Final Election Poll Shows Canada’s Liberal Party Could Win a Majority

At a final campaign stop in western Canada on Sunday, Trudeau said the Liberals offer “not just a change in government, but a better government”. If no party wins a majority, the country may be headed for fraught negotiations to form a minority government.

Harper warns a Liberal victory would tear down everything his Conservatives have achieved. As the country struggled with plunging oil prices and two quarters of contraction to start the year, Trudeau’s call for faster growth coupled with tax hikes on the rich began to resonate.

But the new ridings mean most old riding boundaries also had to be redrawn, literally reconfiguring the electoral map and making seat projections all the more difficult to predict. Combine that with some spectacular polling embarrassments in recent provincial elections and today’s outcome remains very much up in the air.

Flagging in the polls, Harper sought to shift the debate mid-campaign toward identity and national security issues in a bid to galvanize voters around issues such as whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear face coverings at citizenship ceremonies.

Harper, never widely popular, struggled to grow his support beyond his base. According to Éric Grenier’s poll averages it’s now at 22.2%, well behind the Liberals on 36.5% and the Conservatives on 31.1%.

May says she is looking forward to the Greens playing the role of “matchmakers” if Monday’s federal election results give way to a minority government.

The speech by Mulcair at the rally was a way to hammer home the main themes the NDP has been pushing throughout the campaign, repeating big promises like one-million child care spaces costing no more than $15 a day within eight years. Harper has clashed with the Obama administration over other issues, including the recently reached Iran nuclear deal. We can learn a lot from understanding others but at what cost?

Speaking to supporters in Toronto, New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair remained feisty, even though his party has sunk to a distant third.

“Mr Trudeau senior, who died in 2000, is still remembered by many Canadians for instilling ‘Trudeaumania” as a glamorous leader who helped burnish Canada’s global standing.

“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”.

As the seats won graph by election above shows, Quebec has a tendency to move as a block, delivering a clear provincial majority to one party.

With the late premier’s eldest son, Justin, leading the polls, having transformed his Liberal Party from a distant also-ran into something similar to the political force it was under his father, he threatens to prevent the long-reigning Conservative Party of Canada and its leader, Stephen Harper, from winning an unprecedented fourth term in power. If the Conservatives win the most seats, the Liberals and New Democrats say they’ll defeat Harper in a vote in Parliament, raising the possibility of a coalition government.

With only hours before people cast their ballots, the Liberal leader held an event in Edmonton on Sunday where he targeted his message to voters who may have traditionally leaned right. “We know what the Liberals want to do and what they always do”, he said.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper controlled all the levers, the timing and the cash.

Liberals governed Canada for 69 years during the 20th century.