EKOS: Tories Lead by 3.2 (Past Week)

Like clockwork, CBC has released EKOS' latest poll results. EKOS has not picked up the increase in the Tory national lead that Angus Reid and Ipsos observed. However, the regional patterns were very similar in these three polls: Ontario is almost certainly a dead heat, while the Liberals are doing well in Atlantic Canada and the Conservatives are making MB/SK look like Alberta. The NDP is at 13.5% nationally in the latter week of the EKOS poll, which drops it to 14.3% in my projection. It looks like the 18% in the Angus Reid poll from yesterday is a bit of an outlier.

Still, few changes in the seat projection, though the Liberals have lost 3 seats in the past two updates combined. The NDP is back down to 33, but still survives thanks to Liberal weakness in Ontario and Tory weakness in BC:

CON - 133 134
LIB - 90
BQ - 52 51
NDP - 33

The average Conservative national lead pulls back slightly to 4.8% 4.7%.

Another part of the poll looked at Canadians' preferred electoral outcome and their support for a Liberal/NDP coalition. Here is a summary of the numbers:

Liberal vs. Conservative: 37.8-36.2
Majority Liberal vs. Majority Conservative: 22.2-26
Coalition vs. Conservative: 40.9-39.1

The coalition issue increases support by about 3% on each side, so it appears that Canadians are not really afraid of it. However, bringing it up may still help the Tories electorally: while the 3% on the Left are probably mostly electors that would vote NDP anyway, the 3% on the Right might be Liberal/Conservative swing voters that would switch their vote to block a coalition. Indeed, the share of voters wanting a Conservative government is very close to the share of voters that would vote Conservative in every region except Québec (where a few Bloc voters may prefer the Tories to the Grits). Thus increasing the former number by 3% would really suit Stephen Harper, and could make the difference between a loss and a comfortable minority, or a comfortable minority and a majority.

Edit: Some weights were not originally assigned correctly.