Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are floundering as the Tory party moves from being “in the driver’s seat” just three weeks ago to “riding shotgun”, according to a new EKOS poll.
There is “scant” difference now, says EKOS pollster Frank Graves, between the Tories and “their pursuers.”
But what makes these new numbers all the more delicious is that they come amid the fierce debate in political Ottawa over mergers and coalitions on the left.
The EKOS poll shows the Conservatives with 31.4 per cent support compared to 26.8 per cent for Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals. Last week, the Tories were at 31.7 per cent compared to 26.2 per cent for the Liberals.
As well, the NDP are at 16.6 per cent this week; the Green Party is at 12.6 per cent and the Bloc Quebecois is at 8.9 per cent.
And it is not just one factor that is provoking the Tory slippage — not the detainees or the high cost of the security at the Summits, the fake lake imbroglio or the Jaffer/Guergis affair.
Rather, Mr. Graves chalks it up to a “repeated pattern” where the electorate has “gently” recoiled from the Conservatives after it gives it a big, big lead.
Indeed, the Tories’ lead is almost exactly half of their lead of three weeks ago, Mr. Graves says.
Although the two main parties have moved ever so slightly in the last week it is the numbers relating to voter confidence in the direction of the government that has caught Mr. Graves’ eye.
He says that “confidence in national direction has been steadily slipping over the last several weeks”
And he notes that fewer than four in 10 Canadians think the government is moving in the right direction — 38.4 per cent of respondents believe the government is moving in the right direction compared to 48.6 per cent who say it is moving in the wrong direction.
“Majority governments typically enjoy the confidence of about 60 per cent on this right track/wrong track measure,” he says.
“… voter confidence in the direction of the federal government has eroded to the point where it has tied a recorded low for government,” says Mr. Graves.
Mr. Graves’ poll of 1,789 Canadians was conducted between June 2 and June 8; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
But what does this poll mean for the idea of a coalition between the Liberals and NDP?
Mr. Graves has two thoughts: First, he says that this poll could redouble the efforts by those who want a coalition as it shows just how fragmented the left is — it could potentially attract 70 per cent of electorate.
But, the poll also shows that the Conservatives are nowhere close to forming a majority government, meaning that the Liberals could have a chance on their own _ without having to get involved in messy merger discussions.
Interestingly, Mr. Graves says that his polling has shown that Canadians are not coalition-averse, as the Harper Conservatives love to point out.
“… after over six years of minority governments, two prorogation crises and a high profile UK election, which just produced a coalition government, public political literacy on this topic has risen considerably,” he says.
He says that public enthusiasm for minority governments is waning as they are now seen as “fractious, short-sighted and unstable.”
What initially turned off Canadians in the 2008 coalition crisis was that former Liberal leader Stephane Dion could have become Prime Minister “through the back door” just after he and his party were trounced in the federal election.
“After he was out of the equation public receptivity to a coalition was quite high,” says Mr. Graves. “No doubt, a Bloc-free alliance would also be more attractive.”
How a coalition could work …
The accepted view is that there would be a merger or arrangement between the NDP and Liberals.
Mr. Graves suggests, however, thinking about an arrangement between the Green Party and the Liberals.
In his most recent poll Elizabeth May’s Greens attracted 12.6 per cent of the electorate, which is “within spitting distance of the NDP.”
“It is rather odd, therefore that they aren’t given more prominent consideration in these discussions,” says Mr. Graves.
What has turned off serious thinking on this was the mini-merger in the last election between former Liberal leader Stephane Dion and Ms. May. The Liberals did not run a candidate against her in the riding she was seeking to win in Nova Scotia. She ended up losing to Defence Minister Peter MacKay.
But the arrangement between the two leaders proved highly controversial and turned off and confused voters.
“Contrary to popular belief, this arrangement wasn’t the problem in the last federal election … It was Mr. Dion, not the Green détente, which produced the poor results for the (Liberals) last time,” says Mr. Graves. “
As well as the Green/Liberal alliance, there is the potential of a “big-tent” merger: a progressive party of the NDP, Greens and Liberals, much like the Democrats in the U.S.
Mr. Graves notes that such a union would “aggregate” about 57 per cent of voters “in a model which would be familiar to both American and many continental European voters.”
He characterizes this as a “traffic light” coalition and says that is it the “surest route to power for disaffected centre left voters.”
