Pierre Poilievre, the federal employment minister and chief spokesman for the Conservative party in the House of Commons, has “a very significant likeability issue in his riding,” according to pollster Frank Graves, whose company recently polled Poilievre’s suburban Ottawa constituency of Nepean-Carleton.

A June 1-3 robopoll of 500 constituents found that 41% don’t like Poilievre very much. Only 17% said they like him a lot. In contrast, only 24% strongly dislike the riding's Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod and 28% like her a lot.

The poll (conducted by Ekos subsidiary Probit Inc. with a margin of error of 4.38 points, 19 times out of 20) didn’t measure vote intention, just popularity, but the result is bad for Poilievre.

“My guess is that people are looking at him and saying the more I see of him, the less I like him,” said Graves.

This -- like many other portents -- suggests that the Conservatives' electoral prospects this fall are worse than the top line numbers indicate.

The voters who know Poilievre best don’t like him that much. He is the most prominent public face of his government.

Ever since Finance Minister Joe Oliver went off script in a TV interview -- musing about Harper’s granddaughter -- Poilievre has been fielding questions about Oliver’s budget, generally by warning about the opposition’s risky tax-raising schemes.

Poilievre is ready to cross check anyone at anytime. He has previously gone after, for example, former auditor general Sheila Fraser, and aboriginals who were abused at residential schools.

This week, he took to Twitter to promote a boycott of Tim Hortons, an unusual attack on a big employer by the employment minister.

Like a lot of what this government is doing these days, that move seems aimed at motivating core voters rather than reaching undecided voters. Not a good sign.

Just as every hockey team needs a cheap shot artist, every prime minister needs someone who can deliver a well-timed slash to the ankles.

But Harper is playing Poilievre as his starting centre, and the poor results are increasingly apparent on the scoreboard.

After the Alberta NDP swept the Tories from office, the federal NDP got a big bump, moving them into a three-way tie with the Conservatives and Liberals, suggesting that the next election is anyone’s game.

The conventional wisdom in Ottawa is that a Conservative minority is the most likely outcome, but the conventional wisdom leans toward incumbents.

When you look closely at the numbers, Harper looks less likely than Thomas Mulcair or Justin Trudeau to be prime minister when the snow next falls.

The pool of potential voters is worryingly small for the Conservatives. An Abacus poll last week found 56% of Canadians would consider voting NDP, 51% Liberal and 45% Conservative.

Many voters have given up on Harper but haven’t decided yet whether Mulcair or Trudeau should replace him. As that becomes clearer to voters, and the Conservatives lose their air of inevitability, they may become vulnerable in ridings where voters are keen -- often for rink-related reasons -- to have a representative “at the table.”

The Conservatives have hit security issues as hard as they can, communicating aggressively about the threat of terrorism after the attacks last fall, and for a while it worked, giving Harper a boost.

It isn’t working as well now, and the economy, which is almost always what decides elections, is shrinking.

The Conservatives have a lot of money for attack ads, but their main attack on Trudeau is that he is not ready to become prime minister, which has embedded in it the idea that he will one day be ready.

And what will the Conservatives do now that Mulcair seems to be emerging as the alternative? Run attack ads against him?

They risk spending the last months of their mandate in a futile game of Whack-A-Mole.

smaher@postmedia.com

@stphnmaher