The voter landscape is shifting in ways that don’t appear to favour Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, who now find themselves under 29 points for the first time since the security issue gave them a polling bounce back in October. That lead now seems to have evaporated; the party trails — insignificantly — Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and has less than a six-point margin over a clearly rejuvenated NDP.

Despite the sliding fortunes of the Conservatives, they may well be encouraged by the fact that they are now roughly in the same position with the Liberals as they were shortly before the last election, which produced a majority. They do, however, face a number of sharper challenges this time out, as this week’s poll demonstrates: a dire outlook on the economy (essentially unchanged from last week’s poll), a worsening emotional connection between Stephen Harper and voters, and a drift downward in support on some of the key security issues which elevated their game in the fall of last year.

The regional patterns look familiar, with one important exception which bears watching: The Liberals have seen a sharp rise in support in Quebec. Ontario has resumed the virtual tie between the Conservatives and the Liberals that we have seen many times before, while the Conservatives still enjoy strong — but somewhat weakened — support on the Prairies. British Columbia is a competitive four-way race, with the NDP showing newfound strength. The Green Party is holding steady nationally around nine points, but is a real force in British Columbia.

The Conservatives continue to do much better with older voters and men, although this advantage has narrowed. The Conservatives do much worse with women, the university-educated and Canadians outside the Prairie provinces. Their slide in Quebec considerably undermines what once appeared to be stronger-than-expected gains linked to Mr. Harper’s messaging on terrorism, cultural accommodation and the niqab. We have to wonder whether the pattern seen in the last Quebec provincial election with the so-called ‘secular charter’ is playing out again, with the government losing traction with Quebecers on the social values front while anxiety over the expanded military mission in Iraq and Syria rises.

Emotions play a critical role in winning elections, so it’s worth asking how well the party leaders are doing in making an emotional connection with voters. Here the news for Mr. Harper is mostly bad; his positive emotional connection with the electorate outside the Conservative base is quite weak and getting weaker. Only 29 per cent of respondents express positive emotions about Mr. Harper and our tracking points to a steep drop-off in the number of Canadians who say they feel “hopeful” about his leadership. This may be the factor at the heart of the prime minister’s declining prospects and it may pose a critical challenge for him and his party.

Both Tom Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau are roughly on par with each other in terms of generating positive, hopeful emotions in voters. Mr. Trudeau has a slight advantage on overall ‘positive’ reaction and is seen as the least infuriating leader — a mantle clearly owned by Mr. Harper. This could be a problem for both Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau, since it doesn’t put either of them in a clear position to reap the benefits of voters’ negative feelings about the prime minister.

Combined with a decline in support on core security questions and a very bleak outlook on the economy, Mr. Harper’s emotional score suggests he’ll have a hard time reproducing his track to majority in 2011.

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 April 1-7, 2015. In total, a random sample of 3,306 Canadian adults aged 18 and over responded to the survey. The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/-1.7 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.