In November, 27% of respondents picked Ball above Paul Davis and Earle McCurdy in Corporate Research Associate's quarterly survey.
That's a big jump in 30 days.
The only thing that changed in those 30 days is that folks finally got the message Ball has been sending since July: all those layoffs and cuts we had planned for the fall are off. If public perception of Ball is that closely tied to whether or not he carries an axe, his political fortunes will rise or fall with the provincial government's financial state.
Interestingly enough, Ball is now at the same level as his party. For months, more people would vote Liberal than thought Ball was the right choice for Premier. CRA now has his party at 27% of all respondents, up from 23% in August. The Tories remain at 22.
The big losers in this quarter have been the New Democrats. CRA has them falling from 21% in August down to 15% in November. The other two percentage points of the seix the Dippers lost went to the Undecided/will not vote category. As you can see from the chart above, the Grits are a long way from the 50% support they had 12 months ago. The Dippers and the Tories are actually both in relatively better spots than they were a year ago.
Now look again at the more recent poll results. All three parties were clustered together in the low 20s in August. Both Abacus and MQO polled in October and found the Liberals had gained slightly and the NDP had dropped a bit. They both put the undecideds around 31%. The variation among the polls was all within the margin of error for the polls.
Aug
|
Oct-A
|
Oct-B
|
Nov
|
AVG
|
|
Lib
|
23
|
23
|
25
|
27
|
24.5
|
PC
|
22
|
19
|
19
|
22
|
20.5
|
NDP
|
21
|
22
|
17
|
15
|
18.75
|
DK
|
32
|
31
|
31
|
34
|
32
|
Bottom Line: The Liberals are the biggest of three pip-squeeks. None of the parties in the province has a stunning endorsement from voters. Ditto on the leader front. Each of the parties and each of the leaders is vulnerable. Wait until the spring. If the LIberals have to bring in a hard budget, their numbers will likely drop off again.
-srbp-