The Conservatives continue to trend upwards in this week’s Nanos Party Power Index, reaching their highest score since August 2013, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper is also at a 12-month high point.

Latest Power Index numbers:

  • Liberals score 56 points out 100, down a point from last week
  • Conservatives score 54 points, up one point from last week
  • NDP scores 48 points, unchanged from last week

Conservatives on an upswing

The weekly tracking suggests a seven-week positive trajectory for the Tories, a trend that has been largely driven by increasingly positive scores in two key election battlegrounds, Ontario and Quebec.

Though the Liberals still score above the Conservatives on the Index, the two-point margin is also the closest the two parties have been in a year and a half.

 

 

The narrowing gap isn’t a case of the Liberals eroding – it’s about the Conservatives gaining strength from an almost unprecedented stint of no bad news and no scandals to speak of.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also hit a new 12-month high on the preferred Prime Minister measure, with 34 per cent of respondents choosing the Conservative Party leader. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair are both around their 12-month averages, earning 31 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively. Green Leader Elizabeth May had four per cent of the vote.

The Nanos Party Power Index methodology is comprised of a basket of political goods that includes ballot preferences, accessible voters, preferred PM views and evaluations of the leaders. It is modeled similar to a standard confidence index. It is a random telephone survey conducted with live agents, reaching out to Canadians through a land- and cell-line dual frame sample.