Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is travelling the country while assorted Conservative cabinet ministers are bringing bits of good news to the regions but a new poll suggests Canadians have largely tuned out the political chatter.
The respondents in the second week of the two-week EKOS survey that ended July 20 gave Stephen Harper’s Conservatives a “modest but comfortable” lead of 32.4 to 25.5 over the Liberals in national support. The New Democrats were the top choice of 18.4 per cent of decided voters, the Greens had 10.1 per cent and the Bloc 10 per cent.
This is cold comfort for both Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Harper. While the Liberals continue to trail, the Conservatives are still far off the majority mark.
And EKOS calculates that, if an election had been held last week, the Conservatives would have lost seats – dropping from their current 144 to 123. The Liberals would have grown their caucus to 87 from 77. The NDP would have taken 40 seats, up from 36, the Greens would have won two seats, the Bloc would have grown to 55 seats from 48 and there would be one independent.
Under that configuration, this would mean the New Democrats and the Liberals combined would have more seats than the Conservatives. But seat projections are a pretty inexact science and a shift of a few seats would leave the House of Commons divided much as it is right now.
Meanwhile, EKOS president Frank Graves points to “some snippets of demographic interest” that he says are worth watching.
The first is Ontario, where the Liberals are traditionally strong but the Conservatives have pulled ahead by a significant margin. In the second week of the survey, the Tories had the support of 36.8 per cent of Ontarians polled while the Liberals had 29.9 per cent. Mr. Graves calls that “a major plus” for future Conservative electoral prospects. Ontario can decide elections.
Second, there is a widening gap between Liberal and Conservative supporters among the university educated versus the college educated. Among college graduates polled in the second week of the survey, 37.7 preferred the Conservatives while 19.7 chose the Liberals. Among those with university degrees, however, 28.3 chose the Conservatives while 33.1 per cent said they supported the Liberals.
“This may be a reflection of the census storm and a signal of a deeper structural divide between the educated elite and what Galbraith calls the ‘not so rich,’” Mr. Graves said in his analysis.
“Rather than a conflict between rich and poor, we see a split between the educated elites and the Main Street not-so-rich. This rift may be becoming more deeply entrenched in Canadian society and the latest conflict may be over the role of formal knowledge in societal decision making.”
The survey suggests the Liberals are also doing better among seniors and that young voters are tuning out – though the Green Party has the support of many of those young Canadians who are paying attention. On the other hand, Mr. Graves said, the Greens have slipped from a high of 13 points to 10.
EKOS surveyed 2,874 people over the two-week period. When the two weeks were combined, the Conservatives led the Liberals by a margin on 32.2 per cent to 26.4 per cent. A sample of that size is expected to reflect the broad opinions of Canadians within 1.99 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
There were 977 respondents included in the second week’s sample. So the numbers for the second week that are stated above are expected to reflect the broad opinions of Canadians within 3.14 percentage points 19 times in 20. The margins are larger for the individual regions.
