Jody Wilson-Raybould is facing a tough fight to hold on to her Vancouver riding, with a new Mainstreet Research poll for iPolitics showing the former attorney general narrowly trailing Liberal candidate Taleeb Noormohamed.

The 493-person phone survey of voters in Vancouver Granville, conducted between Aug. 27-28, has Noormohamed leading the pack with 28.6 per cent of support, with Wilson-Raybould close behind at 26 per cent. According to Mainstreet, the margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 4.41 percentage points at the 95 per cent confidence level, rendering the race a statistical tie.

Wilson-Raybould is leading among women voters (28.1 per cent), 50-64 year olds (28) and those 65 or older (27.8), while Noormohamed is ahead with men (35.2 per cent), 18-34 year olds (37.3) and 35-49 year olds (25.5). However, the margins of error for the subsamples are higher because of the smaller number of voters polled.

For example, the number of men polled in the survey numbered in the low 200s.

Conservative candidate Zach Segal was the choice of 14.9 per cent of respondents, while the Greens’ Louise Boutin grabbed 9.2 per cent. Undecided voters made up 10.9 per cent of respondents, while NDP candidate Yvonne Hanson drew support from 7.3 per cent.

Naomi Chocyk, a former staffer to Wilson-Raybould running for the People’s Party of Canada in the riding, was the choice of 3.2 per cent of respondents.

When including leaning voters, the undecided faction falls to 7.3 per cent, while Noormohamed rises to 29.5 per cent, Wilson-Raybould jumps to 26.6 per cent, Segal climbs to 15.8 per cent, Boutin budges up to 9.7 per cent, Hanson sits flat at 7.3 per cent and Chocyk moves to 3.7 per cent.

READ MORE: Former Wilson-Raybould staffer running for PPC in Vancouver Granville

Four years earlier, Wilson-Raybould, a former Crown prosecutor and regional chief for the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, was the star Liberal candidate in the riding, which was expected to be a close race between the Liberals and NDP, with the Conservatives also seen as having an outside chance of winning.

However, come election day, Wilson-Raybould took the riding with nearly 44 per cent of the vote, some 17 points more than runner-up Mira Oreck, the NDP candidate who most recently served as director of stakeholder relations for B.C. Premier John Horgan. Conservative Erinn Broshko finished third with 26 per cent of the vote.

After the election, Wilson-Raybould was named justice minister and attorney general in the new Trudeau government. But of course, earlier this year she was booted from the party’s caucus and removed as its candidate in Vancouver Granville after publicly accusing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his staff of inappropriately pressuring her to broker a deferred prosecution agreement with SNC-Lavalin.

Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion ruled earlier this month that Trudeau ran afoul of the Conflict of Interest Act in pushing Wilson-Raybould to extend the relatively new legal tool to the Quebec-based company.

READ MORE: Wilson-Raybould, Philpott will run as independents in October’s election

Shortly after being kicked out of the Liberal caucus, Wilson-Raybould announced that she would seek re-election as an independent in the 2019 election. The Liberals then nominated Noormohamed a tech entrepreneur, to represent the party in the riding. He unsuccessfully ran for the Liberals in the North Vancouver riding in 2011, losing by nearly 20 points to Conservative Andrew Saxton.

When Mainstreet polled voters in Vancouver Granville strictly on party preference, the Liberals were the top choice at 35.4 per cent, followed by the Conservatives with 16.3, another party at 14.8, the Greens at 8.7, the NDP with 8.6 and the People’s Party at 3.6. Undecided voters composed 12.7 per cent of respondents.

The Liberals lead among both men (39.6 per cent) and women (31.8) and among all age brackets broken down into a subsample, ranging from 41 per cent for 35-49 year olds and 36.9 for 18-34 year olds to 30 per cent among those 65 and older.

When adding in leaning voters, the Liberal lead over the Conservatives grows to 37.9 to 17.2 per cent, with the other party option, the Greens and NDP rounding out the top five at 16.6, 10.1 and 8.6 per cent, respectively. The People’s Party was the choice of 3.6 per cent of respondents, while the undecided segment shrank to 5.9 per cent.

READ MORE: Mainstreet poll suggests close Liberal-NDP race in Windsor West

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