OTTAWA—The federal New Democrats are enjoying a rise in support that puts them ahead of the Conservatives following the election of new leader Thomas Mulcair, according to a new national poll.

The poll done by Toronto-based Forum Research Inc. this week shows the NDP was the choice of 36 per cent of decided and leaning respondents, with the Conservatives close behind at 33 per cent.

The Liberals were in third place with 22 per cent, the Bloc Québécois had 6 per cent and the Greens had 2 per cent of support.

An earlier poll conducted by Forum Research on March 30 showed the Conservatives in the lead with 36 per cent, the NDP with 34 per cent, the Liberals with 19 per cent and the Bloc and the Greens with 5 per cent each.

“It looks the NDP and Thomas Mulcair are off to a good honeymoon,” Lorne Bozinoff, president of Forum Research, said Thursday.

The poll results also suggest that Canadians are taking a liking to Mulcair.

Forty-one of decided or leaning poll respondents approve of the job that Mulcair is doing as Opposition leader, compared to 32 per cent in the March 30 poll.

The approval ratings for Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae have remained stable at 34 and 35 per cent respectively.

Bozinoff said it is too early to tell whether the high numbers for the NDP and Mulcair will remain once the shine of the leadership campaign fades.

“They got a lot of publicity from the convention and the leadership race, so that would boost their numbers,” said Bozinoff. “We have to wait a couple months more to see what happens next, but it’s a really good bounce.”

Polling companies took a beating this week for wrongly predicting the outcome of the Alberta election on Monday, when the Progressive Conservatives formed another majority government despite polls showing they were headed to defeat for the first time in decades at the hands of the Wildrose Alliance Party.

Bozinoff argued that the change in voting intentions was a last-minute shift that Forum Research noticed when it was doing polling the day before the election.

“We saw a huge shift just in the one day between our two polls and it looks like we caught about half the shift from the Wildrose to the PCs,” said Bozinoff, explaining that his company’s Saturday poll showed Wildrose well ahead but the Sunday poll showed them tied with the Tories.

“This is a big change, this is a big shift in attitudes and voting intentions,” Bozinoff said. “Normally I think you’re pretty safe if you stop polling on a Saturday and the election is on Monday. You’re pretty confident there won’t be much of a change.”

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The interactive voice response telephone survey called 1,774 randomly selected Canadian adults on Tuesday and Wednesday. There were 1,669 participants who were decided or leaning toward a particular party and so their responses are the ones included in the poll results.

Forum Research claims a margin of error of 2.4 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

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