About 30 per cent of those polled in the [Quebec] said they would vote for a Conservative candidate if the election were held now, up from 25 per cent who actually voted for one in the January election.
...
In the rest of the country, about 36 per cent of respondents said they would vote for the Tories, down about four percentage points from the actual results of the Jan. 23 election.
Bit hard to parse this, because the story doesn't give further detail, but it looks like the Conservatives are edging away from majority government territory.
10:48 am update: Thanks to Diana for the link to the CTV account of the poll. Definite bad news for the Tories. Nationwide figures:
Cons: 35%, down four per cent.
Libs: 31%, up two per cent.
NDP: 16%, up two per cent.
Bloc: 9%, up two per cent.
And, as Diana also noted, the Globe story seems to contain factual errors.
7 comments:
The story seems to be even worse for the CPC than the Globe is reporting. (The G&M story appears to have some factual errors). Wow, the Globe is getting sloppy..
CTV is reporting:
"For other party candidates (with +/- change since April in brackets):
35 CPC (-4)
31 per cent said Liberal (+2);
16 per cent said NDP (+2);
10 per cent said Bloc Quebecois (-1); and
9 per cent said Green Party (+2).'
"Other areas were split on Canada's military presence in Afghanistan:
50 per cent in Ontario opposed sending troops there, with 42 per cent in support;
45 per cent in the West were in opposition, with 49 per cent in support; and
49 per cent in the rest of Canada were in opposition, with 44 per cent in support."
"In Ontario, where support for the Liberal party is at 42 per cent, Woolstencroft said the province has shown a general reluctance to embrace the new Conservative government"
"Meanwhile, many surveyed were skeptical about the government's motivations behind the new budget, with 64 per cent saying the government sought to win a majority in the next election rather than act in the interests of Canadians"
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet
/ArticleNews/story/
CTVNews/20060505/
conservative_poll_060505/
20060506?hub=TopStories
I can hardly believe that the Liberals are so high, what with the fact that they don't really have a leader and will have to go through all those growing pains when they get one. Weren't the cons around 13% when they were in a similar position?
I believe so, but that was previous to the merger, wasn't it?
The result doesn't surprise me too much, as we are barely out of the flag flap and that's the only issue other than childcare that I have heard people who aren't budget fanatics talking about "around the watercooler", as it were.
Harper seems intent on blowing his honeymoon. I mean, the way he blew off McGuinty this week was really just in poor taste. And whose support did it rally who wasn't already inclined to vote Tory?
The margin of error for the poll is 3.1% so the rise in Liberal numbers are statistically insignificant.
The drop in the Conservative number is statistically significant but not by much.
All in all, the poll itself does not tell us much. It is really too early to tell if this is an indication that the Conservatives are succeeding or failing in increasing the level of support they achieved in election day.
However, it should take some of the lead out the pencils that Conservative supporters have been sporting the last couple of weeks.
Canadians can smell bullshit when it's presented to them, even it is on a silver platter. This poll shows Canadians are not buying the budget bullshit Harper presented with such a flourish. It does not matter that the National Post and Globe & Mail presented deliberately false headlines describing the poll. The facts speak for themselves. Voters know Harper is trying to hoodwink them, and that the budget is designed to win a majority and is not a true reflection of the New Tory agenda. Voters are watching Harper and his government carefully, and they are not falling for the neocon spinmeisters.
Bad news for Harper, indeed.
But good news for good old Canadian cannyness: we just don't buy bullshit without questioning, like the Americans seem to do. Better factor that into your advice to the New Tories, Frank Luntz - your dog won't hunt north of the 49th parallel.
How can you tie Harper to Afghanistan? I am sure that the CPC voted to get involved, but wasn't it the Liberals that put our soldiers in Afghanistan in the first place?
By the way, how did you feel in 1998 when the Liberals, under Chretien, joined Bill Clinton, then the American President, in an illegal war against that European Socialist, Slobodan Milosevic?
The margin of error for the poll is 3.1% so the rise in Liberal numbers are statistically insignificant.
That's not correct. Saying that the margin of error is 3.1% does not imply that every possible number from -3.1 to +3.1 is equally likely. The further from the mean, the less likely it is to be that number.
In other words, the changes are stastically significant.
Post a Comment