From “True Blue” to blue Christmas. For Conservative party leader Erin O’Toole it’s shaping up to be like that old Elvis song.

After seemingly beating back post-election questions about his leadership, O’Toole’s popularity among Canadians has fallen by five points, according to the latest Angus Reid poll released on Friday.

More ominously for O’Toole, his favourability ratings among his own Conservative party members (including those who voted for him in the last federal election in September) has dropped 22 points, from 81 per cent  to 59 per cent. That’s lower than his predecessor Andrew Scheer just before he was forced to resign after the 2019 election.

O’Toole’s favourability among Canadians has also dropped from a high of 38 per cent in the days before the election, to 24 per cent, which is a new low for O’Toole.

Angus Reid attributes O’Toole’s sharp decline to a shift among young male voters to the People’s Party. That would explain why O’Toole has been hammering away on meat and potatoes issues on social media in recent days and weeks. 

But the splintering of the Conservative party base seemingly continues despite recent efforts by the Conservative leader to shore up support on his right flank with the recent appointments of the likes of Pierre Poilievre and Michelle Rempel Garner to his shadow cabinet. 

By some media accounts, O’Toole just had his best week since the election, by managing to avoid another public embarrassment by convincing his caucus to support the Liberals’ bill to ban conversion therapy. 

But the more O’Toole tries to steer the party to the centre, the more internal backlash he faces. 

Labelling himself a “True Blue” Conservative during the leadership, O’Toole’s “Efforts to rebrand the Conservative Party as more progressive are, in particular, facing resistance and have reignited old ideological and regional schisms,” according to Angus Reid.

Pressure for an early leadership review also continues to mount after O’Toole removed Senator Denise Batters for publicly launching a petition challenging his leadership.

The Liberal party of Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, has seen a five-point bump in popularity since the election and now hold a six-point lead over the Conservatives, despite questions reportedly surrounding Trudeau’s own future as party leader – not to mention, increasingly tense trade relations with the U.S., rising inflation and a new Omicron variant of the coronavirus to contend with.

While some among the Conservative party’s hardcore are deserting for the PPC, the Liberals seem to be making their own play for moderate Conservative voters moving on a number of Conservative talking points since the election. 

That effort started subtly with the Liberals moving last month to raise Canadian flags on Remembrance Day that had been flying at half-mast at federal buildings ever since the discovery of the unmarked graves of Indigenous children at the former Kamloops residential school in May.

The Liberals also moved last month to end emergency COVID relief supports to all but the hardest-hit businesses, which the Conservative party had been calling for.

Similarly, the Liberal government was quick to follow through on the Conservative party’s call for travel restrictions on flights from seven southern African states, following the recent discovery of the Omicron variant in South Africa.

This past week, the Liberals surprised some of their own party members by taking aim at another popular Conservative target – China – and announcing a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics over China’s “repeated human rights violations.” Canada’s ambassador to China, Dominic Barton, who has been seen in some diplomatic circles as too to China’s business interests, has also officially resigned his post.

Going after moderate Conservative votes is a strategy the Liberals have successfully employed before – in 2015 to win their majority. The current more divided incarnation of the Conservative party under O’Toole seems just as ripe for the picking.

@enzodimatteo