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In the past, it would be easy to see why the party would put Harper front and centre. Such was his reputation as a “strong leader” in the 2008 election that the New Democratic Party made explicit reference to it in its own ads: Harper is a strong leader, they ran, but so, in his own way, is Jack Layton. But now? The leader on whom the Tories are betting their campaign has an approval rating, according to the EKOS polling firm, of just 32 per cent, versus a disapproval rating of 62 per cent. This is by far the worst of any party leader: by contrast, the numbers for NDP’s Thomas Mulcair are almost exactly the reverse, 60-30, while the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau rates roughly equal levels of approval and disapproval.

But if the numbers are bad for Harper, they are horrid for the party. Averaging the polls together, the ThreeHundredEight.com poll-tracking website shows the Tories sliding steadily all through the last two months, from a pallid 32 per cent at the beginning of May to a dismal 29 per cent at the end of June. Worse, only about five to seven per cent of non-Conservative voters would consider them as their second choice. 60 per cent of voters tell EKOS the government is moving in the wrong direction, versus just 32 per cent for the contrary.

What must be particularly dismaying for the Conservatives is that there is nothing they can readily blame the poor poll results on. The economy had a rough first quarter, it is true, as you’d expect following the oil price collapse, but in the broad strokes remains relatively strong: unemployment at 6.8 per cent, median real wages, household incomes and net worth at all-time highs, and so on. Moreover, the Conservatives have shot most of their policy bullets, in the form of those expensive family-friendly tax breaks in the recent budget. Maybe these will start to move the numbers once voters start receiving their cheques this summer. Maybe not.