'Slugging it out': Liberals up by four points ahead of election, poll finds

OTTAWA — Mark Carney’s Liberals are taking a four-point edge over Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives into election day on Monday, according to the last Postmedia-Leger poll of the campaign. The Liberals were the preferred choice of 43 per cent of respondents, with 39 per cent saying they backed the Conservatives. Andrew Enns, an executive vice-president at Leger, said that there’s been little movement between the top two parties over the campaign’s final stretch. “You have two heavyweight political opponents slugging it out. Nobody’s giving an inch, but no one’s getting one either,” said Enns. Support for both parties held steady from last week , with neither gaining or losing any ground. The Liberals were in the lead with all age cohorts except for 35 to 54 year olds, where the Conservatives led by a 44 to 38 margin. Eight in 10 respondents said their choice was final or they’d already voted at the advance polls. Forty per cent said that Carney would make the best prime minister of any party leader, giving him a nine-point edge over Poilievre. Carney beat Poilievre across all age groups, eclipsing him by 20 points among respondents 55 and older. Carney’s personal appeal transcended party lines, with 24 per cent of NDP voters and 30 per cent of Bloc voters saying he would do the best job as prime minister. Fifty-four per cent said they expected the Liberals to win Monday’s election. Exactly half that, 27 per cent, said they expected the Tories to win. The NDP and Bloc Québécois were well behind the top two parties, polling at seven and five per cent, respectively. Both parties were one point down from last week’s poll , showing little evidence of any movement from left-leaning voters who flocked to the Liberals at the start of the campaign to prevent a Conservative win. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet have both retooled their pitches to voters heading into the campaign’s final stretch, pointing to the likelihood of a Liberal win and arguing that their respective parties will play a critical role in keeping a Carney-led government in check. A quarter of respondents, including almost half of Liberal voters, said the NDP would be their second choice. The Liberals were the second choice for 14 per cent, with the Conservatives and Bloc both in the single digits. The survey was taken between April 21 and 25, using a sample of 1,502 adults recruited from a Leger-founded panel. Online polls are not considered representative samples and thus don’t carry a margin of error. However, the poll document provides an estimated margin, for comparison purposes, of plus or minus 2.53 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com

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