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Latest polling thread - started May 22, 2012
May 22, 2012 - 9:59pm
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What's of interest in the Abacus poll? Well for starters the overall results
Party / Mar / May 15-16/12 / Change
Cons / 37% / 37% / No change
NDP / 28% / 35% / Up 7%
Libs / 20% / 17% / Down 3%
So in just 2 months the NDP has gained 7% on the Cons, and 10% on the Libs - not too shabby!
Yeah but i dont trust Abacus they favour conservative in alberta and quebec gaining.
unlike another pollster. nanos favour liberal, ekos/environics/forum favour NDP higher.
right?
Angus Reid out today:
Cons 37 (unchanged since March)
NDP 33 (+4)
Lib 18 (-3)
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/44851/conservatives-steady-ndp-gains-at-the-expense-of-liberals-in-canada/
As much as it's nice to see the NDP gaining ground,it's still depressing that the Cons haven't taken a hit.
You'd figure now that the Reformers have taken aim at workers with their attack on E.I. and have given the GG a 50% pay raise that the Cons would take a blow...But alas,nobody cares...And this apathy keeps the Reform Party train rolling.
Combine the NDP and LPC numbers and you get 51% to the Cons 37%. Just sayin'.
Agreed..But there doesn't seem to be any hope of a merge.
Polls. The divvying up of popular delusion into respective pigeon holes.
The Cons are down since the last election. Every pollster agrees on that. But yes, given their record of the last year alone and even allowing for an Alberta supermajority, their national numbers deserve to be far worse. Though the bedrock of conservative votes in this country must not be much lower than 30%.
The Liberals can maybe save themselves as a viable third party, and save Canada from another Harper government, by electing a leader attractive to the centre-right voters who are unhappy with Harper but currently don't have anywhere else to go.
It makes sense when you consider that going to the Liberals amounts to going nowhere in a hurry. It's merely the sensation of being someplace else that appears as its main draw.
This Angus Reid poll taken over the last 2 days is excellent news for the NDP. It shows that in spite of the hyped-up silliness over Mulcair's tar sands comments in most of the mainstream press, the NDP has gained in support and is within 4% of the Cons. No one said this was going to be easy, but it could have been a lot worse, and it just shows that many Canadians ignore Canada's right-wing punditry. These NDP gains are coming at the expense of the Liberals, the Bloc, and the Greens, so now it is time for the NDP to go head-to-head against the Cons. And for those who are tired of seeing all the anti-NDP comments in the press, just start or keep writing those letters to the editor - some eventually will get published.
Any declared candidates for the LPC leadership yet?
Just one, destined to be the Martin Singh of the race: Shane Geschiere, a paramedic from Manitoba.
Never heard of him!
In 1993 the PC's imploded to 16% but if you add in Reform the right wing parties polled 35%. The NDP (the third party) in that election dropped from a high of 45 seats down to 9 and a little less than 7% of the vote. The Official Opposition formed a majority by eating the third party's vote.
I think that expecting the Conservatives to fall below 30% would be optimistic until the reek of corruption starts to linger and another right wing alternative appears on the horizon. Who is the "new" Paul Martin? The Liberals need him.
http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Elecdata/Canada/parl93.html
The poor ol' LPC..Nothing but duds since Chretien and no prospects on the horizon,either.
If only Iggy put the country ahead of his personal interests,there would have been a coalition or merger and we wouldn't have this fascist abomination Harper government sitting with absolute power and living up to the Dictator most of us recognized him as being in the first place.
The PC's imploded in 1993 but merged with the Reformers by a 'unite the right' campaign.
It's high time to unite the left..or atleast as close to it as possible.
I think the left is uniting. The Liberals have lost a fifth of their voters to the NDP since the election, according to Angus Reid. And certainly not all the remaining Liberals think of themselves as on the left.
As well as consolidating the left to the NDP, it's time to disunite the right. The threatened backbencher revolt this week shows the dysfunction on the government benches. Reform was born of that. I doubt we'll soon see Conservative MPs sitting as independents or coalescing as a new caucus, but Harper has delivered on none of the populist promises of Reform.
All left wing people oppose Harper is not the same as people who oppose Harper are all left wing.
Left leaning voters already vote NDP everywhere but in Ontario and some parts of Atlantic Canada. It seems that when Toronto wakes up to the fact that the Liberals are neocon jerks in liberal costumes the NDP will have no trouble winning a majority.
I want to be positive...
For the record,if the NDP forms the next government and can somehow become a majority,I will organize a cocktail party.
Hopefully we can organize a 'countdown' clock,too..and take to the streets singing Nanana heyheyhey Good-bye..That would be so fitting.
But I think we need 'red' Liberals to jettison from the Liberal party and join the NDP...Maybe,maybe it will be enough for liberal 'Liberal' supporters to realize that the LPC is not worth supporting.
This will be a daunting task.
IMO most of the left liberals have already flown the coop so I don't see a lot of fertile ground there for votes. I prefer the scenario where the Libs elect a right winger like Paul Martin to do a Peter Lougheed imitation and have them run against the Conservative's corruption and sense of privilege. That way the left liberals still not voting for the NDP will get a clear message.
And, don't forget, there's still Tory votes to be had--both of the "reform populist" variety and of the "devil you know" variety. Don't think those cannot shift NDPward...
I agree with adma - one would be very surprised how or why people vote for certain people parties. So here goes - during the leadership race convention, I took a taxi to the convention centre on the 1st day - the taxi driver told me all about driving Olivia and flowers to the church for Jack's daughter's wedding, and he just thought Jack was tops and always voted for him.
