Liberals take lead over Conservatives

Status
Not open for further replies.
V

Valdez

Me
Joined
Feb 4, 2009
Messages
327
Reaction score
0
Yeah, probably only Canadians will take any interest in this story (seems to be the usual case). Oh well, it's still important.

Liberals have been shown as ahead recently in several small polls, but a massive poll over 10 times the usual size cements it (by a sadly small margin).

The Liberals have edged ahead of the ruling Conservatives in popular support but not by enough to be sure of winning an election now, according to the largest ever poll conducted in Canada.

The Ekos survey of almost 11,000 Canadians -- more than 10 times the usual polling size -- put the Liberals at 33.5 percent support and the Conservatives at 32.3 percent.

The results are another indication that despite recent talk of an imminent election, Canadians will not be voting any time soon. The Ekos poll, conducted over three weeks in May for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, was released on Monday.

Under Canada's first-past-the-post electoral system, a party needs to win around 36 percent of the vote to win a minority government and about 40 percent to stand a chance of capturing a majority.

"The overall picture these numbers paint is slightly more positive for the Liberals, who are ahead more days than they lag," said Ekos President Frank Graves.

"But the situation is clearly quite volatile, and neither party could force an election right now confident they would win, much less form a majority," he said in a statement.

The Liberals say they are ready to try to bring down the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Parliament on the grounds that it is not doing enough to help the unemployed.

But to do so they need the support of both the other opposition parties and that looks unlikely.

The leader of the left-leaning New Democrats -- which are on 15.1 percent public support -- said on Sunday he had no plans to move a non-confidence motion in the government before Parliament breaks for its summer recess on June 23.

Ekos said the Liberals had been tied with the Conservatives at the start of last week and then moved slightly ahead later in the week when the government revealed this year's budget deficit would be much larger than first estimated.

Asked who would make the best prime minister, 30 percent of those polled said Harper while 26 percent chose Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. A full 44 percent said neither.

The Ekos poll of 10,896 adults was carried out between May 7 and 28 and is considered accurate to within 1.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20
Click to expand...

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/090601/n_top_news/cnews_us_politics_poll

This story makes me happy. Harper has done nothing but drag Canada down, and it seems the country is beginning to realize that.
 
Go liberalism!
This is awesome!
FIRST POST W00T
 
Well, after the whole elections mess last autumn, I'm pretty happy to see the Liberals gaining a lead. Plus I sort of agree with them on important issues more anyway.
 
Do you even understand why you are cheering or simply doing so because the liberal media dictates that you do?
Click to expand...

The liberal media like Fox News? : p
 
Fox News does indeed suck, but the more liberals there are in the world, the better. Conservatives (at least the right wing) suck.
 
Almost forgot to mention that the Conservatives have already started their attack ads against Ignatieff, with the first airing a week or two ago. If that's not a sure sign that they're losing their cool (and their momentum) I don't know what is.

But then that's the thing with the Conservative Party of Canada; they try to win votes through instilling fear and doubt, not their platform and policies (last election, anyone?)
 
Yup...Maybe that's why I abandoned my support for The Canadian Conservatives and went with the Centrist Canadian Liberals (That's what they are. >.>) recently.

I hope they'll regain seats in the next Parliamentary elections.

I'll hold off with supporting the NDP until something pushes me even more leftward. >.<

TTEchidna said:
Sounds familiar.
Click to expand...

Yup...Living right beside the US has it's thing...
 
Last edited:
A minimal lead in Canada for the Libs is a disaster for the Conservatives, because so much of their support is regional (the Prairies) - a drop of a few percent points in relative popularity to the Libs will cost them dearly in Ontario, to a lesser extent BC, the traditional "Swing" provinces.

To make matters worse for them, they're not the only one losing out to Ignatieff's liberals in relative popularity: recent polls in Quebec have featured 37-31 and 37-33 results Liberal-Bloc results. (The conservatives, for comparison, are around the low 10s - below even the NDP in the latest numbers)
 
Evil Figment said:
A minimal lead in Canada for the Libs is a disaster for the Conservatives, because so much of their support is regional (the Prairies) - a drop of a few percent points in relative popularity to the Libs will cost them dearly in Ontario, to a lesser extent BC, the traditional "Swing" provinces.

To make matters worse for them, they're not the only one losing out to Ignatieff's liberals in relative popularity: recent polls in Quebec have featured 37-31 and 37-33 results Liberal-Bloc results. (The conservatives, for comparison, are around the low 10s - below even the NDP in the latest numbers)
Click to expand...

When have the Conservatives ever been popular in Quebec? I can't honestly remember when they were last ahead of the Liberals there; even in the last election they were lower.
 
2006 General Elections; they got 24.6% of votes, against 20.7% to the Libs, 42.1% to the Bloc. That was with the Kickbacks fresh in everyone's mind, and with the promise of decentralized federalism, so "soft" nationalist largely went with the Libs.

The kickbacks unfortunately faded pretty quickly, and the Conservatives played drop-the-ball on language, environment and culture (while playing though-on-crime, never a big sell in Quebec), all touchy issues in Quebec. Whereas Dion, well, at least spoke French and was all for environment, hence why he was able to steal no-Harper votes from the Bloc in 2008 (Conservatives 21.7, Liberals 23.7, Bloc 38.1).

The conservatives really didn't take well to the fact that Quebecers hadn't happily lined up to vote for them after the "bribes" they had been given (eg, Quebec nation motion, nevermind that it was Ignatieff who started the ball rolling. End result: they started ranting about Quebec, and generally acting like it wasn't part of their world.

Hence why two months after the elections, Quebecers very much favored the Coalition (plus, the party subsidies system is something we've had in place in Quebec for 30 years, so we're a bit opposed to it being cut anywhere), why the "THEY'RE ALLIED WITH THE SEPARATISTS!" argument really, really, really didn't fly well in Quebec (separatists or not, they're still our representatives in Ottawa, and still entitled to taking part in federal political life).

Which brings us to today, where Harper has Bush-like disapproval levels in Quebec (71% of Quebecers are against him), and where Ignatieff is highly popular (predictably: he's shown his vision of Canada has room for the very generalized Quebecer vision of Quebec as a distinct nation (within or without Canada)).

Hence the current polling results:
Liberals 37% - Bloc 33% - NDP 14% - Conservatives 13%
 
Last edited:
An injured and bleeding Prime Minister Harper is better for us in the meantime. I'm glad to see the Green Party gaining ground, the old ideological lines of left and right are not as relevant in a changing world as they once were. It makes more sense to choose a pragmatic party that is open to what works and not what the right or left holy books say; and the environment should be at the top of the agenda.:banghead:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom