Mainstreet: Tories Near Majority

The big polling news this morning is the Mainstreet poll for Postmedia putting the Tories at 37%. The first thing to notice is that this poll was conducted almost a week ago, before the French debate. So it doesn't tell us anything about whether the trends that Nanos has observed since then are real. What it does do is reinforce the EKOS, Forum and Angus Reid polls from last week showing the Tories with a clear lead. Note that other than Angus Reid (online poll), all three other polls used IVR technology. By contrast, none of the four pollsters showing a tight Liberal/Conservative race used IVR: Léger, Ipsos and Innovative conduct their polls online, while Nanos uses live interviewers.

Two things of note in this poll: the Tories lead by 10 in ON (though unlike in the Angus Reid survey that showed a similar lead, the NDP is much lower than the Liberals), and the NDP is at 32% in Québec (again, this was before the French debate, so this is consistent with the NDP having fallen to 29-30% since, as shown by Ipsos and Nanos). This poll also included an oversample in Manitoba and Saskatchewan that broadly confirms other pollsters' numbers.

Today's Nanos poll shows stability. The NDP has, for once, not fallen, though the 23% national level is nothing for its supporters to cheer about.

The new projection moves towards the Tories due, of course, to the Mainstreet poll:

CON - 146, +3 (34.4%, +0.7%)
NDP - 97, -1 (25.2%, -0.6%)
LIB - 91, -1 (29.3%, -0.2%)
BQ - 3, -1 (4.9%, -0.2%)
GRN - 1 (5.1%, +0.2%)

This projection also includes the effect of a riding adjustment informed by one of eight new Forum riding polls in the Toronto area. The only one of these polls that was out-of-line with the projection is in Markham--Stouffville, where the Liberals are doing better than expected at the expense of the NDP. This is the riding of Paul Calandra, infamously known for behaviour widely considered disgraceful in the House of Commons. Is that uniting the opposition in his riding? In any case, the adjustment in Markham--Stouffville is +5 for Liberals, -5 for NDP, and this currently swings the riding from the Conservatives to the Liberals in the projection.

The Liberals are now tied with the NDP in the projection that ignores turnout issues:

CON - 134 (32.8%)
LIB - 99 (30.3%)
NDP - 99 (26.0%)
BQ - 5 (5.0%)
GRN - 1 (5.5%)

Apparently, EKOS is switching to daily reporting at 4pm ET / 1pm PT today, so I will post another projection shortly after that.