A New Normal

UNDERSTANDING A NEW THREE-WAY FEDERAL RACE

[Ottawa – May 22, 2015] We have seen the NDP in the lead more than once during the last three years and we have also seen tight three-way races. But we have not seen that since Justin Trudeau assumed leadership of the Liberal Party and today’s horserace looks strikingly different than what we saw five months out from the last election. In this update, we are trying to do three things. First, we would like to establish that this is a real and important shift. Second, we will offer some reasoned conjecture as to why it has occurred. Third, we will speculate as to what this means as we enter the next stages of the pre-campaign period.

The NDP rise is real and isn’t simply an echo of the Alberta results

For those in denial about the rise of the NDP, we would suggest that they consider abandoning that skepticism. We can question how long it will last, but we are past the point of seeing it as a rogue poll or sampling error. It is real – get over it. The NDP rise began in mid-February and was undoubtedly given a more immediate boost by the election of Rachel Notley in Alberta. This result has been confirmed in every night of polling we have done over the last ten days and we have conducted a totally independent test using our hybrid probability panel and a random experimental test using live interviewers. Guess what? They are all showing the same thing. We will be presenting those tests in the coming weeks.

The overall results show a tight three-way race with the NDP in an insignificant lead over the Conservatives and a marginally significant lead over the Liberals (the Conservatives and Liberals are statistically tied). If we were to summarize across the other results we have been testing, we would probably give the NDP the nod as being in a slight lead over the other two contenders.

For context, it is helpful to compare these results to the last federal election. The NDP have returned to where they were (shocking as that was at the time). The Liberals are up seven points and the Conservatives are down almost 12 points. Hidden in this very good news for the NDP and mixed-leaning-negative news for the Liberals is really bad news for the Conservatives. Despite pulling out all the advertising and tax incentive stops they could imagine, they 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 they should be overly sanguine about another majority at this time. So let’s colour the NDP very bright, the Liberals grey, and the Conservatives dark grey in terms of what this might mean come October. We could make a reasonable guess that the current results would see the NDP and Liberals winning such a large majority of seats between them that any form of Conservative government would be both unlikely and have the shelf life of a mayfly.

The regional and demographic figures:

Ontario is very much a three-way race, which is good news for the Conservative Party, despite their erosion in support since 2011. The near-parity of NDP and Liberal raises the possibility of vote splitting and the prospect a narrow Conservative victory with small pluralities of the vote.

Meanwhile, the Liberals and the NDP have become the key contestants in Quebec, while the Conservative Party and Bloc Québécois have been largely squeezed out of this race. 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 to the same degree as in Ontario.

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

Finally, 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. Conservative support, in contrast, progresses in the opposite direction; they lead handily with seniors but have relatively little support with those under 35.

Second, we are beginning to see something of a class conflict between the NDP and the Conservatives. The NDP draws its strength more from the vulnerable, such as those who are not employed. More than two-fifths of NDP supporters define themselves as lower class or lower middle class, while barely one in seven classify themselves as upper middle or upper class. Among Conservative supporters, however, we see the exact opposite trend and their support rises dramatically as we move into the upper classes. Liberal support, meanwhile, is more heavily concentrated among Canada’s middle class. Interestingly, these trends have not spilled over into educational attainment.

What happened?:

There are a broad range of factors underpinning the latest attraction to the NDP. First, there is a rising backlash coming from the highly educated portions of the electorate (particularly the university educated) who seem to be bridling over the Harper government’s perceived indifference – if not outright 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 has come out as the key beneficiary. Could this be the revenge of the latte-sipping elites?

Second, the party’s fortunes appear to be linked to the Alberta NDP’s recent victory. Indeed, if something so seemingly implausible – in this case, a sweeping NDP victory in the heartland of Conservative Canada – can happen, frustrated progressive voters may now be looking more closely at the NDP as the best option to depose Stephen Harper.

Finally, there may be some backlash over the Liberal Party’s position on Bill C-51, which has been widely rejected by voters outside the Conservative base. While we have no direct evidence that Bill 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 success with this group.

Rise of the labour vote?

One of the factors that was key to the success of the Alberta NDP on May 5th was the convergence of the union vote. Indeed, our final poll showed that the party held a clear majority with union members, while the race was drastically 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. Indeed, one-third of union members (both 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 within Canada’s labour movement dwindle in recent weeks.

Best/Clearest Plan

Given recent NDP fortunes, it is perhaps not surprising that the NDP’s plan for the future is increasingly resonating with Canadians. Indeed, they lead in terms of both holding the best plan for the country as a whole and, to a lesser extent, in terms of presenting the best plan for individual citizens.

Concluding remarks

While we don’t see much that would disrupt in these figures in the short-term, this is still very much an unclear and 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, meanwhile, are facing an increasingly improbable challenge of re-capturing their majority mandate.

However, nothing is fixed and we still have five months until the next federal election. Seventy per cent of Canadians do not plan to vote Conservative, but many have made no final decision as to where they are going to go. We have seen a lot of fluidity over the last five years across the progressive voters searching for some kind of solution to end the stranglehold that the minority of unified Conservative voters have exerted over the federal landscape. The Alberta election vividly underlines the potency of a unified progressive vote, but the new-found strength of the NDP complicates the political calculus of those wishing to vote strategically, particularly given the new parity between the NDP and Liberals in Ontario (and elsewhere).

In the end, we believe that this race will be determined by whichever party forges the strongest connection to voters in terms of values and interests and that game is still very much up in the air.

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.

Click here for the full report: Full Report (May 22, 2015)

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