Latest Nanos projections put Liberals in minority territory, but many ridings too close to call

Pollster Nik Nanos of Nanos Research breaks down how the Liberals are converting support into projected seat gains, and how the NDP is failing to keep up.

The latest seat projections from Nanos Research have put Mark Carney’s Liberals in minority government territory – down 17 ridings from the previous week.

According to the organization, the Liberals would have taken at least 156 seats if the election were held April 6, when the projections were prepared. That’s down from 173 seats in the last projections from March 30.

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, meanwhile, would have won at least 114 ridings, up eight from the previous projections.

• Access the latest Nanos polls and national survey results here

But Nik Nanos, chief data scientist at Nanos Research, noted there are still a whopping 53 ridings that would be considered “too close to call.”

“You know what? It’s a horse race,” Nanos told CTV’s Power Play on Thursday.

The biggest boost went to the Bloc Québécois, which surged from four ridings on March 30 to 17 in the latest data. The NDP remains at four seats, including leader Jagmeet Singh’s riding in B.C.

Race tightening

Recent polling has shown the Conservatives closing the gap with the Liberals. The latest Nanos data, released Thursday, on Day 19 of the 36-day federal election campaign, put the Liberals at 43 per cent support to the Conservatives’ 38.1 per cent – a difference of just under five percentage points.

The reason those numbers translate into so many more Liberal ridings is because much of the Conservative support is concentrated in party strongholds, Nanos said.

“In the Prairie provinces, where the Conservative bedrock is, they’re winning that region by like 20 percentage points compared to other regions where the Liberals are only ahead by five to 10,” he added.

Ontario projections

The latest projections show the Liberals dominating once again in Toronto – where less than a year ago, the party lost a closely watched byelection in the St. Paul’s riding, in what was largely seen as a referendum on former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership.

“Their heartland City of Toronto has come back after kind of abandoning them,” Nanos said. “Basically all the seats at this point in time (are) leaning towards the Liberals.”

Quebec projections

In Quebec, the Liberals have seen support shift to the Bloc Québécois – as predicted this week by leader Yves-François Blanchet, who said voters would come back if they sensed a Carney victory was imminent.

The Liberals still hold significant ground in Montreal, Nanos noted.

“Once we get to the South Shore and the North Shore, you can see the Bloc Québécois being stronger, (but with) the Liberals actually challenging the Bloc in a lot of these ridings,” he said.

The NDP is currently projected to win one seat in the city that was previously considered too close to call.

British Columbia projections

Over in British Columbia, the latest projections continue to show the Liberals and Conservatives positioned to potentially snatch seats away from the NDP – which only has one declared riding in the Lower Mainland, Singh’s home turf of Burnaby South.

With campaign stops in the province, Carney and Poilievre were “circling around like vultures” this week, Nanos joked.

“They’re there because they see that the NDP are back on their heels in one of the most important provinces for the New Democrats,” he said.

For the projections, Nanos Research combines historical election data and polling data to estimate the margins of victory at the riding and neighbourhood levels. The model correctly predicted 86 per cent of federal ridings in the 2019 federal election.