Posted on 07/11/2007 6:11:26 PM PDT by GMMAC
Tories still shy of majority, poll suggests
CanWest News Service, Wednesday, July 11, 2007
MONTREAL -- As Canadians began to head off for summer vacation, they were still in no mood to grant Prime Minister Stephen Harper the kind of support that would translate into a majority government in another election, a new opinion poll suggested.
In the Environics Research Group poll, the Conservatives had 37% support; the Liberals 28; NDP 17; Greens 11 and Bloc Quebecois slipping to 7.
Party standings remained stagnant, said Derek Leebosh, a senior associate with Environics. He likening the parties' positions to "World War I trench warfare" where a metre of ground is gained one day only to be lost the next, with everyone mired in the mud.
While Harper's approval rating has slipped across the country to 48%, it's lowest level since his election and the first time Environics has seen it below 50%, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion hasn't been able to capitalize. Only 16% of Canadians see him as the best choice for PM, compared with 36% for Harper and 20% for Layton.
In fact, Layton, who notched a three-point increase on that question since the last Environics poll, is the only federal party leader gaining ground at the moment.
Harper's decline in approval rating was sharpest in Saskatchewan and the Maritimes, where his unpopular stand on factoring resource revenues into the equalization equation has hurt him, Leebosh said.
But the prime minister has never managed to get the Tories consistently up into the low-40s, where they need to be to be sure of winning a majority, and "the longer you are in power, the longer you have to do something people don't like," the pollster said. "Everything is almost exactly back to where it was before the Liberal leadership convention" in December.
Leebosh said these results are as good an indication as any that there won't be a federal election this fall.
The poll, conducted June 5-30, surveyed 2,021 Canadians across the country for a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points 95 times out of 100.
One of the surprises in the poll was that Layton was the most popular leader in Montreal, where the NDP has never elected an MP.
Among Montrealers polled, Layton scored 24%, compared with 19% for Harper, 16% for Dion and 12% for Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe. However, the Montreal sample was only 217 respondents and had a margin of error of 6.7 percentage points.
Leebosh said Layton's apparent strength in Montreal could be attributed to two factors: "Tom Mulcair [a former provincial Liberal cabinet minister] is the NDP's star candidate in an upcoming byelection, but also the city may be more left-wing than the rest of the province," which suggests dispirited Bloc and Liberal voters may be turning to the NDP in the urban area.
The concept of “plurality” is lost on the paper.
Canadian Conservatives' "ace-in-the-hole"
STEPHANE DION:
“One of the surprises in the poll was that Layton was the most popular leader in Montreal, where the NDP has never elected an MP.”
It’s got nothing to do with electing MPs; it’s just an expression of solidarity by the local anti-semites for Taliban Jack, reinforced by the North African jihadis in Montreal.
I agree the headline is misleading. Isn’t this 9% lead the largest Conservatives have had in a few months?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Imagine what they could do if they held an unambiguous majority.
The second definition describes Asperger’s syndrome.
Have you ever noticed how the polls say only what the liberals want them to say?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.