Apolitical Staples

You know what’s (far) more interesting than manufactured news poll results? The spin that pollsters try to put on them. Nanos doesn’t mention that the CPC is up overall since the election (according to his results) in both Que and Ont .

How come html tags work in the preview but not in the actual comment?

I am sure about that one…I am not very good with HTML to begin with.

I’m sorry, but I see little to gain from looking at poll after poll when the Liberals don’t even have a leader in place.

Until there is a real leader of the opposition, these polls are simply a collection of issue-by-issue plebiscites. When the Liberals have Iggy or Rae (or any of the other eight people who want to inherit the mess known as the Liberal party) as leader, then the public will be able to make a more informed decision as to which party is best fit to govern.

I’m also guessing that this latest poll does not take into account Boris Wrzesnewskyj’s pro-Hezbollah comments. Call me optimistic, but I think that may play against the Liberals…just a bit.

-Pat Watson

The Ont & Que samples are too small. We should wait for province specific polls before concluding anything.

I don’t understand why the Leaderless Libs are so far ahead in Ontario.

[HTML check: bold italics big]

I’m surprised it’s not even worse in pacifist Quebec that is dominated by more than its share of Syd Ryan union-type leaders screaming for soldiers to come home from Afghanistan.

Harper needs to somehow turn the War on Terror discussion to a cut-bait discussion on multiculti and give more support for Canada’s founding cultures. Quebecers were never multi-culti and they were right not to be.

When the election comes, events will play a big role. The arrest of the 17 in Toronto has not played out yet, there will be more info on that which will impact how we value our culture and whether or not we want to ‘conserve” it. In that respect Quebec is more conservative than the ROC.

gulp……..but the liberals haven’t even elected a new leader yet, support is failing in quebec, the liberals are ahead in ontario plus it’s summer and people cannae be arsed about government. that majority looks out of reach eh?

The honest fact is that this country is NOT very sympathetic to the points-of-view that ‘conservatives’ generally espouse.

That coupled with the absolute political cluelessness of most people who simply want to concentrate on their own lives(not a bad thing, really, at most times),means that breaking 40% is a real achievement.

All that most Canadians saw during the last month was DEAD Lebanese. Most Canadians did not bother to ask why they were dead. It was just easier on the internal contradictions to say that the Israeli response was ‘disproportionate’.

Canada unfortunately is not the place it once was. Even more unfortunately Quebec still is.

Quebec has long been mostly pacifist, isolationist, and appeasing. Regrettably so now is much of Canada, especially the smug province of Ontario, which also is mortally infested with a virulent anti-Americanism.

Frankly at this point I would rather fight the good fight as PMSH has done than pander to the ‘informed’ Canadian electorate. If that means 36%, so be it.

Nik Nanos was interviewed on the radio this morning, talking about a 39 % level of support, so I’m a bit confused here. Anyway, expect Harper to deal with poll numbers the way a leader is supposed to: Go around the country, explaining his policies as directly as possible. Even those who still disagree with him will give him credit for trying, and may still vote for him if the opposition turns out to be too mediocre (which of course they all are !)

This approach is much better than the Paul Martin method of forever tweaking his “position” based on polling. And backing down in the face of strong opposition from one constituency (eg dropping out of Ballistic Missle Defence because of opposition from the Young Liberals).

I just had to comment on this, since I have been waiting for SES for months. The most disturbing thing about this poll for both the CPC and the NDP is the rush of soft NDP support to the Liberals (in Ontario for now, but that’s bad enough). If Harper continues to govern the way he has this summer, that movement may be beyond Jack Layton’s ability to stop. The splits being as they are, even a shift of 6% away from the NDP to the Liberals (even confined to Ontario) could have a profound impact on the outcome of the next election. Have a nice rest of the summer folks.

Well it looks like the conservatives have locked in there base.

Now for the fall it is time to Bring in more. Get ready for enviroment plan, and fiscal balance.

I fail to see this poll as bad for the CPC. According to the regional numbers, the CPC is up in every region except for Que.

Cheers, lance

Taken with the necessary grain of salt, what this tells me is that the country wants the current minority government to last. They don’t want the Conservatives to gain a majority, but they don’t want the Liberals back in charge, either.

Suspect that IP has it right — and it’s not a bad parliament, either. I’d prefer the PM to have a bit more support, but I’ll take what we’ve got. He seems pretty adept at managing this body… (Of course, we’ll see what happens once the Liberals elect their new leader.)

I agree with IP. These numbers and others indicate that a lot of Canadians are looking at this parliament and saying “let it ride”, and I strongly suspect that if an election were to take place this fall, a lot of Canadians would search their ballot hard for the option marked “minority government.”

This situation is very similar to the Liberal-NDP agreement years of 1984-86. Canadians spent the next five years trying to recapture that, first giving the Petersen Liberals a landslide majority in 1986, and then turning on them with a vengeance and going with Bob Rae in 1990.

This should be a lesson, here. If Canadians like this minority parliament enough to give Harper a majority the next time around, if he fails to live up to expectations, then the voters might become extremely volatilie. A majority Harper government could be followed next term by a majority Layton government.

Think it’s impossible? Well, who’d have thought that the 42-year Conservative dynasty could have fallen so spectacularly between 1984 and 1986. And who could have thought that the NDP would have come out of nowhere (from 19 to 72 seats) to win in 1990?

So, parliamentarians: behave yourselves, and don’t alienate the moderate voters in this country. Prime Minister Layton could be the result of your failure.

“Prime Minister Layton”? Now I’m going to have nightmares.