New polling data appears to show the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives running away with the 2016 provincial election. Nearly half of all voters say they will vote for the PCs on April 19.
The Tories have managed to hold on to much of their support from the 2011 election, while making crucial gains in seat-rich Winnipeg.
A new poll from Probe Research conducted for CTV and the Winnipeg Free Press suggests a recent string of controversies surrounding Liberal candidates may have taken the edge off a recent rise in support for the Grits.
46 per cent of voters say they support the PCs, up slightly from the 43 per cent who supported the party in the 2011 election.
"That is enough for them to probably win a very strong majority," said Probe President Scott MacKay.
The NDP, on the other hand, had been in a slide up until the most recent poll. The most recent poll shows support levels have risen by almost a third, from 20 per cent to 28 per cent.
Their support fell from 29 per cent to 22 per cent between June and December of 2015.
The poll suggests support for the Liberals fell by almost a third from 29 per cent in December 2015 to 20 per cent in April 2016. In the two previous polls in September and June, the Liberals had increased their support.
A significant portion of the electorate remains undecided two weeks ahead of the election, with 24 per cent of respondents saying they were undecided or refusing to state a preferred party.
The poll was commissioned by CTV Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Free Press. It surveyed 1,000 Manitoba adults between March 28 and April 4.
Results are considered accurate by a margin of +/- 3.1 percentage points.
PC’s make crucial gains in Winnipeg
With 31 out of 57 electoral divisions, Winnipeg is the deciding ground for most provincial elections.
The latest polling numbers show overall support for the PCs and NDP is virtually tied at 38 per cent and 34 per cent respectively. That’s a significant change from 2011, when Winnipeg overwhelmingly supported the NDP at 52 per cent to the PCs’ 35 per cent.
Things look even worse for the NDP when broken down by areas of the city.
The PCs hold the lead in three out of five regions within Winnipeg: the northwest, southeast and southwest regions. The PCs lead by a wide margin in both the northwest (14 percentage points) and southeast (15 percentage points).
The races in the southwest are tighter, with the PCs only five points ahead of the NDP, at 39 per cent and 35 per cent respectively.
Another tight race is taking shape in the northeast, where the Liberals and the PCs are in a statistical tie at 39 per cent and 32 per cent respectively.
Support for the NDP has fallen in all regions across Winnipeg since the 2011 election, especially in the northeast, where support has fallen to 20 per cent from 54 per cent in 2011.
The only area of the city where the NDP maintains a lead is in the core, with support at 50 per cent, ahead of the PCs at 23 per cent. Even that is down from 2011, when 64 per cent of people in the core supported the NDP versus 17 per cent for the PCs.
In rural areas, the PCs have added slightly to their support from the last provincial election (59 per cent currently versus 55 per cent in 2011). NDP support has fallen by half, from 39 per cent to 18 per cent, while the Liberals gained slightly from four per cent to 19 per cent.
No parties hold momentum
Despite holding a steady lead throughout the election, the PCs haven’t managed to gain much support over the last provincial election.
People who supported the NDP and Liberals in 2011 appear to be wavering in their support for the parties this time around. Only 48 per cent of NDP supporters and 42 per cent of Liberal supporters say they will vote for the same party in this election.
Meanwhile, 78 per cent of 2011 PC voters say they will vote PC again this year.
Although support levels for the Liberals have fallen since December, the recent string of controversies around the party’s candidates have not had an overwhelmingly negative effect on the public’s perception of the party, according to the poll.
When asked how their perceptions of the party had changed over the course of the election, 26 per cent of respondents said they had a worse perception of the Liberals, while 20 per cent said they had a better perception.
The same cannot be said of the NDP, which 32 per cent of respondents saying they have a worse perception of the party now than they did before, and only six per cent saying they have a better perception.
Almost an equal number of people said their perception of the PC party had worsened versus those who said it had improved (18 per cent and 17 per cent respectively).
Among people who voted NDP in 2011, 16 per cent said they had not decided who they would vote for. That number was 15 per cent for the PCs and 23 per cent for the Liberals.
