Charlie Angus is the first choice for party leader of close to one-quarter of NDP members, according to a new poll by Mainstreet Research.

But Niki Ashton isn’t far behind, and Mainstreet President and CEO Quito Maggi still sees a path to victory for Jagmeet Singh.

On July 5, Mainstreet polled a combination of NDP donors and names on five past provincial membership lists (provincial NDP members are automatically federal members), screening them, in the process, for active membership.

Of the 1,445 members reached — within a margin of error of +/- 2.56 per cent, 19 times out of 20 — 35.9 per cent said they were unsure about their first choice; 22.6 per cent supported Angus; 20.4 per cent, Ashton; 7.5 per cent, both Singh and Peter Julian; and 6.1 per cent ranked Guy Caron first.

Ashton narrowly edged Angus when it came to second choice support.

But looking at the second choice support of Peter Julian, who dropped out of the race Thursday, Angus gets the biggest boost from his departure.

Almost four in 10 Julian supporters (36.7 per cent) said they were unsure of their second choice. But 24.8 per cent said Angus, followed by Ashton (18.3 per cent); Caron (9.2 per cent); and Singh (7.3 per cent).

Having been deemed a front-runner before he even officially entered the race, Singh’s numbers, at first glance, were surprising.

But Maggi cautioned against reading too much into them at this stage, because this polling is skewing older — a result of dialing donors and previous members.

“There’s clearly a path to victory for Singh. Everyone already knew it was going to have to be based on new signups to the party — younger people, which he appeals to, and of course the substantial Sikh community that’s pretty well distributed across Canada — certainly in large urban centers,” Maggi said.

Under the party’s leadership rules, new members who sign up on a “candidate-specific membership page” will be kept confidential to the candidate until the August 17 membership deadline, possibly leaving a great deal of support hidden for now.

And unlike the Conservative leadership race, which allocated 100 points to all 338 ridings regardless of its membership size, the NDP vote is strictly a one-member, one-vote process.

“Singh can sign up thousands in 20 or so ridings. Even if they’re concentrated in and around large centres — greater Vancouver, greater Toronto area, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton. Just because of the sheer numbers and the NDP process, he still has that great organizational potential,” Maggi said.

Notwithstanding the party’s growth in Quebec in recent years — an achievement Tom Mulcair underscored in an end-of-session press conference in June — the province could end up playing a very small role in the outcome of the race.

Writing in Le Devoir Friday, Hélène Buzzetti pointed out that the fluently bilingual Julian’s departure came despite his being the Quebec caucus’ “chouchou”, or favourite.

Though one-third of the NDP’s current caucus represents ridings in Quebec, only four per cent of the current party membership comes from the province, an unnamed source told Buzzetti.

Mainstreet didn’t provide a provincial or regional breakdown at this time, but it did do a demographic one.

The only really salient result was Ashton’s first-choice support (45.7 per cent) among those 18 to 34.

Mainstreet also polled one of the bigger policy debates to emerge thus far in the race: the creation of a universal basic income, which Guy Caron has championed but Ashton and Angus have criticized.

“It’s a worthwhile idea and it certainly comes up in discussions about precarious work, and I appreciate that you brought it forward as part of this leadership race. But I think there’s some major red flags. One is that there are many people on the right that are big fans of basic annual income,” Ashton said to Caron in a debate last month.

Angus added that the progressive economists he’d spoken to were concerned about the cost.

Almost four out five party members (79 per cent), however, were in favour, while only a small minority (4.5 per cent) were opposed.

Another 16.50 per cent weren’t sure.





*An earlier version of this story mistakenly described the third Mainstreet Research chart as Peter Julian’s redistributed support; it does show his supporters’ second choices, but it doesn’t redistribute those choices to the other candidates.