Polls suggest NDP faces potential annihilation in Manitoba as federal election kicks off

Polls in early January suggested the Liberal Party of Canada could be wiped off Manitoba's electoral map in the next federal election, but now with that election underway, it's the New Democrats that polls suggest are facing potential annihilation in this province.

As of Sunday, when Prime Minister Mark Carney triggered an April 28 election, an aggregate of polls combined by CBC's Poll Tracker suggests the Liberals and Conservatives are in a statistical dead heat in terms of the popular vote.

But due to the relative efficiency of the Liberal vote — Conservative support is concentrated more heavily in a smaller number of ridings — the same aggregate of polls gives the Liberals a better chance of winning if the election were held today.

The same aggregate of polls suggests NDP support has collapsed to the point where Jagmeet Singh's party may not hold on to official party status, which is 12 seats.

Canadian voters appear to view this election as a largely binary choice between Carney's Liberals and Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives, said Mary Agnes Welch, a partner at Winnipeg's Probe Research.

"Singh started with a little bit of this happy warrior kind of vibe and has been able to do absolutely nothing to capitalize on that over the last three years," Welch said.

"I think he's seen as as much too closely linked to Trudeau and now, any of the good work that's come from this supply and confidence process has not benefited the NDP. They're seen as really not even an option for most voters."

A Probe Research poll of Manitoba voter intentions, conducted on behalf of the Winnipeg Free Press between March 4 and March 16, suggested NDP support has plummeted to nine per cent in this province. The same poll suggested the Liberals and Conservatives are in a statistical dead heat in Manitoba, garnering 44 and 42 per cent of popular support, respectively.

The Probe sample of 1,000 Manitoba adults has an error margin of 3.1 per cent and a reliability of 95 per cent.

Possible struggle for incumbent NDP MPs

Both Welch and Eric Grenier, the polling analyst who runs CBC's Poll Tracker and publishes thewrit.ca, said historically low NDP support could result in a struggle for Manitoba's three incumbent NDP MPs.

"They only squeezed by in the Elmwood-Transcona byelection," said Grenier, referring to NDP MP Leila Dance's narrow victory over Conservative Colin Reynolds in September.

"If those [polling] patterns hold at all and the NDP continues to drop, then you know they might be in danger there and you can't take for granted that Niki Ashton in the north or or even Leah Gazan in Winnipeg Centre would be safe."

Former university professor Gazan, who is seeking her third term as the MP in Winnipeg Centre, brushed off the idea a collapse in NDP support threatens her party in this riding, which she snatched from the Liberals in 2019.

"The polls have never really reflected the results in Winnipeg Centre," Gazan said Friday in her campaign office on Portage Avenue in downtown Winnipeg. "That doesn't impact how hard I work and I'll continue working hard regardless of what the polls say."

The Liberal Party has tapped 23-year-old former party staffer Rahul Walia to challenge Gazan. Walia — who worked in Ottawa for MPs Terry Duguid, Anita Anand and Pablo Rodriguez — won the party nomination by acclamation in December, when the polls suggested the Liberals faced electoral disaster under then-leader Justin Trudeau.

Walia said it "may be the case" he would have faced more competition for a Liberal nomination now, he still would have sought it.

"The reason why I wanted to run is because this is my home riding and I feel that I can make the biggest difference here," Walia said Friday in his campaign office on Sherbrook Street in West Broadway.

Walia said he has been already been door-knocking for months.

"We're hearing that people want positive change and they want to make sure that we're stopping whatever we can from the tariff threats against us from Donald Trump."

As Gazan suggested, voter-intention polls do not always translate into election-night results. In Churchill-Keewatinook Aski, for example, NDP incumbent Ashton enters this race without any competition from the Liberals or Conservatives, who have yet to nominate a candidate in Manitoba's northernmost riding.

Liberal candidates may breathe easier

Stronger polls for the Liberals will also allow some of the centrist party's candidates to breathe easier than they would have had support remained at early-January levels, Welch said.

This includes incumbents Ben Carr (Winnipeg South Centre), Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North) and Terry Duguid, whose Winnipeg South riding has always elected an MP belonging to the winning party.

Rookie candidate Ginette Lavack, who is trying to hold Saint Boniface-Saint Vital for the Liberals against two-time Conservative candidate Shola Agboola, may also face less of a challenge, Welch said.

The Liberals may also be more competitive than they would have been in Winnipeg West, where Conservative incumbent Marty Morantz heads into his third consecutive race against former Liberal MP Doug Eyolfson, she said.

Polling analyst Philippe Fournier's 338.com suggest Eyolfson would be the likely winner in that race if it were held today. The poll aggregation site also lists Kildonan-St. Paul as a toss-up between well-known Conservative incumbent Raquel Dancho and Liberal challenger Thomas Naaykens.

Welch said it may require a further surge in Liberal support in order for the party to dispatch well-known NDP or Conservative incumbents. That said, upswellings of support can translate into electoral surprises, such as the NDP wave that swept through Quebec during the 2011 federal election, which made MPs out of dozens of young, political novices.

"The local candidate doesn't matter as much as we always think it does," Welch said.

Polls suggest the Conservatives are unlikely to face any challenges in their five rural Manitoba strongholds: vacant Brandon-Souris, where Larry Maguire announced Sunday he is not running again, and four held by incumbents Dan Mazier (Riding Mountain), Branden Leslie (Portage-Lisgar), James Bezan (Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman) and Ted Falk (Provencher).