Léger, Mainstreet, Nanos: NDP Falls in Québec; LIBERALS TAKE LEAD IN PROJECTION

Just when you thought things have settled in Québec, all three polls out this morning have the Liberals in the lead there: Léger and Mainstreet, both with a large sample of about 1,000 in QC, have the Liberals in first place at 31-32%, followed by the NDP at just 25%; Nanos also has the Liberals increasing their still marginal lead, 30.9% to 28.5%. What's more, according to Léger, it's a three-way race among francophones: 27% apiece for the Liberals and the Bloc, 26% for the NDP. This is all terrible news for the NDP: is its campaign, which has been steadily losing steam, crashing and burning in Québec in the final few days? Conversely, the Liberals get one more path to victory, and the Bloc's chance of retrieving official party status just shot up.

Nationally, all three polls have the Liberals ahead by 5-8 points, and all three show an Ontario Liberal lead of 11-12.3 points. Suddenly, Ontario looks settled, and Québec is back in the spotlight. All three polls also show the following order in BC: Liberal, Conservative, NDP. That's another nail in the coffin for the NDP.

As you can imagine, the NDP suffered a heavy drop in the projection:

LIB - 129, +6 (35.3%, +0.6%)
CON - 128 (33.1%)
NDP - 74, -8 (21.8%, -0.6%)
BQ - 6, +2 (4.6%)
GRN - 1 (4.3%, +0.1%)

The Liberals have now taken the lead in the projection, albeit by a hair. It's really 50/50 at this point, if you believe the turnout adjustment. For a while, it looked like the Liberals would need to win the popular vote by 3-4 points in order to tie the Tories in the seat count. However, because the recent surge in Liberal support was concentrated in Ontario, the Liberal vote became less inefficient.

Without the turnout adjustment, the Liberals are well ahead:

LIB - 141 (36.4%)
CON - 112 (31.5%)
NDP - 76 (22.4%)
BQ - 8 (4.6%)
GRN - 1 (4.5%)

That's a 15-20% chance of a Tory minority, a 75-80% chance of a Liberal minority, and a 5% chance of a Liberal majority.

It's unclear whether we'll get final updates from any pollster other than Nanos and EKOS. (Update: In addition to Nanos and EKOS, Ipsos will be out with a final poll.) Hopefully Abacus, Forum (and maybe even Environics or CROP), Innovative and Ipsos will also give us a better idea of what's happening in Québec. (Update: Abacus and Innovative will not provide another batch of voting intention numbers) It makes a HUGE difference whether the NDP is at 30% or 25% there.