Wind At Our Back?

...or meaningless twitches in the numbers?

A survey by Angus Reid Strategies for the Toronto Star shows the federal Liberals with 34 per cent support and the Conservatives with 33 per cent – a statistical dead heat. The result is a warning for any party thinking of plunging into a fall election: No wind of change is blowing across Canada.

The CPoC vote share hasn't changed since the last go round, but the Libs are up four points. Stephen Harper seems to be defying the conventional wisdom that a government's polling numbers improve during summer when they can traipse about handing out money. And I don't know when the polling period for this latest survey ended--is it possible that the return of wafer-gate has actually damaged the Tory numbers?

Meanwhile, my secret sources tell me that this latest Tory scandal is about to get even deeper--its no longer just about crackers! Now there's pork rinds involved!!!

The Tide Has Crested!

I kind of suspected this would happen. As the wave of attack ads and mud has tapered off, the Tories numbers have started to creep downwards; the Libs upwards.

Note that this poll is from the infamous Angus Reid, but the polling dates (March 6 and March 7) given do not seem to match up with the on-line poll they've been conducting recently, and which I wrote about here. Or at least if this is indeed that poll, Cherniak's responses to it (given yesterday) must have been excluded from the total.

Anyway, if it is an on-line poll, I still question the methodology, and would point to the weird Quebec numbers which seem to be at odds with every other polling source:

In Quebec, the Bloc has the support of 37 per cent of decided voters, with the Conservatives in second place with 25 per cent, and the Liberals third with 24 per cent.

Rationally or not, however, I am encouraged by the direction of the national trend (which is pretty close to Decima's).