The banner at the top shows people who say they voted for the various parties in 2006. The columns underneath indicate where those people say they are now in terms of current voting intention.

Look first at the CPC column. I said column, not row – that’s how you get confused. Among declared 2006 Conservative voters, 84% say they intend to vote Conservative again this time – the highest vote retention of any of the parties. The rest have scattered various ways: 6% to the Liberals, 5% to the NDP; and 4% to the Greens.

Note: when the Conservatives lose voters, it does not affect their opponents differentially – each of the other national parties gets a bit of the honey, meaning none of them emerges from the pack on the basis of this shift. Note also: there are virtually no respondents claiming they voted Tory last time, who now plan to vote for the Bloc.

Now look at the LPC column. The Liberals aren’t doing well at all. Only 62% of those who say they voted Liberal last time are planning to repeat – the lowest retention rate of any of the parties, which is perhaps not surprising given that they are the ones whose support has eroded most since ’06.

Where have all the Liberals gone? The other parties have picked them, every one. (Apologies to post-boomers). Interestingly they have split almost equally right and left. Eighteen percent have gone to the Conservatives. So the Conservatives have been the single largest winner from Liberal weakness. However, the 19% who have vamoosed off to the left have gone to the New Democrats in sizeable numbers, but also to the Greens – meaning their impact is dissipated.

In other words, in sum these trends benefit the Conservatives. The Conservatives have the highest retention rate in terms of their ’06 voters; they are winning over about half the wayward Liberals from ’06; and they benefit also from the fact that the half of the straying Liberal flock they haven’t captured are splitting in two different directions once they leave the old Liberal pasture.

In the case of the other parties, the margins of error are getting a little high to read too much in, but it looks like the NDP is holding on to a large number of its ’06 voters. Surprisingly, perhaps, those who have moved seem to be heading to the Liberals. But the New Democrats also seem to be picking up voters straying from the Bloc.

Paul Adams is the Executive Director of Media and Strategic Communications at EKOS Research. He is former political reporter for the CBC and Globe and Mail and is currently also an assistant professor of journalism at Carleton.

Posted on September 17th, 2008 under Commentary by Paul Adams, National Results • RSS 2.0 feed