2,036 and Ashton’s $2,944 combined.

Candidates have until Thursday of next week to sign up enough members to swing the balance in their favour, and Singh’s team has been pushing all week for last-minute donations. One fundraising email Singh’s campaign sent out Tuesday night said he has “activated thousands of new supporters and mobilized existing ones” across Canada, and promised that donations would go directly toward a final-hours membership drive.

“The people we mobilize between now and then could swing the vote and decide the outcome,” it reads.

“Signing up members takes organizers on the ground and events across the country. We need to ramp up those efforts for the final stretch before the deadline.”

Maggi said the state of the race should become much clearer following the August 17 deadline for signing up new members.