Abacus Data Poll: Nova Scotia PCs headed for landslide win bucking anti-incumbency trend.
November 24, 2024
But first, a message from Abacus Data founder and CEO, David Coletto:
We love elections at Abacus Data. Exploring what people think and feel and how that impacts their behaviours at work, as consumers, and as citizens is at the core of what we do.
And so, with just two days left to go in Nova Scotia, we are excited to share the results from our final provincial election survey with you and show how opinions and intentions have shifted over the campaign.
In case you missed our big announcement at the beginning of the campaign: Abacus Data is proud to be investing in Atlantic Canada. We have opened an office in Halifax and Kelly Bennett has joined our team as Vice President & Atlantic Canada Lead.
Together, we will serve clients in Atlantic Canada with the same curious, thoughtful, and hospitality-inspired approach that has made Abacus the most sought-after, influential, and impactful polling and market research firm in Canada.
To learn more about our investment and expansion in Atlantic Canada, click here.
Now to the survey results.
The results indicate that unless something fundamentally changes today or tomorrow, the Nova Scotia PC Party and Tim Houston are headed towards a landslide victory on Tuesday night.
PCs lead by 20-points over the NDP among all committed voters but that lead grows to 24-points among those who have already voted and tell us they are most motivated to vote.
Tim Houston’s PCs are at 48% followed by Claudia Chender’s NDP at 28% with Zach Churchill’s Liberal Party at 22%. Since the start of the campaign, the PC vote share is up 3 points, the NDP share is up 2 points, while the Liberal vote share is down 3. points We expect the NS Greens to get about 1% of the vote. Among all eligible voters in Nova Scotia, 20% say they are still undecided, down 5-points from the start of the campaign.
Among those who say they have already voted (turnout has been lower in advance voting than it was at this point in the 2021 provincial election) and those who say they are most motivated to vote (57% of our sample), the PCs are ahead by 24-points: PC 50%, NDP 26%, Liberal 23%, and Green 1%.
What is driving this highly likely PC Party re-election?
Despite NDP leader Claudia Chender having a lot of goodwill and the best net favourable rating of the party leaders, the incumbent PCs benefit from having a relatively popular incumbent leader, they lead on three of the four top issues (and both of the top two election issues), and the desire for change has not reached a level that is a serious threat to them.
Let’s explore each of these.
The Issues
The PCs and Tim Houston are seen as best able to handle three of the four top issues by more voters. On the top two issues – affordability and health care – they are well ahead of either of the main opposition parties.
Fixing healthcare, affordability and improving housing remain the top three issues likely to impact the way Nova Scotians vote in the provincial election. The salience of these issues has not changed much since the start of the campaign.
When voters who identify healthcare, affordability, housing and/or reducing taxes as their top issues are asked which party they think will be best able to manage those issues, the PCs finish first on three of the four top issues. They lead the Liberals and NDP by 19-points on “fixing healthcare”, lead the NDP by 11-points on “making life more affordable”, and lead the NDP by 28-points on “reducing taxes”.
Only on “improving housing and reducing homelessness” do the PCs slightly trail the NDP (34% to 29%).
The PCs also lead among those who identify “growing the economy and creating good jobs,” “managing population growth”, and “improving roads” as their top issues.
And the PCs are in fourth place on the party Nova Scotians who rate climate change and the environment as a top issue (the Greens lead on that issue).
The Leaders
Our final election survey also confirms that Tim Houston remains far more known than the other party leaders, even as the campaign enters its final days. 74% of eligible voters currently feel they have a very good or pretty good idea who the incumbent Premier is and what he stands for, remaining high overall and high in most segments.
Familiarity with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill and NDP Leader Claudia Chender has improved a little bit since the start of the campaign, but remains much lower than it is for Tim Houston.
While the same proportion (48%) of voters have at least a pretty good idea of who Zach Churchill is (unchanged from the start of the campaign), there has been a 3-point decrease in those who say they don’t know much about him at all (21% to 18%).
For NDP Leader Claudia Chender, we see a similar change. Familiarity with Claudia Chender as a person and a leader is only slightly higher than it was when the campaign started (+3), but the proportion of those who don’t know her at all is down 6-points (28% to 22%).
