A surprising lack of political polling is something that has political junkies and pundits scratching their heads.

The writ is expected to be dropped this week, yet there has been very little in the way of political polling to get a guage on public opinion.

The dearth of information has caught the attention of Memorial University political scientist Amanda Bittner. She says part of the issue is trying to poll opinion in smaller populations.

“Trying to understand trends in a small region is very challenging,” says Bittner. She says survey research methodology and getting people to participate are among the difficulties encountered.

Bittner says there are a couple of polling companies that do regular polling in the province, but she hasn’t found any recent polling data.

“The most recent polls that I saw were done in November,” says Bittner who says a lot has changed since that time, including a change in premier, Trump’s tariffs, and the recent federal election. “It would be nice to have some recent polls out there.”

A Narrative Research poll issued in June showed that 67 per cent of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians asked were completely or mostly satisfied with the provincial government’s performance, however it did not compare the performance of the various parties.