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TORONTO -- On the eve of the federal election, the final round of polling suggests it could come down to the wire between the Conservatives and Liberals.
Nanos Research, commissioned by CTV News and the Globe & Mail, conducted a sample survey with a total of 739 decided voters on Sunday, Oct. 20, and asked the voters: “If a federal election were held today, could you please rank your top two current local voting preferences?” and found support for the Conservatives at 32.5 per cent, while the Liberals sit at 31.7 per cent.
According to the polling data from Nanos Research, the NDP heads into the election with 20.8 per cent support, the Bloc Quebecois are polling at 7.2 per cent, the Green Party at 6 per cent and the People’s Party of Canada at 1.5 per cent. The results have a margin of error of ±3.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
“Popular support remains a coin toss between the Conservatives and the Liberals,” said pollster Nik Nanos in a news release. “Now it’s about the ground game and delivering votes.”
In all, 10.3 per cent of respondents polled on Sunday were still undecided.
The Liberals, Conservatives and NDP each saw growing support from Saturday, with the NDP making the most significant jump of 2.3 percentage points.
Meanwhile, the Greens fell by over 3 percentage points, while the Bloc Quebecois stayed the same and the People's Party of Canada dropped slightly compared with Saturday.
Nanos said although the gains and losses are within the margin of error, "there's actually a certain level of logic and coherence, where it looks like the movement is between progressive parties or between center-right or right-wing parties."
"So I think for some voters on Sunday, they're kind of looking at the way things are and thinking, 'I want my team to win.' And they kind of moved over to one of the top three" parties, he said on CTV's Trend Line podcast.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, has a lead over the Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer when it comes to Canada’s preferred prime minister.
"We have a statistical tie, an absolute statistical tie between the Conservatives and the Liberals in the ballot support," said Nanos on Trend Line. "But the Liberals have a little bit of an advantage, factoring the margin of error, on preferred P.M."
The Nanos survey found 30.5 per cent of respondents preferred Trudeau to serve as Canada’s leader, while Scheer sits 4.1 percentage points behind.
For this portion of the survey, the voters were asked “Of the current federal political party leaders, could you please rank your top two current local preferences for prime minister?”
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has 19.7 per cent support, while 13.2 per cent remain unsure.
METHODOLOGY:
A national random telephone survey of 1,600 Canadians is conducted by Nanos Research throughout the campaign over a three day period. Each evening a new group of 400 eligible voters are interviewed (800 on October 19th). The daily tracking figures are based on a three-day rolling sample comprised of 1,600 interviews. To update the tracking a new day of interviewing is added and the oldest day dropped.
The respondent sample is stratified geographically and by gender. The data may be weighted by age according to data from the 2016 Canadian Census administered by Statistics Canada. Percentages reported may not add up to 100 due to rounding.
On October 19th and 20th the daily national sample was increased to 800 randomly selected Canadians.
The last day of polling reported was a single day representative national random sample of 800 Canadians and is accurate ±3.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
