SIRI AGRELL
From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Sep. 24, 2008 9:49PM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 8:49PM EDT
The Liberal Party has failed to make any gains among Canadian women, new polls show, losing its grip on a key constituency even as the NDP and Green Party effectively woo female voters to their cause.
In battleground ridings across Canada, the Liberals trail the Conservative Party among women, and some are placing the blame squarely on Leader Stéphane Dion.
“Liberals win elections when they have the edge with women voters,” said Peter Donolo, a pollster with the Strategic Counsel. “Right now, they're not enjoying that edge.”
New polling done for The Globe and Mail by the Strategic Counsel found that women are not helping the Liberal Party make up any ground in closely fought battles that it desperately needs to win as the party struggles to find traction against Stephen Harper's Conservatives.
In battleground ridings of British Columbia, where 51 per cent of men said they currently back the Conservative candidate, support among women is significantly lower, at 35 per cent. But the Liberal Party is not drawing any ground from the gender differences. While 24 per cent of men in the province favour the Liberals and 16 per cent back the NDP, female voters are more evenly distributed among the opposition parties. Twenty-eight per cent of women say they support the Liberal candidate, but 24 per cent are backing the NDP and 13 per cent the Green Party.
In Quebec, where the Bloc Québécois enjoys a healthy overall lead, Liberal support is at 22 per cent among both men and women, while men favour the Conservative Party 27 per cent to 23 per cent among women.
Only in Ontario do women close the margins for the Liberals.
In battleground ridings in Ontario, 36 per cent of women are backing the Conservatives, while 32 per cent support the Liberals. Among male voters, the split is 48 per cent Conservative and 22 per cent Liberal.
“It's not that the Conservatives are enjoying an edge among women,” Mr. Donolo said “But the Liberals are seeing their women's vote split three different ways among the opposition to Harper. They have to draw back support from the NDP and the Green Party.”
That new reality was also visible in a Harris/Decima poll released Wednesday.
The survey found that female support for the Conservative Party has fallen to 34 per cent from 40 per cent at the beginning of the campaign, but that has not meant a gain for the Liberal Party, where support among women is at 27 per cent, the same level as the first day of the election.
The New Democratic Party, Green Party and Bloc, meanwhile, have all gained ground. The Green Party saw an increase in support of women to 12 per cent from 10 per cent when the election was called. Support for the NDP has increased to 16 per cent from 15 per cent when the campaign began, and the Bloc has risen to 9 per cent from 7 per cent. Among urban women, the increases are even more pronounced.
“In most elections, there is a dragging down of support for Conservatives among women as the election goes on,” said Bruce Anderson, president of Harris/Decima. “What's unusual in 2008, is that it hasn't coalesced around the Liberals, it's drifted in a number of different directions.”
He does not believe this is because of a problem with the Liberal brand, which was strong before the election was called, or due to a specific issue or general lurch to the left among women throughout the campaign.
“I think the No. 1, 2 and 3 answers are Stéphane Dion and his communication skills,” Mr. Anderson said.
Greg Lyle, managing director of the polling firm Innovative Research Group, agrees that both the NDP and the Green Party have been more effective than Mr. Dion in capturing the attention of women voters.
“The Greens are going up because they're more visible,” he said. “Winning that debate fight was very important to them.”
The NDP has run a campaign focused on voters who are having a hard time getting by and are alienated from the Conservative priorities.
“Jack Layton's saying, ‘You're having a tough time, I get that, I'm going to get big business off your back,'” Mr. Lyle said. “And Stéphane Dion's saying ‘I'm not sure if you're having a good time or not, but what do you think of this tax?'” Mr. Donolo believes the Liberal Leader's only chance is to persuade voters of the threat of a Harper majority.
“Women voters are less warm to Harper and more concerned about his individual agenda items than men are,” Mr. Donolo said. “So if Mr. Dion can build something of a clarion call around that, it might have some impact.”
But the Liberals' vanishing gender advantage may also be a product of how effectively Mr. Harper himself has played down that risk, persuading voters that there is nothing to fear from his government.
With fewer concerns about a Conservative ideological agenda, the Liberal Party coalition may be dissipating to the Greens and NDP, Mr. Donolo said.
“Whether they're just flirting with these other parties...we'll know on election day,” he said.
The Harris/Decima poll represents a total of 1,248 interviews, gathered from Sept. 20 to Sept. 23. The margin of error is 2.8 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
The Strategic Counsel data were gathered between Sept. 4 and Sept. 23, in 45 ridings with the tightest ridings in the most populous provinces of the country. The margin of error ranged from 4 per cent to 7.9 per cent.
Week 3 of the campaign
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