Little more than a week before NDP Leader Tom Mulcair is set to face his party in a leadership review, a new Ekos poll shows the New Democrats are polling at their lowest level in more than a decade.

The poll, conducted by Ekos for iPolitics, shows the NDP is standing at 11.7 per cent support among Canadians – down eight percentage points since last October’s election. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party is up 2.6 percentage points to 42.1 per cent while the opposition Conservative Party, under the interim leadership of Rona Ambrose, is at 31.7, down slightly from its election day result of 31.9 per cent.

Elizabeth May’s Green Party appears to also be benefitting from the NDP’s misfortune, up 2.9 percentage points to 6.4 per cent support since election day.

The results come at a crucial time for Mulcair, who has been countering post-election defeat questions about his leadership with endorsements from some MPs and union leaders ahead of the NDP convention in Edmonton April 8-10.

He is set to face a leadership review at that gathering for which party president Rebecca Blaikie recently deemed the bar at which Mulcair can feasibly remain as leader at 70 per cent. The party’s constitution only stipulates 50 per cent plus one as the level support required to fend off the challenge.

Under the NDP’s constitution, a vote on whether the party should hold a leadership contest must take place at every party convention that is not a leadership convention.

The leadership question, while not on the official agenda, is expected to take up much of the oxygen at the annual Broadbent Institute conference in Ottawa this weekend. Mulcair will be in attendance for part of the policy gathering.

While the fate of Mulcair’s leadership will depend on the votes of the estimated 1,500 NDP members who attend the Edmonton convention rather than the general population, Ekos President Frank Graves says the national party support numbers won’t help.

“That is the lowest number we have seen for an NDP party since 2003,” Graves said. “Let’s put this in context. This is not good. How they decide to deal with the future is obviously their choice and he’s got all kinds of talent. But that is a pretty spectacular fall from grace.”

However, George Smith, spokesman for Mulcair, questions whether party support figures are a true indicator of Mulcair’s support among New Democrats.

“Mr. Graves said he didn’t test Mr. Mulcair’s approval rating but assumes they are bad. Other polls have tested his approval and clearly found that most New Democrats support him. However, Mr. Mulcair continues to take nothing for granted and looks forward to a convention focused on rebuilding the party for the future.”

After a campaign that saw him sink from a heady first place to a Stornoway-vacating third, Mulcair has been working hard since the election, criss crossing the country meeting with grassroots New Democrats. However, it has been hard for many observers to get a handle on the mood of the party as delegates prepare to head to Edmonton.

There have been vocal opponents but also vocal supporters of his leadership and little, if any, sign of potential successors working behind the scenes to take his place.

If there is a move afoot, it may become more obvious at the Broadbent conference.

While the poll finds the NDP down in every province, one of the sharpest drops appears to be in British Columbia, where it elected 14 MPs. The New Democrats got 26 per cent of the vote on election day but the poll estimates they are now standing at 9.9 per cent.

In Saskatchewan, where the NDP made a breakthrough Oct. 19, collecting 25 per cent of the vote and electing three MPs, the poll puts the party at 9.1 per cent.

The poll found the highest level of support was in Quebec, where 15.5 per cent of respondents said they backed the NDP. However, that was down nearly 10 percentage points from its election day results in Mulcair’s home province.

Graves said Ekos did not specifically ask respondents whether they approved of Mulcair or of other party leaders.

“I didn’t gauge approval at this time for him or the other party leaders but it’s hard to imagine when they are running at 11.7 points that he is enjoying high approval at this time. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“His base has gone from as much as upper 30’s to 11 per cent in an eight-month period.”

Graves said he can’t tell whether the slide is the result of the party or the leader.

“It looks like most voters right now are just discounting the NDP. Whether it is because of the NDP or Tom Mulcair is hard to say. I think it would make it very challenging for Mr. Mulcair to withstand a leadership review at this time but stranger things have happened. There’s a lot of solidarity and loyalty within the party and I know that some of the labour movements are committing to him and the party.”

The margin of error of the poll of 2,019 Canadians, conducted through High Definition Interactive Voice Response between March 24-29 is considered accurate to within 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The margin of error for regional breakdowns is higher.

The last time Mulcair faced a leadership review vote, at the 2013 convention in Montreal, he walked away with the support of 92.3 per cent of delegates – much higher than the 57.2 per cent he garnered to win the leadership a year earlier.

Going back to 2001, the lowest result for any NDP leader in a review was 84.3 percent, said party spokesman Kiavash Najafi.

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