Liberals Maintain Lead Over Conservatives

NDP REBOUND?

[Ottawa – October 14, 2015] We’re less than five days away from Election Day and the Liberals are maintaining a small but stable four-point lead over the second-place Conservative Party. The NDP is in third place, but the party is up almost four points over yesterday and may be showing signs of resuscitation after its decline over the last month.

The NDP is doing significantly better in Quebec, where the bloom is off the rose for the Conservative Party, who at one point seemed to be gaining ground over cultural and values concerns. Ontario is swinging decisively Liberal and the Conservative Party is likely to lose seats here, despite the prospect of vote splitting among centre-left voters. British Columbia remains a four-way race and the NDP may be recovering here.

Support for the Conservative Party rises progressively with age and the party retains a clear lead with seniors, although this advantage might be shrinking. In a stark contrast, NDP support declines with age. What is remarkable about Liberal support is how balanced it is across age groups.

The data on second choice provide some insights into each party’s potential for growth. If we combine each respondent’s first and second choice, the Liberal Party has a theoretical vote ceiling of 55 points. In a speech earlier today, Justin Trudeau asked Canadians for a majority mandate and these findings suggest there are certainly enough potential Liberals out there to make this happen. The NDP has a vote ceiling of 45 per cent meaning that while the party is still ten points off the lead, they still have plenty of headroom. The Conservatives, however, have a vote ceiling of just 38 points meaning that even if Stephen Harper could (improbably) convert every second choice voter to his camp, his party would still fall short of a majority.

All in all, the Liberals hold a clear advantage and, more importantly, this lead is stable. If Stephen Harper is not able to improve his party’s standing over the next day or two, it is highly doubtful that he will be able to get the strong minority he’ll need to retain power, let alone a majority.

Methodology:

This study involved a blended sample collected using two separate methodologies: Computer Assisted Live Interviews (CATI) and EKOS’ proprietary 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 figures in this report are based on a three-day rolling sample. Each day, a new day’s worth of interviewing is added and the oldest day is dropped. The field dates for this survey are October 11-13, 2015.* In total, a random sample of 1,179 Canadian adults aged 18 and over responded to the survey (1,030 by HD-IVR, 149 by live interviewer). The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/- 2.9 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.

*Note that due to the Thanksgiving holiday, we did not run the live interviewer portion on Sunday, October 11th or Monday, October 12th.

Click here for the full report: Full Report (October 14, 2015)

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