One of the features of this campaign is that the opposition leaders have not been able to improve their familiarity with voters and the Premier, like any incumbent, held a big advantage when the campaign started and held that throughout.
When we ask Nova Scotians about their impressions of the party leaders, Tim Houston continues to be viewed positively by 41% of eligible voters (up 3 point since our first survey) and negatively by 29% (down 5 from the start of the campaign) for a net score of +12, representing an improvement since the start of the campaign.
In comparison, Liberal Leader Zach Churchill is +3 (down since the start) and NDP Leader Claudia Chender is +21 (a slight drop). Very few Nova Scotians have a negative impression of Ms. Chender and although her positives almost match Premier Houston, she hasn’t been able to convert this goodwill into support (likely because of how the party is perceived to perform on the top issues mentioned earlier).
This set of results also confirms that neither Justin Trudeau nor Pierre Poilievre are well-liked in Nova Scotia. The Prime Minister’s net favourable is -35 while Pierre Poilievre’s is -15 in the province.
Another interesting dynamic relating is the PC party’s appeal among voters who dislike Justin Trudeau and those who dislike Pierre Poilievre. The charts below show the relationship between provincial vote and views of Trudeau and Poilievre. It shows that the PCs have been able to attract a majority of those with a negative view of Trudeau while also attracting over 1 in 4 Nova Scotians who have a negative impression of federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
That broad (purple) coalition is a big part of the lopsided PC victory that is likely to happen on Tuesday. 32% of past federal Liberal supporters and 21% of past federal NDP supporters say they are or have voted PC in the Nova Scotia provincial election.
The Desire for Change
Incumbents everywhere in 2024 have seen their vote share decline. But in Nova Scotia, it appears that Tim Houston and the PCs will buck that trend.
In our first Nova Scotia election poll, 50% of eligible voters told us they definitely wanted to see a change in government in Nova Scotia. Today, that figure is still 50%. And those who definitely want to see the Houston PC government re-elected is holding steady at 21%. The opposition parties have been unable to increase the desire for change leaving the Houston PCs in a strong position. Compared with other elections where we have done polling, the desire for change in Nova Scotia is not much higher than it was at the start of the 2022 Ontario provincial election or the final weekend of the 2021 campaign.
But even more important, among Nova Scotians who say they have voted or are most motivated to vote, those who definitely want Houston and the PCs re-elected goes up to 28% while the definite change voter share only increases 2 points. This suggests that if turnout is lower than in the previous election (and advance voting is lower than last time), the PCs will have an advantage because the opposition has not galvanized the desire for change (which is similar to what happened in Ontario in 2022).
Even among those who definitely want to see a change in government, 13% of eligible voters in Nova Scotia still say they plan to vote PC, an increase of 4-points since the start of the campaign.
And the NDP and Liberals currently split the-solid-change-vote 36% to 28% for the NDP with neither party being effective in mobilizing change voters around one option. This vote split will further help the PCs win more seats in some places it wasn’t successful in 2021.
Tim Houston leads by 16 on “Best Premier”
When we ask Nova Scotians which of the party leaders they think would make the best Premier, Tim Houston continues to finish far ahead of the other party leaders. 38% pick the current Premier, 22% select NDP Leader Claudia Chender, while Liberal Leader Zach Churchill is third at 15%. Both Houston and Chender are up since the start of the campaign. And 24% are unsure.
Will Turnout Drop? Probably because most expect a PC win.
We expect voter turnout to be lower in this provincial election than it was in 2021 due to various reasons, including no online or telephone voting options, no voter cards telling people where to go to vote, bad weather on the last weekend of the campaign and perceptions of an uncompetitive election. As academic research has shown, the likelihood to vote is determined by several factors including the answer to four questions: Do I like politics? Do I have a duty to vote? Do I care about the outcome? Is it easy to vote?
At the end of the campaign, more than half of Nova Scotians believe that the PCs will win the provincial election, a six point increase from the start of the campaign. 12% think the Liberals will win and only 8% expect an NDP victory, despite more people saying they will vote or have voted NDP than Liberal. The low expectations of an NDP win can likely explain part of the reason why they have been unable to convert a popular leader into more support.
