Third party, redux

Latest in a continuing series...

Based on today's release of August CRA fieldwork, the incumbent NL PCs would be demolished in an election if these popular-support numbers were actual election returns.

This is the fourth consecutive publicly-reported poll, including others by Vector and MQO, which show the governing party trailing, and badly, in popular support.

At third place among voters, the current governing party would be reduced to — what's their favourite phrase again? — the third party in a narrow Liberal minority government.

Today's figures would yield 23-24 Liberal seats, to an unprecedented NDP opposition of 16-19 members.

The third party would be a rump caucus of 5 to 9 members, most of whom would barely cling on to their own seats by very narrow margins.

The "pincer move" previously proposed in this corner, in which the PCs bleed support and seats to the NDP in the northeast Avalon and a few other areas, and to the Liberals most everywhere else, seems to be firming up as a feature of the political landscape as the mid-point of the 2011 mandate approaches.

Here’s the notional district-by-district map.* For the current opposition parties, dark colours indicate holds and pale colours are pickups. For the incumbent outgoing PCs, dark blue is a hold, while paler blue is a hold by less than a notional 10% margin of victory. Light grey indicates a district where the projection models are in disagreement about the notional winner. (Click to enlarge.)

* To be taken with a grain of salt – the overall seat totals in swing models are more accurate than district-by-district projects, as the errors in the latter tend to cancel one another out.