Latest Opinion Poll - June 10, 2009

Frankly if I were the Liberals I would be very worried.  With a new leader honeymoon and all the fawning press, the mess that is the federal government, and major economic upheavel the Liberals should be cruising around majority territory in the polls.  That the Conservatives and NDP have only a slight down-bounce in their numbers from the last election does not bode well for the Liberals.  It is also suggests the more Canadians see Ignatieff the less they like otherwise he would be pulling much higher numbers.

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

Frankly if I were the Liberals I would be very worried.  With a new leader honeymoon and all the fawning press, the mess that is the federal government, and major economic upheavel the Liberals should be cruising around majority territory in the polls.  That the Conservatives and NDP have only a slight down-bounce in their numbers from the last election does not bode well for the Liberals.  It is also suggests the more Canadians see Ignatieff the less they like otherwise he would be pulling much higher numbers.

It is debatable as to where a party "should" be in the polls.  You may be right that perhaps the Liberals  should be higher right now considering the economic situation, but it could also be argued the Liberal numbers are pretty good considering recent history.

The Liberals just had one of their worst elections in history and only got 26% of the vote on October 14.  People said in October that the Liberals would be in the political wilderness for years with no chance of winning another election for a long time.  The fact that less than a year later the Liberals are ahead of the Conservatives and in contention to win another election may be a good sign for the party.  Therefore, it's hard to know what the right way to interpret the poll numbers are.  It depends upon how you look at them.

Where is my colour?

I had time on my hands, and curiosity over this new format of webpage. I haven't been here for a while.

WCG, the "why?" next to Calgary ... did it mean you were wondering why they bothered to sub-sample it?  I have my guess as to why, but perhaps you were asking a different question.

ottawaobserver wrote:

WCG, the "why?" next to Calgary ... did it mean you were wondering why they bothered to sub-sample it?  I have my guess as to why, but perhaps you were asking a different question.

Yes. Why as in "why subsample that region" when we know Conservatives will sweep that city. A subsample of Edmonton, a city of similar size, would have been more relevent.

I was thinking maybe they did it to see whether Ignatieff is getting any pickup there.

Most of the folks involved with designing that new big Ekos poll and getting the CBC to pay for it are big L or small l liberals (In addition to Frank Graves, I'm thinking of Elly Alboim, Paul Adams and others, and we won't even mention the pro-Liberal bias of their sponsors in the CBC english-language service and The National in particular).  I'm not saying it affects the quality of the research, but I do think it affects the kinds of questions they're interested in.  For example, on best PM ... they ask about Harper and Ignatieff but no-one else.  Then they get an answer that says "neither" but don't pursue it further to perhaps see if someone else would be preferable.

Of course now I'm talking myself out of this as an explanation for the Calgary sub-sample, since I assume the Liberals are interested in Edmonton as well (surely they are, right?).  Perhaps remind's explanation of it being Harper's home is the right one after all.

ottawaobserver wrote:

I'm not saying it affects the quality of the research, but I do think it affects the kinds of questions they're interested in.  For example, on best PM ... they ask about Harper and Ignatieff but no-one else.  Then they get an answer that says "neither" but don't pursue it further to perhaps see if someone else would be preferable.

I don't think so.  The reality is that Harper and Ignatieff are the top 2 preferences in the best PM polls - Layton ranks below Harper and Ignatieff in all the best PM polls except in Quebec where Layton ranks ahead of Harper.

However, there is a non-Canadian leader who comes ahead of Harper and Ignatieff when the question is expanded beyond Canadian leaders, and that is Barack Obama.

So yes, ottawaobserver, there are a lot of respondents who aren't that enthusiastic about any of the Canadian leaders and who would prefer Obama, but since Obama isn't running for PM, the pollsters obviously focus primarily on the race between the Canadian leaders.

Barack Obama during his (so far) short term in office has had more Predator drone bombings of AfPak than Bush during his entire term. Obama also has his own troop surge in Afghanistan.

As far as the Afghan war, Obama has turned out to be more "Bush".

I see.

The irony though is that Edmonton would be a more relevant Alberta city to poll since there is actually a non-Conservative seat there (Edmonton-Strathcona) and perhaps another with the possibility to go Liberal again (Edmonton Centre).  Edmonton has pockets of left of centre voters whereas Calgary does not appear to have that.  The last time a non-right winger won in Calgary was in 2000 when Joe Clark was able to win in Calgary Centre with the help of the Liberals and NDP.

Though 23.1% *does* seem high for the Liberals in Calgary...

remind wrote:

Was looking over the poll pdf, and again it is Canadian women in the majority supporting the NDP. Very interesting indeed.

I think you misread...at least if you were looking at the Ekos poll. 

Female vote (page 6 of 15)

CONS - 27.3%

LIBS - 35.6%

NDP - 16.6%

Green - 11.4%

BLOC - 9.1%

N = 2741,  MOE = +/-1.9

http://www.ekos.ca/admin/articles/CBC-2009-06-11.pdf

Edited to add...unless you meant more women than men support the NDP.

I hope not still

The Calgary support for the Liberals could be a start of their rebuilding in Alberta - Iggy has been there several times recently and has been meeting with the oil and gas types and seems at least here on the west coast to be getting positive coverage - Iggy knows to win a solid majority he needs to make inroads where the Party has been week for years - the biggest example is Alberta and then Saskatchewan.

politics101 but it could also be that those provinces like right wing shit n O look Corporate Party of Canada Red branch Leader Iggy to the Rescue

she stayed in a lot of news cycles because of that issue. it won't happen this time. there will be one cycle where everyone just agrees to let her in.

