Federal Tories unaffected by Pallister’s unpopularity: poll

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This article was published 05/04/2021 (1696 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — If a federal election were held last month, most Manitoba MPs would have kept their jobs, according to new polling that suggests Premier Brian Pallister’s unpopularity isn’t hurting his federal cousins.

Probe Research’s recurring survey of Manitobans’ federal voting preferences puts the Tories at 37 per cent across Manitoba and the Liberals at 29 per cent, with the NDP following by four points.

Within Winnipeg, 37 per cent of decided voters would side with the Liberals — essentially the same percentage as the 2019 election. The NDP would collect 28 per cent support and the Conservatives would take 36 per cent, while the Greens would get seven percentage points.

“This is not a bad story for the federal Conservatives; they seem to be shielded from what’s happening provincially here,” said University of Manitoba political scientist Chris Adams.

“We’re back at when the Conservatives took back some of their ridings in the last election.”

The polling, taken March 10 to 26, overlaps with a survey that found the Progressive Conservatives have fallen to 27 per cent support provincially, while the NDP leads at 42 per cent.

In Winnipeg, the federal Tories took a hit at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when voters rallied around the Trudeau government in spring 2020 as Ottawa rolled out unprecedented economic supports.

The Conservatives dropped to 19 per cent support in the city but recovered to around 27 per cent by the fall, a position they’ve held steady despite changes in provincial support.

“What startles me the most is the federal brand is not affected by the drop in polling numbers at the provincial level,” said Adams.

The Liberals are leading in both southern quadrants of the city, which tend to be a bellwether for federal results, while the federal NDP remain solid in the core. The Tories seem to be holding support in the two ridings they took from the Liberals in the 2019 vote.

“It’s interesting that there hasn’t been any kind of either a bump for (leader) Erin O’Toole and the Conservatives, but there also hasn’t been a drop,” said Curtis Brown, a principal at Probe Research.

The polling period included a period of persistent leaks from Tory MPs about rifts in the party, and an ill-fated push by some of the grassroots to declare that climate change is real, which backfired when party members argued the text of the motion came down too hard on certain industries.

Brown observed the percentage of Manitobans living outside the Perimeter Highway who said they’d vote for a party other than the top four has doubled from three to six per cent.

“I wonder if that means a slight bit of appetite for a right-wing, not-Conservative option like Wexit, or something like that,” said Brown, though he stressed this is not currently a significant cohort in Manitoba.

“It is something that any conservative party on the Prairies has to be aware of, just based on history.”

The polling occurred as the Liberals experienced COVID-19 vaccination shipment disruptions, which appear to not be affecting the party’s brand in Manitoba, despite multiple premiers blaming Ottawa for vaccine rollout problems.

Brown noted premiers instead seem to be absorbing criticism about the vaccine rollout as well as the failings documented in personal care homes, as health care is almost entirely within the provincial realm.

Adams pointed to an education gap in responses, with the Conservative picking up more than double the support of the Liberals among those with a college degree or less, and the Liberals by far the most popular with university graduates.

He expects the WE Charity scandal could be used further as a wedge. The affair surrounded the prime minister’s family members being paid to speak at WE events and his finance minister, Bill Morneau, resigning after accepting $41,000 in travel-related expenses with charity.

“I perceive that the Conservatives, during a federal campaign, would hammer hard on the WE scandal, to take advantage of these differences between well-educated Manitobans and lower-educated Manitobans,” he said, particularly if opposition parties successfully paint the government as disconnected elites trying to benefit their friends.

Yet Adams said the Tories likely still won’t gain any Winnipeg seats if they don’t boost their support among women voters.

Politics watchers almost unanimously anticipate an election this year, though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has recently hinted he’d try avoiding a spring campaign.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca

Probe poll on March 2021 federal vote intentions