Every time we get polls released each month, we always have at least one poll where the Conservatives are up on the Liberals from the prior month, who also throw in leadership polls that show Dion doing poorly, and predictably, we get some Liberal bloggers getting heartburn and demanding either the leader resign or else be upended in a palace coup or else claim this shows Canadians won’t listen to Dion’s message in an election - specifically on a carbon tax. The next day, Nanos polling comes out with much more close numbers, and that usually calms the “nervous nellies”.
So once again, we have another poll from Nanos released.
A new Nanos Research-Sun Media poll shows the Opposition Liberals at 34% and the ruling Conservatives at 33%, compared to 36% and 36% respectively in April. The results indicated a statistical tie that could see either party win a minority…The poll, which asked committed voters which party they would vote for, showed the Green Party slowly inching up in the polls from 4% at the 2004 election, to 8% now. The Bloc is at 11%, compared to 10% at the 2006 election, while the NDP dropped three percentage points from 18% in 2006 to 15% now.
If you look at the provincial breakdown, you see a continued large lead in the Maritimes for the Liberals, a continued substantial lead in Ontario. a virtual tie with the Cons in Quebec for 2nd place, and while still trailing in the “West”, the Liberals actually have cut into the Cons. lead and have it in single digits. That type of breakdown to me indicates a far better chance of having a Liberal minority then a Cons. one right now if these numbers held to election day.
While I’m not going to call on people to quit whining, I do think some need to take the aforementioned pepto-bismol. As I said over here in comments, people elect political parties in Canada - they don’t elect presidents. Furthermore, since some are worried about whether we can sell a carbon tax or not - if the majority of the Canadian public are starting from the position that they approve of a carbon tax, as recent polls indicate, thats an automatic built-in advantage for the Liberals. We don’t need to “sell” it as hard if the public isn’t skeptical of it from the get-go. Note also that a fair # of the pundits are starting to say this might be a better issue then some are giving Dion and the Liberals credit for. That’s a good thing too if the media are presenting that narrative to the public.
In short, I wouldn’t sweat leadership #’s too much, and I wouldn’t get our noses out of join over an individual poll here and there The election will not be won and the leadership #’s will not move before a general election gets called - these polling #’s seem to indicate that.
hear, hear.
Although I would go further and tell people to, quite frankly, quit their bitching. Chretien was by all accounts an awful opposition leader, yet, except for a few people loyal to one of the worst leaders our party has ever had following him, few would say that getting rid of Chretien would have been a good idea for the party.