

Joshua Freeman, CP24.com





A new poll released Thursday appears to show the NDP leading the Conservative and Liberal parties as the federal election campaign continues.

According to the poll released by Forum Research on Thursday, just more than one third of voters (34 per cent) plan to cast a ballot for the NDP in the upcoming election. The poll puts the Conservatives in second place with 28 per cent support and the Liberals just behind them with 27 per cent support.

While the NDP lead, the poll represents a drop for the party compared to another Forum poll released last week that put them at 39 per cent support.

“It appears last week's bump for the NDP wasn’t just giddy exhilaration brought on by the election call,” Forum Research President Lorne Bozinoff said in a news release.

Bozinoff said the fact that so many electors are still planning to vote for the NDP after having had a week to watch the candidates perform shows that the NDP support is not an anomaly.

“Among the signs this isn’t temporary are that Tom Mulcair is equally likely to be seen as the best steward of the economy as the Prime Minister, who has always owned that measure himself,” Bozinoff said.

The poll found that voters feel NDP leader Tom Mulcair would make the best prime minister (28 per cent), slightly ahead of Stephen Harper (25 per cent) and Justin Trudeau (23 per cent).

In terms of who is trusted to handle the economy, Mulcair (29 per cent) and Harper (30 per cent) are roughly tied, while Trudeau lags at 26 per cent.

Harper leads both when it comes to which leader is trusted on national security (35 per cent) compared to Mulcair (26 per cent) and Trudeau (21 per cent).

However Mulcair is most trusted when it comes to the environment (36 per cent), with a massive lead on Harper (15 per cent) and a comfortable lead over Trudeau (25 per cent).

The telephone poll sampled 1,392 randomly selected voters across the country on Aug. 10-11. It is considered accurate to within plus or minus three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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