Trudeau has a head start, but many races are too close to call

Bloomberg

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s party leads his top rival in safe districts ahead of Canada’s election next week, but is bleeding support to smaller parties while many races remain too close to call, polling shows.
Seat projections by Nanos Research, unveiled on Wednesday at Bloomberg’s Canadian Fixed Income Conference in New York, showed Trudeau’s Liberals are on pace to win at least 127 of the parliament’s 338 seats, with the Conservatives next with at least 84 seats. Another 95 seats remain too close to call in the October 21 vote, while smaller parties are on the rise.
The Liberals’ vote is more efficient than the Conservatives’ and translates more easily to gaining districts, Nanos said. More than one in four remain toss-ups, with the election set to be decided in Toronto’s suburbs, known by their 905 area code, and on the Pacific Coast, he said. None of the parties currently has enough support to win a majority, he said.
“It’s battleground 905 and also British Columbia,” Nanos said. The Conservatives are at 33% support nationally, compared with 32% for the Liberals, Nanos polling shows. “In Ontario, the Liberals are still doing well but watch the 905 because the Conservatives need to do better in the 905 in order to do well in the
election.”
Nanos’s projections are based on over 73,000 statistically modeled polling stations, and assign parties a seat when they’re projected to win by at least seven percentage points. The Liberals and Conservatives had narrowed to similar projections after Trudeau’s blackface scandal jolted his campaign, but the gap between the two has since widened again.
The New Democratic Party (NDP), which is left-leaning and entered the campaign with the third-highest number of lawmakers, is projected to win at least 19 safe seats, while the separatist Bloc Quebecois is projected to win at least 11 safe seats. The final numbers will likely be higher once toss-up seats are decided. The Bloc could gain perhaps 20 new seats, Nanos said.
The NDP is hovering at 19% support overall nationally, but needs to break through the 20% threshold to have a major impact on seat projections, the pollster said.
The number of races that are too close to call is rising, but the number of razor-thin toss-ups is falling. Of the undecided seats, 27 are projected to have margins of 2% or less, down from from 37 seats a week ago. Another 68 seats are currently projected to have margins of victory between 2% and 7%.
Trudeau will lose seats in Atlantic Canada, in part due to Conservative gains in New Brunswick, Nanos said.