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The latest polling numbers continue to show a tight race between the Green, Liberal and PC parties, at the beginning of what is likely to be an election year.

An opinion poll released Thursday by MQO Research shows P.E.I.’s governing Liberal party holding the support of 33 per cent of decided voters, trailing the Green party, standing at 34 per cent. The PC party is holding onto third place with 28 per cent of decided voters, while 39 per cent of voters are either undecided or do not plan to vote. The provincial NDP stands at two per cent support.

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Since last October, support for the Greens and Liberals has climbed two percentage points while the PC’s, in the midst of a leadership race, have dropped by two percentage points. The NDP saw the largest drop in popularity, dropping five percentage points.

"The numbers are certainly looking toward a minority government at this point," said MQO research director David Head.

The poll was conducted by telephone from Jan. 21 to Jan. 27, 2019 with a random selection of eligible voters. The margin of error is ± 4.9 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

MQO polls have consistently shown support for the PC Party at a much higher level than those of Corporate Research Associates, another major polling firm following public opinion on P.E.I. Thursday’s poll, showing PC support at 28 per cent contrasts with a poll released by CRA in December, which showed PC support at 20 per cent. While MQO polls have maintained PC support between 28 and 30 per cent over the last year, CRA polls have shown PC support oscillate from 17 per cent in February 2018 to 26 per cent in May 2018, before settling to 20 per cent during August and November polling.

Head would not comment on the differences in methodologies employed by the two polling firms, but noted the margin of error, at 4.9 percentage points, could account for some of the differences between the polling results.

“That's a fairly wide gap of where the true number lies," Head said.

"They're both snapshots in time, so whatever's going on during the data collection period in the province on the political landscape, that's going to have an impact on the numbers as well," he said.

The poll also found that opinions on the provincial outlook were largely unchanged. Twenty-five per cent of Islanders reported that their outlook on P.E.I. had improved, while 52 per cent said it had stayed the same. Twenty-one per cent of Islanders said their outlook had become worse, two percentage points more than October.



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