TORONTO – The balance of power between the parties is changing. At the beginning of the third week of the election campaign, the Conservatives consolidate the advantage over the Liberal Party, completely overturning the balance in voting intentions in view of the electoral round on September 20th. 

To certify the overtaking of the party led by Erin O’Toole on that of outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are the latest 11 polls carried out daily by three different polling institutes from 25 to 28 August. In all the investigations the Conservative Party is clearly in the lead, with the Liberal Party losing ground and with Jagmeet Singh’s NDP not taking off. In the latest polls, those carried out on August 28, the Tories capitalize on the difficulties encountered by the Liberal leader in this election campaign.

According to Nanos, O’Toole’s vatnage on Trudeau is only 2.1 percentage points – 33.2 percent against 31.1 percent – while for Mainstreet Research the gap between the two parties is much wider: even 9.5 percent, with the conservatives at 37.8 percent and the liberals collapsed to 28.3 percent. These figures are obviously a source of concern for the entourage of the outgoing prime minister, also because the polls of the previous days had highlighted how since the beginning of the electoral campaign two constants in voting intentions have been repeated: the progressive decline in consensus around the grits and the increase in the electoral strength of the conservatives.

In addition, we are beginning to glimpse percentages that would not only lead to a clear and unexpected victory for the Conservative Party, but even to a triumph with the potential achievement of an absolute majority of the seats at stake. Historically in Canada, during elections, the party that approaches or even breaks through 40 percent manages to govern with a majority government.

For Trudeau’s liberals, at this point, we need a change of gear in this electoral campaign, which began with very different expectations and under other auspices. It was in fact the liberal prime minister who decided to force his hand and go to early elections, when the other parties had declared themselves against and with an electorate more concerned about the developments of the pandemic and the economic crisis caused by Covid-19.
Now the outgoing prime minister pays duty for these basic contradictions. Of course, there are elements that still give hope for a possible recovery of the gap that currently divides the Tories from the Liberals.

An encouraging figure for Trudeau is that of the disappointing results of the NDP, still stuck at 20 percent since the beginning of the election campaign. A lack of strength that could push Ndippini voters in individual districts to opt for the useful vote and bet on the liberal candidate over the conservative one.

Pic from Elections.ca