The latest (not recent, sorry I'm a little bit late on that one) poll from Abacus shows the three main federal parties very close to each other. However, once we take into account the distribution of the vote, the Liberals of Justin Trudeau would be the clear favorite to win the election.
Please note that Abacus doesn't allocate the undecided anymore. They made this choice after the last BC election. While it's nice, I don't have an "undecided" category in my seat projections model. Therefore, I allocated the undecided proportionally. During the next election, I'll spend a lot of time looking and studying these undecided voters. But for now, it'll do.
The average projections would put the Liberals and Conservatives in a tie. If that was to actually happen, Stephen Harper would then remain PM, unless the NDP wold of course announce some sort of deal or support for Justin Trudeau.
In terms of probabilities, the Liberals would have around 65% chances to win the most seats. The Conservatives are only at 35%. As for the NDP, its chances are almost zero. It might seem weird that the NDP, despite being so close in the overall popular vote, would have virtually no chance of forming the next government. This happens mostly for two reasons. First of all, being third in Ontario would realy hurt this party. Secondly, the NDP currently doesn't seem to have a sure region or province. The Liberals have the Atlantic while the Conservatives have the Prairies and Alberta. For the NDP, the closest thing would be BC but it doesn't completely compensate for the other regions/provinces. But let's be clear here, if it was an election, we'd have to consider the NDP as being in the race. Simply with lower odds.
The detailed projections (riding by riding) are here.
Despite being projected equal with the Conservatives, the Liberals thus have a lot more chances to win the election. This happens because the Tories are close to some sort of breaking point. At 27% and by staying high in the West, they could rival the Liberals. But 1-2 additional points difference and the Grits would take a big lead. In particular, the Liberals would benefit from being back to first in Quebec, a province where the Conservatives are now almost non-existant outside of a couple of ridings. Not being competitive in the second largest province really affects the chances of the Conservatives. It was fine to ignore la Belle Province when the Liberals where far behind everywhere. But now that this party is up virtually in every province, it is a lot more costly. Especially since Liberals and NDP don't seem to be splitting the vote much in Quebec.
There doesn't seem to be a possibility for a majority governement though. The maximum for the Liberals is 150 while it is 125 for the Conservatives. Even by taking the super best case scenario (the max in each province), Stephen Harper couldn't get higher than 142. And it's borderline impossible scenario. It'd require the Conservatives to beat the polls and be efficient in their votes in every province.
It's interesting to see that the Bloc is projected at 12 seats, as compared to 0 with the latest Nanos poll of my previous post (in french). Being 7 points higher, coupled with the lower NDP, really would help this party to come back. Still, this party is nowhere near its high of a couple of years ago.
I won't be publishing an article like this for every poll. I decided to do it this time to show the probabilities that are now povided for every riding in every province. The Abacus poll was perfect since it showed a close race, at least in the popular vote. As usual, you can simply use the simulator to enter your own percentages or the ones from another poll.
