JOHN LEHMANN
Here's some advice for Stephen Harper as he embarks on his sixth year of governing: "Communicate with people."
There's advice, too, for the NDP and the Liberals: "Get a new leader." And for Elizabeth May and her Green Party, the wisdom is: "Broaden policy views."
All of these suggestions come courtesy of a Nanos Research poll that asked 1,202 randomly selected Canadians what one piece of advice they would give to each of the political parties to "improve" their levels of support.
Nik Nanos, president of the national polling firm, characterized this as a "tough question" to ask in a poll.
"Even if you were a political professional, you probably have a hard time distilling a single piece of advice for a political party."
But distill they did, and with surprising results. It's ironic, for example, that the top unprompted piece of advice for the Harper Conservatives, from 13.2 per cent of poll respondents, is to "communicate with people." This, after the Conservatives have made it their mission in life to control the message. Of the respondents, 12 per cent who said they were Conservatives chimed in with that advice, compared with 12.5 per cent who said they were Liberals and 15.6 per cent who identified themselves as NDP.
This doesn't mean the government should totally revamp its style, Mr. Nanos said.
"If you're the Prime Minister or a Tory strategist, you don't really need any significant change in course but a fine-tuning of tone in terms of showing Canadians how the government is listening, which will probably go a long way in helping with how Canadians feel about the party."
And there was more advice – 6.4 per cent of respondents suggested the Tories be more honest and transparent, while 4.4 per cent advised lowering taxes, fixing the economy and creating jobs. Sifting the results, 7.5 per cent of the respondents who identified themselves as Conservative supporters wanted to lower taxes, compared with 5.3 per cent who said they were Liberal and 3.5 per cent who were NDP.
No surprise, meanwhile, that the top piece of advice for the NDP and Liberals was to find a new leader – 8.9 per cent of respondents told the NDP to choose a new leader, compared with 11.5 per cent who advised the Liberals to do the same.
"I think for both the Liberals and New Democrats, it's realistically all about leadership in the short term," Mr. Nanos said.
The NDP are to choose a new leader in March, but the Liberals will not be holding a leadership contest until 2013.
The second-most noted piece of advice for the New Democrats – from 8.7 per cent of respondents – was "no advice" at all. Mr. Nanos said this has to do with the success of the NDP in the last year – winning Quebec and Opposition party status in the May election. "No advice is a bit of a proxy for great job, stay the course," he said.
For the Liberals, though, the story is much different: The second-most noted suggestion is "be more honest, transparent." Mr. Nanos said the fact that 6.3 per cent of respondents made this point shows there is still "residual baggage" from the Liberal sponsorship scandal in Quebec.
In addition, 6.1 per cent of respondents want to see the Liberals rebuild their party.
The poll was conducted between Nov. 16 and 21 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.