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Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau  speaks in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill Tuesday April 8, 2014 in Ottawa.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Seamus O'Regan is only the most recent Atlantic Canadian to throw his lot in with the federal Liberals, as the region looks set to swing over to the party in dramatic fashion.

The former host of CTV's Canada AM will be seeking the Liberal nomination in the riding of St. John's South-Mount Pearl, currently represented by NDP MP Ryan Cleary. If polls in the province and the wider region are any indication, Mr. O'Regan has a good chance of winning it.

But the traditional rival of the Liberals in Atlantic Canada has been the Conservative Party rather than the New Democrats. From the 1960s through to the 1980s, the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives traded the region back and forth, with both parties routinely capturing between 40 and 50 per cent of the vote. The NDP only won its first seat in the region in a general election in 1974, and did not win more than two seats before 1997.

The largest victory won by the Liberals in the region in the last 50 years occurred in 1993, when a divided right led to Jean Chrétien capturing all but one seat in Atlantic Canada and 57 per cent of the vote. That later dropped dramatically to 33 per cent in 1997 and between 35 and 44 per cent between 2000 and 2008, before falling to just 29 per cent in 2011. It was the worst performance of the Liberal Party in the region since Confederation.

The rebound under Justin Trudeau has been significant. The party has averaged 54 per cent support in polls conducted so far this year, which would rank as the second-best performance of the party in the last half-century and the best since 1993.

In the 60 polls that have been carried out in Atlantic Canada since Mr. Trudeau became party leader, the Liberals have had majority support in 38 of them. The past eight months have been even better, with the Liberals scoring 50 per cent or more in 20 of the 25 polls published for the region in 2014.

There is even little disagreement on where the party stands, with the highest and lowest results from the polls still putting the Liberals between 45 and 62 per cent support, a respectably tight band considering the normally small sample size of Atlantic Canadian results. The polls that have been published for the individual provinces in the region all show a Liberal landslide of varying magnitudes.

Conservative and NDP woes

While the Liberals are soaring high in the region (the party has led, on average, since November 2012, well before Mr. Trudeau's leadership victory), the Conservatives and New Democrats have been suffering.

The Tories have not recovered from the changes to unemployment insurance that heavily impacted the region. In 2014, the party has averaged just 22 per cent support in Atlantic Canada, which would rank as their worst electoral performance in the party's history. The Conservatives have ranged between 12 and 27 per cent in polls done this past year, suggesting that a historic worst will be hard to avoid without a change of fortunes. Even the Progressive Conservatives took 26 per cent of the vote in Atlantic Canada in the disastrous 1993 campaign.

The New Democrats were not a factor in the region until Alexa McDonough, a former Nova Scotia NDP leader, took over the party in the 1990s. Their haul of eight seats in 1997 remains their best, though the 30 per cent captured in the 2011 election was the highest vote share in the party's history in Atlantic Canada.

The NDP has averaged just 20 per cent in the region in 2014, which would set them back to before the Jack Layton era. Their polling range, between 10 and 28 per cent, is less worrisome for the party, however, at least in the context of their historic performances.

Seat expectations

Based on the average of all polls conducted so far in 2014, the Liberals could capture as many as 24 of 32 seats in Atlantic Canada – including St. John's South-Mount Pearl. Based on the extremes in the polling, the Liberals could take as many as 28 seats or as few as 19. Even that lower bar would rank among the party's better results.

For the Conservatives, they could be reduced to as few as five seats on current polling trends (the party holds 13 seats in the region). That would be their worst since 1993, and it could theoretically become even worse for the party. The lower band bottoms out at zero, though with their better polls they could capture as many as 10.

On current trends, the NDP could win just three seats in Atlantic Canada, half the number the party won in 2011. With the polling ranges, however, the party could win between one and six seats.

That the Liberals will likely win – and win big – in Atlantic Canada next year is one of the safer bets that can be made about the 2015 election. The party has been leading in the region for 22 months and by this time next year all four provincial governments in Atlantic Canada could be headed by a Liberal premier (Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia already are). With the wind in their sails, Seamus O'Regan may not be the last high-profile candidate the Liberals recruit.

Éric Grenier writes about politics and polls at ThreeHundredEight.com.

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