Stephen Harper may have been swept aside in last year’s election by a powerful desire for change, but a new poll suggests that at least among Conservative voters, he’s the preferred choice to make a comeback as the party’s leader.

According to new data from EKOS Research, 28 per cent of declared Conservative supporters say the former prime minister is their preferred choice for next leader of the party. That number drops to 11 per cent among the broader group of 1,176 Canadians surveyed for the poll.

“It does look like he has the nod from Conservative supporters right now if he was to throw his hat into the ring, although that could all change,” said Frank Graves, president of EKOS Research. “I don’t think he’s coming out of the Duffy trial particularly well.”

The poll was conducted on April 14 and 15, before Ontario Justice Charles Vaillancourt acquitted Senator Mike Duffy of 31 charges of fraud and breach of trust that had been laid over concerns about his Senate residency expenses.

In his ruling, Vaillancourt slammed the “mind boggling and shocking” conduct of the Harper PMO and the lengths the staffers there went to to cover up what he called “the Duffy problem.”

“The political, covert, relentless, unfolding of events is mindboggling and shocking,” he wrote in the 308-page ruling. “The precision and planning of the exercise would make any military commander proud. However, in the context of a democratic society, the plotting as revealed in the emails can only be described as unacceptable.”

It’s not clear whether that ruling and the reflection it cast on the behaviour of the Harper PMO would have shifted the numbers in the poll.

The Conservative Party will elect its new leader in May, 2017. Former Harper cabinet minister Rona Ambrose is currently interim leader of the party.

Besides Harper, the poll also let respondents choose from five other leadership contenders: Peter MacKay, Kevin O’Leary, Maxime Bernier, Lisa Raitt and Kellie Leitch. The biggest chunk of general respondents, 36 per cent, said they wanted to support someone other than the six options given.

That number was 17 per cent for Conservative supporters.

Coming in at second place among Conservative supporters — and first among the broader group surveyed — is former Progressive Conservative leader MacKay, with 23 per cent of Conservative supporters picking him as their preferred leader and 20 per cent of the broader group saying the same.

Bombastic TV personality Kevin O’Leary came in at third place among both groups, with nine per cent of the broader group picking him as their preferred Conservative leader and 11 per cent among Tory voters.