Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau addresses supporters at the B.C. Day Liberal barbeque in Vancouver, B.C., on Monday August 4, 2014.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Are the Liberals in the midst of a summer surge, or are their recently glowing polling numbers a fluke?
A weighted average of the latest polls suggests the Liberals currently enjoy the support of 39 per cent of Canadians, one of the highest aggregate levels of support registered by the party since Justin Trudeau became leader in April 2013. That puts them well ahead of the Conservatives, currently at 28 per cent support, and the New Democrats, who trail in third with 22 per cent.
The Greens are currently polling at around 6 per cent, with the Bloc Québécois at 4 per cent.
Translated into seats, the Liberals would likely be able to win about 153, shy of the 169 needed to form a majority government in the expanded House of Commons but more than quadrupling their current representation. The Conservatives would likely drop to around 100 seats, with the New Democrats taking 81 and the Bloc and Greens splitting the remainder.
But is this sudden surge in Liberal support for real? While the party has been leading in the polls consistently now for 16 months, their numbers had stabilized since the beginning of the year in the mid-30s. The Conservatives, meanwhile, were incrementally improving to around 30 per cent, while the New Democrats were rock-solid at between 23 and 25 per cent.
That the Liberals are now pushing 40 per cent is due primarily to the two most recent polls published by Forum Research and EKOS Research. The former pegged Liberal support to be 44 per cent. With the exception of a single poll from May 2013, also conducted by Forum, the Liberals have not been recorded with support that high since the days before the Conservatives came to power in 2006. The EKOS poll put the Liberals at 39 per cent, a less unusual result but still relatively high, and had the Tories at just 26 per cent – their lowest number in recent memory.
Centre-left lack of consensus
The polls have had a harder time pegging the support of the Liberals and New Democrats than they have the Conservatives. Over the last 10 polls, the Conservatives have been registered at between 26 and 33 per cent, with all but the highest and lowest putting the party between 28 and 31 per cent.
By contrast, the Liberals have been anywhere between 30 and 44 per cent, double the spread of the Tories and with more pollsters at either end of the spectrum. The New Democrats usually bear the brunt of the variation, with between 18 and 27 per cent support. This may be the product of voters shifting more easily between the Liberals and NDP than between the Conservatives and either party, or it could be caused by the methodological differences between the pollsters.
Since the beginning of 2014, Forum has averaged 38.9 per cent for the Liberals, against 29.1 per cent for the Conservatives and 21.5 per cent for the NDP. EKOS has averaged 35.7 per cent for the Liberals, 27.4 per cent for the Conservatives, and 22.7 per cent for the NDP.
But other pollsters recently in the field paint a different picture. Abacus Data has averaged 34 per cent for the Liberals this year, with the Conservatives at 29 per cent and the NDP at 23.3 per cent. Angus Reid Global has averaged just 31.2 per cent for the Liberals, 30 per cent for the Conservatives, and 26.2 per cent for the NDP.
Both Abacus and Angus Reid conduct their polls online, while Forum uses interactive voice response. But mode of contact is not necessarily the main cause of the discrepancy, as EKOS has done its polling both online and via the telephone.
Is one set of polls wrong? While possible, without any means of verifying which is on the mark we are best to look at the average. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. But EKOS and Forum have polled most recently in the middle and end of July, while Abacus and Angus Reid last polled in June and early July. It is possible that, when these firms next report, they will show a spike in Liberal support too.
For now, however, the polls look good for the Liberals. Since Mr. Trudeau became leader, 59 national polls have been conducted and his party has led or been tied for the lead in all but five of them – and the last three of those were done by a single pollster (Angus Reid). The party is likely to come down from their recent high simply due to who next publishes new numbers. But roughly one year from the next federal election, the Liberal amorphous lead endures.
ThreeHundredEight.com's vote projection model aggregates all publicly released polls, weighing them by sample size, date, and the polling firm's accuracy record. The seat projection model makes individual projections for all ridings in the country, based on the provincial and regional shifts in support since the 2011 election. Projections are subject to the margins of error of the opinion polls included in the model, as well as the unpredictable nature of politics at the riding level.
Éric Grenier writes about politics and polls at ThreeHundredEight.com.