Three major parties have equivalent scores on Index, on preferred PM Harper leads

Weekly tracking on the Nanos Party Power Index suggests that the three major parties have comparable scores on the Index with the Conservatives registering 54 points out of a possible 100, the Liberals 53 points and the NDP 52 points. The Green Party of Canada scored 32 points while the BQ scored 27 points (QC only).Of note, although the parties had comparable index scores, the scores on the preferred Prime Minister weekly measure were not tight between the three parties. Asked which federal party leader they preferred as Prime Minister, 32 per cent said Harper was their first choice, with Trudeau at 29 per cent, Mulcair at 20 per cent, May at five per cent while 14 per cent were unsure.Even though the NDP have been realizing scores better than average on the index and in terms of accessible voters (NDP has hit yet another 12 month high on this measure and is numerically first) Mulcair still trails both Harper and Trudeau on the preferred PM front at this point in time.The Nanos Party Power Index comprises a basket of political goods that includes ballot preferences, accessible voters, preferred PM views and evaluations of the leaders. It is modeled similar to a standard confidence index. It is a random telephone survey conducted with live agents, reaching out to Canadians through a land- and cell-line dual frame sample.Asked a series of independent questions as to whether they would consider or not consider voting for each of the federal parties, 49 per cent of Canadians would consider voting NDP while 48 per cent would consider voting Liberal, 44 per cent would consider voting Conservative and 27 per cent would consider voting for the Greens.Readers should note that with more than 12 months of weekly tracking, Nanos is now calculating highs, lows and averages for the key Nanos tracking variables in the public domain. This will allow our subscribers and clients to better contextualize the data.Read the full Nanos Research Report here...