The latest Nanos poll shows Justin Trudeau's Liberals riding high at 39.1 per cent support and nearing majority government territory, leaving both the Conservatives and NDP in the dust.
That places the Liberals at nearly nine percentage points in front of Stephen Harper's Conservatives who are currently sitting at 30.5 per cent, while Tom Mulcair's New Democrats have crashed to just 19.7 per cent, a humiliating blow for a party that began the 2015 federal election with a consistent lead in public opinion.
The results seem to bear out Nik Nanos's fellow pollster Quito Maggi's opinion, who predicted that the Liberals could win a majority if they were able to keep up their momentum, which they seem to have managed despite last week's controversy over Trudeau's campaign co-chair Dan Gagnier's links to Big Oil.
According to Maggi, Trudeau was able to position his Liberals as the progressive party of choice for the roughly 70 per cent of Canadians desiring a change in government, by sticking to core progressive messages such as infrastructure investment, while Mulcair erred by trying to woo centrist voters by offering balanced budgets, only to loose his left-wing base to the Grits.
“The Liberals have continued to surge in this final week of the campaign and now hold a four percent lead over the Conservatives among all voters, and five percent among decided and leaning voters,” said Maggi, who heads up of Mainstreet Research.
“With 37.8 per cent support, the Liberals may now be on the cusp of a majority. The Conservatives, with 32.6 per cent support will surely be in opposition and the NDP at 20.8 per cent will return to third place in the House of Commons, with a reduced but still substantial caucus.”
Maggi said that the Liberals are now dominating in Atlantic Canada and are pulling ahead in Quebec at 32 per cent, well ahead of the NDP's 25 per cent, Conservatives' 22 per cent, and the Bloc Quebecois's 17 per cent.
But it is in battleground Ontario where the Liberals look poised to reclaim the Toronto-area swing ridings, four years after Stephen Harper's Tories unceremoniously chased them out.
"In Ontario, the Liberals have opened an eleven-point lead over the Conservatives, 44 per cent to 33 per cent, with the NDP at just 19 per cent. They lead in every region of Ontario, with the exception of South Central Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area, where the parties are neck and neck. This shift in Ontario, compared to previous regional polls, is most pronounced in Southwestern and Eastern Ontario, where Conservatives once enjoyed very significant leads,” said Maggi.
Forum Research is also showing the Liberals hitting majority territory at 40 per cent, compared to the Conservatives' 30 per cent, as of Oct. 18. These results are broadly similar to both Nanos and Mainstreet.
CBC's Poll Tracker is showing the Liberals trending at 37.2 per cent, enough to win a minority government at 146 seats, just 24 short of a majority.
"The gap that exists between the Liberals and Conservatives in the Poll Tracker is not wide enough to give the Liberals a high probability of reaching the 170-seat mark required for a majority government. It is also not wide enough to rule out the possibility the Conservatives could eke out more seats than the Liberals nationwide. So, though the Liberals are favoured in the polls today, it still makes the outcome of tomorrow's election uncertain," said Eric Grenier, founder of ThreeHundredEight.com.
Nonetheless, Grenier concurred with Maggi by saying that the Liberals had picked up an average of two percentage points per week over the last three weeks.
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