We’ve seen the NDP in the lead more than once during the past three years. We’ve also seen tight three-way races. But we haven’t seen either since Justin Trudeau assumed the leadership of the Liberal party — and today’s horserace looks strikingly different from what we saw five months out from the last election.

It’s time for the skeptics to put away their doubts about the rise of the NDP. We can ask how long it might last, but no one can dismiss these numbers as the result of a rogue poll or sampling error. It’s real — get over it.

The NDP rise began in mid-February and was undoubtedly given a boost by the election of Rachel Notley in Alberta. This trend has been confirmed in every night of polling we have done over the last ten days. We also conducted a totally independent test using our hybrid probability panel and a random experimental test using live interviewers. They’re all showing the same thing. (We’ll be presenting those tests in the coming weeks.)

The overall results show a tight three-way race, with the NDP holding a statistically insignificant lead over the Conservatives and a marginally significant lead over the Liberals. The Conservatives and Liberals are statistically tied.

Based on these figures, polling analyst Paul Barber predicts the following seat count in the House of Commons:

It’s helpful to compare these results to the last federal election. The NDP’s support has returned to where it was then. The Liberals are up seven points and the Conservatives are down almost 12 points. So this is very good news for the NDP, mixed-leaning-negative news for the Liberals — and really bad news for the Conservatives.

Despite having pulled out the stops on publicly-funded advertising and tax incentives, Stephen Harper and his party are sitting fully twelve points back of where they were on election night in 2011. There isn’t much in the approval or directional indicators to suggest that the Conservatives should be overly sanguine about another majority at this time. We could make a reasonable guess that, if an election were to be held tomorrow, these numbers would see NDP and Liberals winning such a large majority of seats between them that a Conservative minority might have a very short shelf life.

Looking at the regional breakdowns: Ontario is very much a three-way race. That’s good news for the Conservative party, despite its erosion in support since 2011. The near-parity of NDP and Liberal support in Ontario raises the prospect of vote-splitting and a narrow Conservative victory based on small pluralities of the vote.

Meanwhile, the Liberals and the NDP have become the key combatants in Quebec, while the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois have been largely squeezed out of the race. However, the Liberals and NDP both rely on different segments of the Quebec voter base (for example, the Liberals do well with anglophone and allophone voters, while the NDP does better with francophones), so the Conservatives are unlikely to benefit from vote-splitting in Quebec to the same degree that they might in Ontario.

The NDP continues to lead with university graduates, although its advantage here has weakened since last week. Interestingly, the NDP has dramatically improved its standing with the college-educated — which is suggestive of the convergence of university and college graduates that led the Alberta NDP to victory earlier this month.

We also see evidence of two distinct faultlines emerging between Conservative and NDP supporters. The first runs along age. The NDP base is disproportionately younger and support for the party declines with age; they have a sizeable advantage with youth but are reduced to third place among seniors. The Conservatives lead handily with seniors but have relatively little support with those under 35.

The second faultline is one of class, for want of a better word. The NDP draws its strength more from the economically vulnerable, such as the unemployed. More than two-fifths of NDP supporters define themselves as lower class or lower middle class, while barely one in seven describe themselves as upper middle or upper class. Conservative support, on the other hand, rises dramatically as we move into the upper class echelons. Support for the Liberals is more heavily concentrated among Canada’s self-identified middle class. These trends have not spilled over into educational attainment.

So, what happened?

There are several factors underpinning the trend towards the NDP. First, we see a rising backlash from the highly-educated portion of the electorate, particularly the university-educated — people who seem to be bridling at the Harper government’s perceived indifference (or hostility) toward expertise, professionalism, science, reason and evidence. They are expressing mounting dissatisfaction with what they see an anti-intellectual, populist governing style and the NDP is reaping the benefits. (Could this be the revenge of the latte-sipping elite?)

Second, the party’s fortunes appear to be linked to the Alberta NDP’s recent victory. The fact that something once considered completely implausible — a sweeping NDP victory in the Conservative heartland — actually happened may be inspiring frustrated progressive voters to look more closely at the NDP as the best option to defeat Harper.

Finally, there may be some blowback for the Liberals over their position on Bill C-51, the national security legislation that has been widely rejected by voters outside the Conservative base. While we have no direct evidence that C-51 is a major factor in the NDP’s success, the party’s position lines up much more closely with that of Canada’s university-educated, which may at least partially explain the party’s recent success with this group.

One factor that turned out to be key to the success of the Alberta NDP on May 5 was the convergence of the union vote; our final poll from that election showed that the party held a clear majority with union members, while the race was much tighter outside of this group. We are now seeing a similar situation at the federal level (albeit less vividly) where the NDP is now benefiting significantly from the labour vote. One-third of union members, current and former, now support the NDP, compared to 27 per cent for the Liberals and just 24 per cent for the Conservatives, who have seen their fortunes with Canada’s labour movement dwindle in recent weeks.

Given recent NDP fortunes, it is perhaps not surprising that the NDP’s plan for the future is resonating with Canadians. They lead on the question of which party has the best plan for the country as a whole, and to a lesser extent on which party presents the best plan for individual citizens.

While we don’t see much that would disrupt these results in the short term, this is still a wide-open race. NDP prospects are looking bright and they now find themselves on the upswing. The Liberals are stuck and their outlook is leaning negative. The Conservatives’ quest to capture another majority mandate is looking more and more improbable.

But the election is still five months off, and five months is a long time. Seventy per cent of Canadians do not plan to vote Conservative — but many have made no final decision on where they’re going to go. We’ve seen a lot of fluidity over the last five years as progressive voters searched for a way out of a situation where a unified minority of Conservative voters have had a headlock on the federal landscape. The Alberta election vividly demonstrated the power of a unified progressive vote, but the NDP’s newfound strength complicates the math for those wishing to vote strategically — particularly given the new parity between the NDP and Liberals in Ontario and elsewhere.

This race will be won by the party that forges the strongest connection to voters in terms of values and interests. That part of the campaign is just getting started.

Frank Graves is founder and president of EKOS Polling.

Methodology:

This study was conducted using High Definition Interactive Voice Response (HD-IVR™) technology, which allows respondents to enter their preferences by punching the keypad on their phone, rather than telling them to an operator. In an effort to reduce the coverage bias of landline only RDD, we created a dual landline/cell phone RDD sampling frame for this research. As a result, we are able to reach those with a landline and cell phone, as well as cell phone only households and landline only households.

The field dates for this survey are May 13-19, 2015. In total, a random sample of 2,675 Canadian adults aged 18 and over responded to the survey. The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/-1.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Please note that the margin of error increases when the results are sub-divided (i.e., error margins for sub-groups such as region, sex, age, education). All the data have been statistically weighted by age, gender, region, and educational attainment to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to Census data.