New Brunswick's provincial campaign to kick off as a toss-up

With just days to go before New Brunswick's provincial election campaign officially gets started, the outcome at this stage looks little better than a toss-up just another indication that the next five weeks will be decisive in determining whether the province defeats its fourth government in a row or gives an outgoing premier a second mandate for the first time in over a decade.

According to the CBC'sNew Brunswick Poll Tracker an aggregation of all publicly available polling data and seat projection model Brian Gallant's Liberals start the campaign as the early favourite. Butnarrowly so.

• New Brunswick Poll Tracker:Check out the latest projections
• Vote Compass: Compare your views to 5 New Brunswick parties

With 39.2 per cent support, the Liberals are only a few points ahead of the Progressive Conservatives under Blaine Higgs, who trail with 35.7 per cent support. (See full methodology here.)

But in a province that could be moving back toward its traditional linguistic split the Liberals doing best among francophones, the PCs best among anglophones each party's support provincewide only tells a part of the story.

According to the Poll Tracker's estimates, the Liberals and PCs are in a position where both parties could emerge with the same or a similar number of seats.

The projections put the two parties deadlocked at 24 seats apiece, with a range of between 17 and 33 seats for the Liberals and between 16 and 31 seats for the PCs being the most plausible outcome if an election were held today.

The slightly better range for the Liberals make them the slim favourite.

If these numbers hold through toSept. 24, when New Brunswickers cast their ballots, the Liberals would be given a 48 per cent chance of winning the most seats, compared to 43 per for the Tories.

In the remaining scenarios, the two parties end in a tie giving David Coon of theGreens, and potentially Kris Austin, the People's Alliance leader the balance of power in a minority legislature.

Outsized importance for 3rd parties?

The early estimates for the provincial campaign indicate that the smaller third parties could play a significant role. The Poll Tracker puts the Greens at9.4 per cent support, with Jennifer McKenzie's New Democratsand the People's Alliance averaging 7.9 and 7.3 per cent support, respectively.

The Greens and NDP have been holding steady in the polls for some time, which would be good news for Coon's re-election chances butnot for the NDP's hopes of winning its first seat since 2003.

A new trend in the polls, however, has been the increased support for the People's Alliance.

The three most recent polls by the Corporate Research Associates have awarded the party three or four per centwhen in the past the party has not polled better than one or two per cent.

People's Alliance moves a titch

Recent surveys by Mainstreet Research and MQO Research havefound support for "others" at seven and nine per cent, respectively. This would primarily be support for the People's Alliance, but would also include voters intending to cast a ballot for an independent candidate.

"Others" hasalso been a refuge for undecided voters in polls.

But if the People's Alliance maintains some of these higher numbers, Austincould have a decent shot at getting into the legislative assembly. Austin fell just 26 votes short of winning in Fredericton-Grand Lake in 2014, when the People's Alliance received only 2.1 per cent of the vote province wide.

Even if there isn't a minority government in the next legislature, these smaller parties will still have a role to play in deciding whether that government is shaded red or blue.

In a close race, those New Brunswickers supporting the Greens, NDP and People's Alliance right now totalling about one-quarter of the electorate are voters the Liberals and PCs need to have on their sides.

Varying results

While the polls are generally in broad agreement about where the three smaller parties sit, there is lessconsensus on the relative strength of the Liberals and PCs.

The three most recent surveys conducted by CRA in May, Mainstreet in mid-July and MQOin the last half of July and the first days of August showed significantly different results.

The Liberals have ranged from 38 to 45 per cent and the PCs between 31 and 39 per cent in these surveys. While that is not an abnormal amount of fluctuation considering the margin of error and different methodologies used by the three polling companies, the results would produce significantly different election outcomes.

More data needed

The 14-point gap for the Liberals recorded by CRA would re-elect Gallant with a huge majority government.

The eight-point margin in MQO's survey would see Gallant re-elected to the same majority he received in 2014, while Mainstreet'sone-point PC edge would likely see the Tories in majority territory instead.

The advantages of using an aggregate of polls like the Poll Tracker is to try to make sense of these differences, but the variation in the surveys could simply be chalked up to when they were conducted. More data is needed to get a better understanding of where things really stand.

But it is clear that the Liberals cannot take their re-election for granted. Campaigns really do matter. The next five weeks will prove that.