Next, he told me he also voted for Ford for mayor - now that blew me away but here's the thing, this guy always voted for the populist candidate and the perceived "underdog". Obviously on first blush his "politics" was coherent but in asking more questions I was able to see how Jack and Ford met his criteria for his "vote". So yeah, don't discount that reform populist voter.
Or the relatively apolitical "devil you know" voter. i.e. those who opted for Harper the way they once may have opted for Chretien/Martin, even when the incumbent was an odious Tom Wappel type...
Totally agree with you. I've watch this voter movement many times over the years. In my family several of the family have gone back and forth NDP TO CONSERVATIVE. These people are generally political only in the fact that they want the government to do the right thing. That right thing depends on what is paramount on their mind during the election cycle. The men often won't vote liberal simply becasue they seem to "sit on the fence so to speak" . The women in the family tend to move NDP/LIBERAL as they are much happier with a moderate approach or concern for the underpriveleged.
This i am sure does not play to all families and regions. But the tough mean image the con's are trying to put on Mulcair is actually helping him among the Men, both in the polls and among the males i know.
So let's take the liberal/bloc/green votes we can get to join the opposition to Harper. But let's bring to us the democratic conservative voters. they expected their goverment to do the right thing and on that they have failed. LET'S GO after the con voter.
I have argued since the 1980s that politics is not just left right but also populist establishment so the opposite of left populist is right establishment -- eventually a third dimension was created as people found they needed to distinguish between the social and economic Conservative-progressive dichotomy. The vote compass interestingly started using a 2 dimensional scale to plot voters as well.
If you want to be accurate though these points are ideology-based and you see how they have become complicated. But ideology is only one reason people use to choose how they are voting. Then you have personality (Do you relate to them? Do you like them?); Anger (some will tend to vote against whomever is in power when they feel they are suffering or not being heard-- constantly saying give the other guys a chance etc.). Then you have those who really have not made up their minds and can radically change their political opinions from one year to the next. This may see odd to those of us who have spent time to come up with some basic principles we believe in but many don't think about politics that much and remain close to a blank slate at election time and can be moved from one party to another easily. Finally you have one-issue voters-- people not inspired by programs, people or ideology but will vote for what they think is important or top of mind at the time. For these people things can change easily.
A large number of voters are completely up for grabs in any election. This can represent as many as a quarter of the electorate which is huge when you consider what that means when they move. 15% have taken the NDP from under 20% to first place in some polls. 25% can elect a majority by changing sides or bring a party to wipe out status.
If you accept that 25% are up for grabs in any election and a further migration can happen with others (as happened in Quebec to the NDP), and about 10% can vote or stay home depending on motivation then you get an idea of how fluid things can be.
So in a right wing riding with say 50% voting Con 25% voting Liberal and 20% voting NDP-- a small migration form Liberal to NDP of say 5% plus a shift of that 25% that is up fro grabs to the NDP and a demoralized Con vote that loses 10% who stay home you can get: Con50%-5% stay home-25% move to NDP/NDP 20+5% from Liberals+25% and you have an NDP victory. It is rare that such change happens but it is easier to do than you think and this is with well over 50% of the population voting as they always do. What creates huge shifts are relatively small changes in opinion.
Liberals hit new low as NDP, Tories face-off
http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.ca/2012/05/liberals-hit-new-low-as...
Which is worth mulling over. For I see these as the true "conservative" voters--not in their ideology, but in their caution in exercising their franchise. Thus in Ontario in the 1990s, federal Liberal proved a more "conservative" ballot-box option than the PCs or Reform (let alone NDP).
However, this doesn't mean they're immovable--they just need extra convincing that a seemingly more "attractive" alternative is truly viable, before committing to it. On behalf of the NDP, Ontario took that gamble provincially in 1990--with disastrous results. However, said gamble worked out for notoriously "conservative" Nova Scotia in the late 90s--at least provincially. Federally, NDP remained a tricky option post-Alexa.
Jackmania and all, NDP remained a question mark for many Ontarians in 2011. So they opted for Conservative to be "on the safe side", all the more so with the collapse of the IggyGrits...
I think most 'true' Conservatives will not have very nice things to say about Liberals and socialists. Granted there is a conservative tendency to go for the devil you know and to resist change, which can sometimes be good for left-leaning pols who are seen to be honorable. There is often a complaint from the Left that the Liberals campaign from the left and govern from the right. The complaint on the Right is the opposite, so called 'PC' Tories will campaign from the right and govern from the Left.
When a real Conservative candidate comes out, right wing Conservatives vote in droves, and guys like Rob Ford and Mike Harris win. As we saw with the election of Rob Ford, the Liberals fell in line behind the righ-wing leader, and more than a few went for Harris more than a decade earlier.
If you are in any way equivocal about your Conservative beliefs as a politician, most hard-right voters will stay at home saying, "Might as well let the real Socialist/Liberal win". At least they will be able to complain with a clear conscience.
But as per my point, "true" Conservatives do not equate with "conservative" voters.
New Forum Research poll, the exact results of which The Post is being strangely coy: "the NDP was the declared preference of more than one-third, compared to less than one-third who chose the Conservative Party and one-fifth the Liberal Party." Though they admit, whatever it is, it's enough for an NDP minority government.
Headline "NDP Gains Ground." Are you gaining ground when you're winning?
http://www.nationalpost.com/Gains+ground+poll/6688269/story.html