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Thursday 4 December 2008
New poll: Conservative support now at 44%...Coalition support 28%
As the coalition begins to collapse, it should be noted that public support of it is barely higher than the Liberals vote percentage in the last election and is much lower than the Conservative support in the last election according to a new poll. I don't think anyone should be surprised that this circus has put Conservatives into majority territory. Having said that, we should extend an olive branch and work with the opposition parties on the budget until that majority comes for real. Dion is the gift that just keeps on giving.
Update: Other polls here here here here and here. Based on all these numbers, any coalition supporter who thinks Dion has a mandate to be Prime Minister is kidding themselves. I have seen nothing close to 62% support for this idea.
Update 2: I like this one best. 46% support now for the Conservatives (easy majority) and a solid with NDP and Liberal numbers crashing. I don't think we have been anywhere near 46% support in the history of our party. 72% are scared of the political situation in Ottawa. 60% think Conservatives best option on the economy. 70% agree with the decision of the Governor General. What a disaster this experiment has been for the Liberals. Now is a pretty good time for Liberals and the NDP to accept the election results and get to work on a common budget with the Prime Minister.
-Darryl
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Support for Tories up amid House crisis, CBC-EKOS poll suggests
The Conservatives appear to have won the initial public relations war surrounding the current impasse on Parliament Hill, during one of the most chaotic weeks in Canadian political history, a new EKOS poll conducted for the CBC suggests.
Respondents in the two-day automated telephone survey conducted Tuesday and Wednesday were asked: "If an election were held tomorrow, which party would you vote for?"
According to the poll, Stephen Harper's Conservatives received 44 per cent of respondents' support, up from the 37.6 per cent support the Tories received in the federal election that returned them to Ottawa with another minority government just seven weeks ago.
The results suggest support for Stéphane Dion's Liberals is down two percentage points from the election with 24 per cent of respondents' support, while the New Democrats are down almost four percentage points at 14.5 per cent support.
Meanwhile, the NDP received 14.5 per cent of respondents' support, while the Bloc was at nine per cent and the Greens at eight per cent.
"It does appear that in this period right out of the gates the Conservatives have done a much better job of getting their message out to Canadians who are making up their minds about who to blame for this current mess," Frank Graves, president of EKOS Research, told CBC News on Thursday.
But the poll results also suggest that as angry as some Canadians are about political inaction in Ottawa, Gov-Gen. Michaëlle Jean may have gauged public opinion correctly when she approved the prime minister's request to prorogue Parliament on Thursday.
16 per cent want another election: poll
Some 37 per cent of respondents in the survey said they wanted MPs to take a month off to see whether the Conservative minority government can get the confidence of Parliament when it comes back into session.
Twenty-eight per cent said they wanted the proposed Liberal-NDP coalition with the support of the Bloc Québécois to replace the government in the next few weeks, while 16 per cent of respondents said they wanted another election within the next few weeks.
The survey was largely conducted ahead of the speeches Harper and the three opposition leaders gave on Wednesday night, EKOS said.
It also asked whether respondents had confidence in the Governor General's ability to make decisions about the political impasse. Forty-eight per cent of respondents said they were confident in Jean's ability, while 16 per cent replied they were moderately confident.
But 36 per cent said they were not very confident. The answers broke along party lines, Graves said.
"Conservatives were much more likely to express low levels of confidence, particularly those out west, whereas Liberals and NDP express much greater levels of confidence," he said.
The survey was conducted using interactive voice recognition (IVR) technology, which allows respondents to enter their preferences by punching the keypad on their phone, rather than telling them to an operator.
In total, a random sample of 2,536 Canadians aged 18 and over responded to the survey. A sample of this size provides a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
All the data were statistically weighted to ensure the sample composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to census data.
