FORUM POLL: Conservatives Hold Narrow Lead

Projection shows Conservatives would win minority government.

Yesterday, I reported on the latest Nanos Poll, which showed the Conservatives and Liberals tied at 33% following the release of Andrew Scheer’s Climate Plan.

As I said at the time, “The survey diverges from some other polls in showing the Liberals catching up to the Conservatives, and also diverges in terms of the NDP leading the Greens by 7 points (17% to 10%),” and added “So, we should wait for some other surveys to find out whether this latest Nanos Poll is an outlier, or a trend.”

Well, we now have another survey to look at.

The latest Forum Research poll does indeed differ from the Nanos survey.

Here are the key numbers:

Conservatives – 35%

Liberals – 29%

NDP – 13%

Greens – 12%

Bloc – 5%

People’s – 4%

Other – 2%

Regionally, the Conservatives lead the Liberals 35% – 32% in Atlantic Canada, the Liberals lead the Conservatives 31% – 23% in Quebec, the Liberals lead the Conservatives 36% – 32% in Ontario, while the Conservatives dominate the West, with a 57% – 18% lead over the Liberals in Saskatchewan/Manitoba, a 57% – 16% point lead over the NDP in Alberta, and a 34% – 25% lead over the Liberals in BC.

Forum says those national and regional popular vote numbers would result in a Conservative minority government, with 150 seats. The Liberals would be second with 135 seats, the NDP would have 32, the Bloc 16, and the Greens 5.

In contrast to the Nanos poll which showed the Conservatives losing support following their climate plan release, the Forum poll shows basically no change. The Conservatives gained 1 point since the last Forum poll in early June, while the Liberals lost 1 point, the NDP stayed the same, the Greens lost 1 point, the Bloc lost 1 point, and the People’s Party remain unchanged.

Considering that the margin of error in these surveys is about 3% either way, those changes are meaningless.

It should be noted that Nanos polls generally show better results for the Liberals, and Forum polls generally show better results for the Conservatives, so we can gather that the overall federal horserace is pretty close, with the Conservatives leading narrowly, and the NDP and Greens fighting for third.

Spencer Fernando

Photos – Twitter