If the election was held today, the Liberals would win — but with fewer seats, Signal analysis says

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This article was published 30/08/2021 (1470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA—The Conservatives have widened their lead in popular support but the Liberals would still take enough seats today to eke out a minority victory as the federal election approaches its halfway point, a new analysis from Vox Pop Labs shows.

Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives now have the support of 34.1 per cent of Canadians, compared to 32.3 per cent for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

The analysis — from The Signal, Vox Pop Labs’ election forecast for The Star — continues to show the Liberals edging past the Conservatives in seat count to secure a minority win.

The projection has the Conservatives sitting at 136 seats to the Liberals’ 141: a margin that has narrowed over the past week. When Trudeau called the election, the Liberals held 155 seats in the House of Commons.

The Tories clocking in at two percentage points ahead of the Liberals, and with their five-seat gain since last week’s projections, suggests that initial predictions for a runaway Liberal majority are no longer in the cards, said Clifton van der Linden, a political scientist and founder of Vox Pop Labs.

“The ground has shifted in a substantial way. The Liberals are (struggling) to hold on to their lead. The Conservatives seem to have the momentum in this race at the moment. But … we’re only at the midway point in the campaign and a lot can change between now and election day,” van der Linden told The Star.

The New Democrats, meanwhile, have 19.4 per cent of voter support, with the Green party sitting at 3.9 per cent.

“We are starting to see indications that the Conservative momentum may be resulting in a consolidation of support for the Liberals in some regions, drawing the vote share and vote support away from the NDP in an effort to stymie the Conservatives from forming government,” van der Linden said.

The Signal forecast is generated by a model that takes a poll of polls going back to 2009 to account for each political polling firm’s “house bias,” and compares those surveys against actual election results.

This week’s analysis added results from 10 new polls released over the past week, which saw the national Liberal campaign encourage candidates to stay the course amid a “tougher” than expected start to the race.

What’s emerged as something of a wild card is Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada, van der Linden said, which has started to see an increase in vote share.

Those gains haven’t translated into seats, but it remains to be seen whether the party will draw support away from the Conservatives and if that could grant the Liberals a slight edge.

And across the regions, Ontario is the province poised to serve as the “kingmaker” of the campaign.

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“As of the end of last week, we were still seeing the Conservatives going up and the Liberals going down. Now, we’re seeing the Conservatives and Liberals moving almost in parallel with one another,” van der Linden said.

“This is not a huge shift … But it may suggest that the Liberals are sort of consolidating some support in Ontario, and whether that’s enough to turn the tide is, at this point, still an open question.”

The Conservatives are currently leading the province with 36 per cent support, with the Liberals coming in right behind with 34.7 per cent of voter support.

With files from Alex Boutilier

Raisa Patel is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @R_SPatel