Just as it looked like we were setting into a three-way tie, the NDP appears to be opening up some daylight between itself and the Conservatives — who are still stuck at sub-30 — and the listless Liberals, still drifting downward in a significant erosion of their support.

New Democrats should be jubilant. Liberals should be very concerned. But the worst news here may be for the Conservatives.

NDP and Liberal fortunes are inextricably connected; they tap a shared pool of promiscuous progressive voters who are now looking more favourably at the NDP for a variety of reasons — the election result in Alberta, dissatisfaction with Justin Trudeau’s qualified support for C-51, and a rising sense that the New Democrats are a plausible option to dislodge the current government.

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These swings, while real, are by no means fixed; we’ve seen several such large movements in this group of voters over the last several years. We do know that those outside of the diminished Conservative base are increasingly receptive to some form of government arrangement between the progressive parties.

However, based on these numbers and given the provincial breakdowns, analyst Paul Barber, who blogs as TC Norris, says a tie or something very close to it would be the likely outcome.

If we examine the trends here based on very large probability samples, the near-tie of a month ago — which was seen as sketchy by many at the time — is still changing. The Liberals continue to decline as the NDP continues to rise. The Conservatives are languishing well back of where they need to be for a reasonable shot at another stable government.

The NDP now holds a commanding lead in Quebec and enjoys double the support of any of the other three contenders. Liberal support has dropped considerably in Quebec; the party now finds itself in a three-way tie for second place. Ontario, meanwhile, has turned into a tight three-way race and all three major federalist parties now find themselves within three points of other. This is a far cry from the situation just a few short weeks ago, when Ontario was the scene of a fierce Liberal-Conservative contest and the NDP was not even considered competitive there.

In fact, the NDP is now the only true “pan-Canadian” party, in that it’s the only party that enjoys at least 20 per cent of the vote in all provinces. The Conservatives have not been a serious contender in Quebec for some time and the Liberals do quite poorly in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The NDP owes much of its recent success to its support among university graduates. The party has jumped ten points with this group in just three weeks and now holds a ten-point advantage over the Liberals — a complete reversal of the situation of just a few short weeks ago. The NDP is now tied for first among the college-educated, a group that until recently appeared widely committed to the Conservative party.

This week, we took a look at voters’ expressed second choices for party support — a very revealing indicator. It can help gauge how much room a party has to grow, and the relative distance separating the parties in the minds of voters. In a political climate where there is a rising ‘anyone-but-Harper’ sentiment, and growing openness to strategic voting and coalitions, second choices become crucial.

The chart above tells us two things. First, the Conservatives’ room for growth is extremely narrow. Not only are they below thirty points nationally, very few people seem to be taking them seriously as a second choice. This is also reflected in the loyalty expressed by voters in the Conservative base, who are by far the least likely to consider any second choice. That ‘my way or the highway’ attitude is an asset when it comes to turnout, but it has its limits; even when converting every possible second choice, the Conservative party is left short of its 2011 election result.

The NDP has the most headroom now; astonishingly, the party leads on both first and second choices. The Liberals also have access to enough first and second choices to aspire to a majority — theoretically. But the huge advantage that the NDP and Liberals enjoy on voter ceilings is severely dampened by the split in the anti-Conservative vote.

This becomes clearer when we look at the array of second choices by party. Overwhelmingly, NDP and Liberal supporters both cite each other’s party as their second choice. If we consider second choice as a measure of values and issues, we see that the NDP and Liberals are far closer to each other than the Liberals and Conservatives. This will be the most interesting dynamic to watch in the coming months. How will a clear majority of center-progressive voters array themselves to get a progressive government? The answer isn’t clear at all.

Meanwhile, Stephen Harper faces challenges that grow more daunting all the time. The directional numbers for the country and government are horrible, possibly driven in part by poor first-quarter growth rates and the belief — tracked in our April poll — that the economy is in recession. The Conservative base is down and its opportunities for growth are extremely limited. Harper’s personal numbers are dismal; the number of voters who disapprove of him is almost twice the number who approve of him now. Following a brief warming trend in the fall of last year, Harper’s personal numbers have been in retreat and are now tracking near historical lows.

Thomas Mulcair, on the other hand, is on top of the popularity heap; his numbers are pretty much the reverse of Harper’s — two to one in favour. Trudeau is somewhere in between, as the electorate waits to be convinced he’s a better bet to replace Mr. Harper.

Frank Graves is founder and president of EKOS Polling.

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 27-June 2, 2015. In total, a random sample of 2,204 Canadian adults aged 18 and over responded to the survey. The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/-2.1 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.