One problem is that if you allow the cities the ability to dominate the rural votes, the rural communities are run roughshod over. This is a very big problem as it is, and it is difficult enough to support or protect these rural areas.  Rural populations need to be represented and they need their values and concerns represented.

It is for good reason that they are weighted. Regardless, in places in Ontario, where large riding boundaries have been drawn around Rural areas, it is not for the benefit of the rural communities but the city located in the centre.

Noise wrote:

adma is right...23.1% Liberal might be how the Alberta Libs poll in Calgary, but I have problems seeing that on a federal level. In 2008, the best a Liberal did in Calgary federally was in the 21% range (which I accredit to a popular lib who managed to play on some anti-Rob Anders support), so if this poll is accurate we've got about a +12%ish in Liberal support. For 2008 federal, half of the ridings (4 out of 8) the Greens were quite a bit ahead of the Libs. Only one riding saw a green vote of less than the 8.7% this poll gives them too... I'd give the greens somewhere in the 12% support range and the NDP in the 10%...libs perhaps in the 14% or lower range.

Actually, I just commented about it being "high"; not about it being implausibly high.  And prior to 2006/08's Grit tailspin, 23.1% wouldn't have been implausible at all, federally.  So this would be going back to, or not too much above, a Chretien/Martin-era normal for Grit polling numbers in Calgary.

For that matter, I think you're lowballing it for the provincial Liberals, too; after all, Calgary now has more Grit-held seats than Edmonton, and the leader's a Calgarian (and who knows if even that has latent federal spillover)

No offence Noise, but I always weight empirical evidence heavy against opinion. 

So many opinions are proven wrong, and so much data is proven accurate 19 times out 20.

Red Rover - I did provide emperical evidence from 2008 results, and I provided emperical evidence that close to half of the people that responded to that poll won't vote...polls done in Calgary are very rarely accurate, if you'd really like we can go over some of the past ones that put the ALP taking most of Calgary last election as examples. Phone polls especially as their methodology misses the majority of youth that only have unlisted cells (which the GP and NDP benefit from)

Though now that I look at it...the plus or minus 7% on the calgary numbers means the numbers I'd expect are within error (err, 2% extra for the libs).

adma:

Quote:

I think you're giving the Greens too much credit as a perma-Grit substitute in Calgary

I wouldn't call it a perma-Grit substitute, but the protest vote heavily collects under green where it didn't prior. It's incorrect that Liberal voters go green here too, the GP gets alot of former Con voters.

Alberta Liberal party are only affiliated with Liberal party of Canada by name...there technically is no counterparts to iggy here beyond namesake.  If you watch our voter trends, the ALP vote doesn't align with the Federal Libs vote...the Provincial ridings that make up the City-Center north riding, the ALP manages to put together well over 10'000 votes with the NDP lucky to have 2k votes.  The same region federally under John Chan (probably the most popular calgarian NDP member) manages over 7400 votes, Greens about .03% behind, and the Liberals with just over 5k.  The Provincial ALP vote does not translate in Federal Liberal votes...the GP and NDP benefit more-so

The mayoral race featured 12% turnout, most people are unaware bronconnier even ran as a Liberal in the past.  Very hard to get any trends from that with such a low turnout. 

Provincial representation isn't the most telling since we dip to around 1 in 3 voter turnout, but what it does highlight is our vote is concentrated in the city center riding and into city-center north (as of 2008, the NDP vote collapsed after Brian Pincott left the scene...most of us went to the greens under Natalie Odd.  by us I mean campaigners, not just votes).  Calgary City center is also where Joe Clark managed to beat out a reform/alliance member and by far the most likely to produce a non-Conservaitve MP at some point down the road. 

editted to add...both of the ridings I refer to above saw a shift away from Liberals and NDP over to Green from 2006 to 2008.  I don't see the trend subsiding anytime soon, but who knows....

Quote:

giving Iggy too little credit for having even token reach in Calgary

He won't change what most people that responded to this poll will say. What he can effect is the turnout rates of Liberal voters.

Hey sweet, I normally don't get to see age breakdowns of these. Alberta is listed in the poll stockholm linked:

age con lib ndp green

<25 43.7% 15.4% 22.0% 18.9%

45-64 69.1% 14.4% 7.8% 8.6%

It's amazing the differences from one generation to the next...the NDP have an amazing opportunity to grow this youth support here. Unfortunately, youth seem to be the largest non-voters segment as well.

added...look at the trend within the <25 group towards NDP and GP...the greens are 15% higher amoung <25 than over 65.  NDP isn't quite that well prounounced but similiar trend.   Any comments as to the frusteration of the youth with the current 2 parties maybe?  This is really the challenge for growing the NDP, the need to get the youth that support them into thier folds.

What's really good for the NDP is that very few under-25s actctually bother to vote.

But that should make you very nervous, Debater.  Usually when a party gets a new leader there is honeymoon and the party rises in the polls.  The fact that that is not happening with Iggy's ascension is very troubling for the Liberals. 

Wrong, wrong wrong.

We have a PM that is universally loathed by the progressive portion of the nation.  We have a newly 'annointed' leader of the Official Opposition that received all kinds of fawning press.  We have one of the worse economic downturns since the Depression. 

The stars are all aligned for the Liberals yet they are barely moving.  Even in Quebec the change is minor in terms of movable seat changes.  The more likely outcome of the current numbers is more Bloq seats not less.

Liberals should be quaking waiting for the end times given how positive the news should be for their numbers.  Anything else is Liberal silly spin.  The fundamental proof is Iggy getting a big fat zero, and having no courage to even try to get more from Harper in this week.