No Majority

While the blogosphere rends its hair at any number "inside baseball" type issues, the Canadian populace has jobs and girlfriends and, apparently, better things to do. However, when the phone rings and the pollsters ask to sample their opinions, the Canadian populace will take time out of their busy schedule to say: no majority for you, Tory Boy:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives, bolstered by a surge in support in Quebec, have edged upward in popular opinion, but they remain shy of the magic numbers they need to form a majority government, a new poll shows.

The Tories are now at 38 per cent nationally, six points ahead of the second-place Liberals, who garnered 32 per cent support, says the poll, conducted by Ipsos Reid for CanWest News Service and Global Television.

While you might say that there's good news for Harper in Quebec--the Tories are up ten on the Libs after throwing billions in free candy at the province--for the most part the trend line in Ipsos polls has been gradually downward and away from majority territory. Their post budget bounce is definitely on the fade.

And there's not particularly good news for the Green Party, which has settled back into the below ten per cent region (eight, to be precise). This explains as much as anything the rationale for the Dion-May non-compete agreement, at least from the Green perspective: give your leader a better shot at her seat and, hopefully, a place in the debates rather than clock in at ten per cent in riding after riding and come up with doodly.

But its all good news for us, since it means political bloggers can get out and look at the Sun this Spring, maybe color up those pale, flabby white hides, instead of huddling furtively over our PCs and over interpreting every twitch of the body politic.

But wait...an election in PEI! This could change EVERYTHING!!! I must stay up until midnight for the results, and will post my analysis by three am!!!