WATCH: How would Canada’s government look if an election was held in July? According to a new poll, the NDP appears to capture most seats, but not enough for a majority. Eric Sorensen reports.
Tom Mulcair and the NDP are still projected to win a small minority government during the October election, according to the latest seat projections.
The numbers, provided to Global News by the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy (LISPOP), suggest the NDP would win 10 more seats (129 in all) than the Conservatives, ending Stephen Harper’s 10-year career as Prime Minister, if an election were held today.
The numbers are almost identical to Lispop’s previous projection where the NDP had 130 seats. But only looking at the country-wide breakdown might mask the regional shifts in support for the parties which contribute to the totals.
LISPOP’s projections are based on a blended sample of polls between July 3 and July 16 among approximately 7,500 respondents.
Since the June 23 seat projections, the nationwide numbers have barely changed. But regionally, the NDP has lost a projected four seats in Ontario and eight seats in Quebec, while the Bloc Quebecois, Conservatives, and Liberals have gained in Quebec.
“At the moment, the change that we see dramatically expressed in early May and really the last month or so up until late June, I think it’s pretty much ebbed, it’s pretty much stopped,” Barry Kay, a politics professor at Wilfrid Laurier University said in an interview Thursday.
A delayed reaction
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But Mulcair’s party, which is projected to form the next government, is gaining in the rest of the country – a delayed reaction from their surge in Quebec.
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According to the latest Lispop projection, the NDP picked up three seats in Atlantic Canada, one seat in the Prairies, one in Alberta, and six in British Columbia when compared to the previous month’s projection.
“I think the initial movement towards the NDP was most noticeable in Quebec, they were gaining elsewhere as well, ever since Alberta but particularly in Quebec,” Kay said.
“Other provinces it was happening more slowly, they were gaining in B.C. but not much in the prairies, hardly at all in Atlantic Canada. It was almost as if there was a delayed effect.”
Why public opinion doesn’t always translate to seats
The updated Lispop projections give the NDP four fewer seats in Ontario than they were projected to win last month and 24 fewer seats than the Conservatives, despite public opinion polls putting the party within striking distance of the ruling Conservatives.
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The apparent disparity comes from the fact that the NDP does especially well in some northern Ontario ridings while barely competing in rural ridings which the Conservatives nearly swept during the last election.
“The NDP does very well and picks up seats in downtown Toronto and Hamilton but particularly in the north,” Kay said.
“But many of those places they’re wasting votes, they’re winning by huge margins in some of those areas whereas in more competitive seats they have a much smaller starting point to move from and the likelihood of winning in Oxford County or Elgin or some of the rural regions of the province are not very great.”
What’s happening in Quebec?
The new Lispop projections suggest the NDP will pick up 52 seats in Quebec – it was 60 last month. The Bloc Quebecois, under the new-old leadership of Gilles Duceppe, picked up two over the month, while the Conservatives picked up four, and the Liberals lost two.
“Each of those other parties, Liberals, Conservative and Bloc, in Quebec, the seats they’re winning are very much concentrated,” Kay said, pointing out that the Liberals do well in Montreal, the Conservatives in Quebec City, and the Bloc Quebecois in the Gaspe region.
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