UPSHOT
According to Kelly Bennett: “Our final Nova Scotia election poll suggests that Tim Houston and the PCs will get the big mandate that they were hoping for when they decided to throw out the ‘save the date’ card and go with a snap election this fall, instead of waiting until the hazy days of next summer.
With just 48 hours left to go, the PCs continue to have a big lead on the other parties, making them very likely to win the election by a landslide.
Tim Houston and the PCs started the election with many advantages. They knew the date. They knew their positions and they were ready to go. They have also run a very disciplined campaign, promising Nova Scotians “lower taxes, more doctors and higher wages” over-and-over again – on the ground, on their signs, through social media, on TV and by radio. That consistency has paid off.
We also expect Claudia Chender and her party to be celebrating some wins on Tuesday night, with the NDP now likely to finish second and return to Province House as the Official Opposition. Our final poll suggests that the NDP has found some momentum in the last week, pulling six-points ahead of Zach Churchill’s Liberals and continuing to lead on the housing issue.
Chender will also finish her first campaign as party leader with high personal favourability – making her someone to watch now and into the future. While she could not consolidate the desire-for-change vote this time, she may have the personal qualities and skills that Nova Scotians want in their leaders.”
According to David Coletto: “As I have noted in previous analyzes of our polling, Tim Houston and the Nova Scotia PC Party are on the cusp of doing something very very few incumbents have been able to do in 2024 (and no national government globally has been able to do): get re-elected with a higher share of the vote than it received previous. They will not only survive “inflationitis” but actually find a way to thrive with it all around.
Tim Houston and the PCs took a chance when they called an early election that voters would not punish them for that decision but reward them for what they perceived as fairly effective governance and focus on the issues most Nova Scotians care about. Unless something fundamentally changes in the final two days of the campaign, that gamble will likely pay off.
Claudia Chender and the NDP should win more votes than the Liberals, but their campaign doesn’t seem to have been effective enough in convert the potential out there. Chender is well liked and the NDP’s accessible voter pool has grown over the campaign but they have not been able to break through and convert that goodwill – in part, I think, because not enough voters are convinced they have a better plan or can better handle the two big issues facing the province – affordability and healthcare.
For the NS Liberals, this campaign will end in disappointment. Not just because the Liberals will not form government but because Zach Churchill will finish the campaign the least well known of the three main party leaders and the party’s vote share is likely to fall to third for the first time since 2006.
It appears that this election campaign will end as it started. Tim Houston and the PCs will get a second mandate and it will be a larger, broader, and more secure one.”
METHODOLOGY
The survey was conducted with 645 eligible voters in Nova Scotia from November 21 to 23, 2024. A random sample of panelists were invited to complete the survey from a set of partner panels based on the Lucid exchange platform. These partners are typically double opt-in survey panels, blended to manage out potential skews in the data from a single source.
The margin of error for a comparable probability-based random sample of the same size is +/- 3.8% 19 times out of 20.
The data were weighted according to census data to ensure that the sample matched Nova Scotia’s population according to age, gender, educational attainment, and region. Totals may not add up to 100 due to rounding.
This survey was paid for by Abacus Data Inc.
Abacus Data follows the CRIC Public Opinion Research Standards and Disclosure Requirements that can be found here: https://canadianresearchinsightscouncil.ca/standards/
ABOUT ABACUS DATA
We are Canada’s most sought-after, influential, and impactful polling and market research firm. We are hired by many of North America’s most respected and influential brands and organizations.
We use the latest technology, sound science, and deep experience to generate top-flight research-based advice to our clients. We offer global research capacity with a strong focus on customer service, attention to detail, and exceptional value.
And we are growing throughout all parts of Canada and the United States and have capacity for new clients who want high quality research insights with enlightened hospitality.
Our record speaks for itself: we were one of the most accurate pollsters conducting research during the 2021 Canadian election following up on our outstanding record in the 2019, 2015, and 2011 federal elections.
Contact us with any questions.
Find out more about how we can help your organization by downloading our corporate profile and service offering.
