MONTREAL — A year out from the 2015 federal vote, Stephen Harper’s worst-case election scenario probably looks like the Ekos poll that Radio-Canada and the website iPolitics released on Sunday.

It would see the ruling Conservatives (26 per cent) pushed back to the Reform heartland of Western Canada next year while the Liberals (38 per cent) and, to a lesser degree, the NDP (25 per cent) take the lion’s share of seats in Central and Atlantic Canada.

This is hardly a definitive picture. The dynamics that will shape the next campaign are still fluid. To wit: even as they were in the field at about the same time, Ekos and Abacus are coming up with different takes on public opinion this week.

The Abacus poll released on Monday reports a more competitive battle between the Liberals and the Conservatives (32 and 30 per cent respectively) among committed voters — with the NDP (25 per cent) on the rise.

But the two polls concur on what remains the most concerning feature of the current pre-electoral landscape for the Conservatives. Even when they are on the right side of public opinion, they can’t seem to move the needle their way in voting intentions.

In the lead-up to the Ekos and Abacus polls, the issue of Canada’s role in the international coalition against Islamic State extremists dominated the national conversation, with the Conservatives ultimately going it alone on a combat mission.

According to Ekos, the government won that debate. A significant majority of the poll’s respondents were in favour of Canada’s participation in the airstrikes against Islamic State. Yet the governing party’s standing in voting intentions is unchanged from the firm’s previous poll.

Abacus, for its part, has the Liberals dropping six points among committed voters, a loss no doubt facilitated by what was widely panned as a mediocre performance on the part of Justin Trudeau in the Islamic State debate. But that did not translate into a gain for the Conservatives. Instead support for the NDP and the Greens went up a few notches.

With every passing poll, the non-Conservative vote looks more solid, with public disaffection toward Harper running higher than with any other federal leader including the Bloc Québécois’ otherwise unloved Mario Beaulieu.

In the Ekos poll, Harper’s party was the second choice of less than 10 per cent of the supporters of the other parties.

Voters that supported the Conservative stance on Islamic State and that had supported the party in the last election still failed to come back to the fold.

Based on those trends, the best Conservative hopes for re-election next year rest more heavily than ever on a favourable opposition vote split in the party’s favour.

But there are emerging variations that are less auspicious for the ruling party.

The Ekos poll for instance suggests that the Liberals could lose Quebec to the NDP and still win Canada by beating the Conservatives out of Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

Like CROP a few weeks ago, Ekos essentially found the Bloc (13 per cent) on life support. Mulcair — whose party leads the pack in francophone Quebec — is so far the main beneficiary of the sovereigntist party’s demise.

But Ekos has the Liberals making up for their shortcomings in Quebec with quasi-majority support in Ontario (49 per cent) and a 20-point lead in Atlantic Canada.

Support for the Conservatives has been off the party’s 2011 score by a significant margin for more than a year.

Over that time the anybody-but-Harper trend has gained momentum.

Until now it had been widely assumed that if and when the Liberals faltered, Conservative fortunes would recover.

But when Trudeau tripped last month it was Mulcair and not Harper that got a bit of a hand up.

In the Ekos poll, the NDP was the second choice of more than half of the Liberal respondents (54 per cent). Barely one in six Liberal supporters opted for the Conservatives.

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Mulcair’s approval rating is the highest of all the federal leaders. Both those facts hint at NDP growth potential.

For now the Conservatives will find a silver lining to their grim poll results in the fact that the NDP is gaining ground at the expense of the Liberals. But history suggests than an electorate determined to find an alternative to the incumbent usually finds a way to have its way in the polling booth.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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