There’s a strange paradox at the heart of this week’s polling. Voters now believe the economy is in a recession and give the government poor marks on broad national direction. The dominant media issues of terror and security are no longer tracking in the government’s favour and Prime Minister Harper has the worst approval rating of all leaders.

And yet — even under the combined weight of a poor economy, lousy directional and approval ratings and regime fatigue (which almost always augurs very poorly for the incumbent) — the vote intention landscape is pretty stable and favouring the Conservatives overall.

Mr. Harper has a modest but significant lead over Justin Trudeau, who is seeing a continued and gradual slide in terms of both vote intention and approval. Thomas Mulcair’s NDP is seeing a real but modest uptick in its fortunes and the party has now re-established itself as a contender in a three-way race.

The current numbers place the Conservatives in a position very similar to where they were in the lead-up to their majority win in 2011. Once again, the two main opposition parties face a perfect storm of vote-splitting favouring Mr. Harper.

What’s going on here? Voters are giving the government very poor marks on what they tell us are the truly important election issues — and yet, Mr. Harper’s prospects are certainly much brighter than they were back in September. The driving forces are clear enough; what isn’t clear is how long they can be expected to last as the race becomes more heated and closely followed by voters themselves. At this stage, here’s what we see behind the Conservatives polling strength:

A dramatic conversion of the senior vote to his cause; Success in convincing that group (and a few others) that issues around terror, security and culture are the most important ballot questions — and ones that only Harper can answer convincingly; A clear and improbable victory to date in the values war which is so critical to the emotional engagement of voters; Mr. Harper’s clear victory to date on the battle to be the candidate best representing voters’ interests, and in terms of clarity of his plans, and; A modest but significant recovery in Quebec and a major improvement in fortunes in Ontario linked to success on points three and four.

As the seniors’ cohort gets larger and larger, it continues to vote in large numbers. As the youth cohort gets smaller relative to population, it votes less and less (about half the rate of twenty years ago). For these reasons, the senior vote is absolutely critical in shaping election outcomes.

What’s striking about the chart above is how different things look in senior Canada. Stephen Harper would win a clear majority there, but would be around 30 points across all other age segments. Yes, he has a very large lead with men as well, but this is both smaller and less critical as women vote in the same numbers as men. It’s interesting that the NDP’s support is almost a mirror image of Harper’s with its strength in women and younger Canada.

As we expected, the terrorism-inflamed climate of late 2014 produced majority support for the rather aggressive Bill C-51. As in our earlier tracking, we find that concerns over civil liberties and privacy have started exerting more influence and support for the bill has dropped accordingly. We have seen a dramatic net drop of nearly 15 points (and support probably will continue to erode) — and no party constituency outside the Conservative fold clearly supports this bill. It may be that Thomas Mulcair’s rise is in some measure linked to the NDP anticipating where the public would be on this issue.

The evolution of public opinion on C-51, as with other issues around security, underlines the paradox of an electorate withdrawing support from Mr. Harper’s key positions while it frets about a brutal economic outlook — even as he manages to hang on to a modest lead in vote intention. Mr. Harper may owe his current polling strength to presenting a message that is clear, consistent and appears to be values-based.

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 March 25-31, 2015. In total, a random sample of 3,901 Canadian adults aged 18 and over responded to the survey. The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/-1.6 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.