LIBERALS SCATTERING TO THE WINDS

[September 17, 2008] The latest EKOS tracking poll shows very little movement from yesterday in the “topline” standings of the parties, which gives us an opportunity to direct attention to one of the underlying dynamics of the election campaign.  

Structurally, the single most important change from the last election is a drop in the Liberal vote. So where are those voters going? Well, pretty much everywhere. In fact if you compare voters’ current vote intentions with how they report having voted in 2006, you’ll see that former Liberals are the single largest source of new recruits to every other party. 

Among Green Party supporters, fully one-fifth say they voted Liberal last time. (The second largest source of Green votes is the NDP, whose ‘06 voters make up 14% of current Green support.) 

The NDP is also reaping a harvest of former Liberals. Sixteen percent of their current supporters are former Liberal voters. 

The Conservatives are benefiting too. Twelve percent of current Tory supporters say they voted Liberal last time.

Even the Bloc Québécois owes 8% of its current support to the Liberals.

interestingly, this is something of a departure from traditional voting patterns in Canada, where the Conservative Party (or the old Progressive Conservative Party) was usually the main beneficiary of wayward Liberals.

 “If the Liberals hope to get back into contention in this election,” said EKOS President Frank Graves, “job number one has to be to gather back in those former supporters who have scattered to the winds.”

Detailed Tables:

National Federal Vote Intention

Q. If a federal election were held tomorrow, which party would you vote for?

Tracking Federal Vote Intention

National Federal Vote Intention

Q. If a federal election were held tomorrow, which party would you vote for?

Methodology:

EKOS’ daily tracking polls are conducted using Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) technology, which allows respondents to enter their preferences by punching the keypad on their phone, rather than telling them to an operator. Each weekday evening, a nationally representative sample of approximately 1,000 Canadians, 18 years of age and older is surveyed.  

The daily tracking number presented in this report is based on a three-day rolling average of surveys collected September 14, 15, and 16. The margin of error associated with this three-day rolling sample of 3,121 decided voters (including leaning) is +/-1.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Please note that the margin of error increases when the results are sub-divided (i.e., error margins for sub-groups such as region, sex, age, income). All the data have been statistically weighted to ensure the samples composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to Census data. 

Click to download PDF: election-08-daily-tracking-sept17-revised

Posted on September 17th, 2008 under National Results • RSS 2.0 feed