Few of these numbers offer much seasonal cheer to the beleaguered Conservative party. It seems mired at 26 points — a precipitous fall from the majority heights of 2011. Yet despite a bruising year of problems, with questions around ethics and accountability, our rough forecast — based on adjustments accounting for who’s most likely to actually show up and vote — shows a three-way dead heat.
In other words, get ready for the return of the permanent campaign — which should rise in intensity in the coming year. While we will focus on the horserace issues here, this poll is a segue to a much more in-depth survey of where Canadians are on a range of key issues that we will be rolling out in the coming weeks. We will try also to connect this particular polling snapshot with some of the patterns and trends we have seen over the past year, and compare it to the 2011 election.
Beginning with the obvious, things are very different now from the aftermath of the last election. The CPC has fallen a full 14 points, the NDP has dropped about half as far and the resurgent LPC has risen from the grave to nearly double their nadir performance in 2011.
Let’s start with the clear loser to date: Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. The freshly minted majority of 2011 is nearly unrecognizable in the husk of the party’s current constituency. Not only have the Conservatives lost by far the largest portion of the electorate, most of these defectors have moved to the Liberal camp.
Mr. Harper’s approval numbers have hit new lows, confidence in the country and the direction of the federal government also have plumbed record new lows in recent polling history — and nothing in this poll suggests any immediate reversal of the trend. The Senate spending scandal, the yet-to-be-completed investigation of the ‘robocalls’ vote suppression affair and the emergence both of an attractive young Liberal leader and an impressive Thomas Mulcair (who doubled his approval ratings over the past year) have all come together to produce serious problems for Stephen Harper’s government.
Yet even these difficulties might not be the factors that ultimately undermine the Harper administration. The dénouement (which appears increasingly inevitable) may come from the long grind of a declining outlook on medium and longer-term prospects for the economy.
The growing conviction that progress may be over, that the middle class is shrinking and falling back and that the future only gets worse in the longer term — these may be the deeper forces which define the next election and its outcome. The Conservatives may claim Canada is on the upswing but Canadians increasingly are telling us that they are falling down — particularly the nearly three in four who don’t count themselves supporters of this government.
The reduced constituency for the CPC lives in a Canada very different from the rest of the country. Conservative Canada is thrilled with the direction of the country and the government. They are buoyant about the future and tell us they have done pretty darn well in recent times. Even this hasn’t prevented the defection of over a third of the party’s 2011 supporters — who now have joined the majority of Canadians who increasingly are pessimistic and perhaps even angry about the direction of the country, the economy and the federal government.
In addition to the lowest-ever score on national direction and the lowest-ever scores for trust in government and the health of our democracy, we are seeing the lowest-ever number of Canadians describing themselves as ‘middle class’. Mirroring a similar (perhaps even steeper) decline in the United States, only 47 per cent of Canadians now consider themselves middle class — down from over two-thirds when Mr. Harper took office. The shifts are all downward — to the burgeoning ‘working class’ and the poor.
The longer-term outlook on the future is even darker. The crisis of the middle class — and the spectacle of rising privilege at the top income echelons, while most Canadians feel they’re stagnating or falling backward — has become the most important issue of the day. How the parties confront this defining issue will be the decisive factor in shaping the outcome of the next election.
So far, there is no clear evidence that any party has shown it can solve this master issue. This may be why the likely voter projections show a vitual deadlock (probably reflecting a ‘none of the above’ mentality, which may explain the recent rise in Green Party support).
What else can we learn from this poll, and our past year of polling? The LPC and Justin Trudeau are the clear winners of the past year — but the election, of course, is still a long, long way off. That’s not intended to dismiss the Liberals’ formidable achievement: nearly doubling party support and taking the LPC from a near-death experience to a pretty stable lead over the past several months. Trudeau is re-establishing the center of the political spectrum and his growth has come from an almost perfectly balanced stream of voters from both the right and left — with an equal measure of returning disaffected Liberals, the ones who sat out the last election.
This new Liberal constituency is interesting. Although Trudeau may be the poster child for youthful optimism, his real strengths lie with grey Canada — where he now has a large lead. This may not the brand image the Liberals sought but boomers and seniors bring two huge political advantages with them. They are the largest cohorts in the electorate — and almost all of them vote.
The Liberals also have recaptured the new Canadian vote (at least temporarily) and have a larger lead there than with the Canadian-born. The ‘big shift’ may be stuttering for the time being.
The NDP has been humbled numerically since its astonishing breakthrough in 2011 — but their loss is relatively half as deep as the CPC’s attrition. Mr. Mulcair is doing much better than Mr. Harper and his party has a good opportunity to capture support on the declining middle and rising uber-rich fronts.
Moreover, it should be noted that there is a large cohort of center-left voters who would move easily from LPC to NDP, depending on who is seen as the more plausible bet to defeat Harper. We have seen just such volatility in these ranks over the past couple of years and this cohort could swing back to Mr. Mulcair again. In fact, it is Stephen Harper who, according to second-choice statistics, has the least opportunity to grow his vote.
The stage is now set for an almost unprecedented contest across three almost equally-poised parties. The contest will be for the hearts and minds of the beleaguered middle class and perhaps the newly-swollen ranks of working class and poor.
The prospects of a tie raise the spectre of a coalition government — something that frightens parties, not voters. Expect to hear party leaders deliver clear denunciations of coalitions — but remember, if current trends continue, you can expect to hear the C-word a lot more often.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Frank Graves
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