Here’s some depressing news for political leaders: Veteran EKOS pollster Frank Graves says that “none of the above” is the only candidate capable of forming a majority government right now, such is the stagnant state of political affairs in this country.
Although he is being mischievous, Mr. Graves has a point. His latest survey finds the political parties pretty much where they have been for the past 18 weeks – Stephen Harper’s Conservatives still hovering at the 33.1 per cent support level leading Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals by seven points.
The Grits have attracted 26.1 per cent support of voters; the NDP are at 16 per cent; the Green Party is at 11.5 per cent and the Bloc is polling at 10.2 per cent.
“Recalling that slightly over 40 per cent of Canadians didn’t vote in the last election it may well be ‘none of the above’ is the only candidate capable of winning a majority government,” Mr. Graves says.
Meanwhile, at the risk of being accused of giving advice to the Liberal Party, the pollster also bravely suggests it is time now for Mr. Ignatieff to move on from his focus on the Helena Guergis and Rahim Jaffer scandal. (There is word this morning the Conservatives have officially dropped her as a candidate in her Ontario riding.)
“Might be time to trade in the Guergis/Jaffer playbook for something that really grabs the public’s attention,” Mr. Graves says. “This hard slog hasn’t yielded much other than to reinforce public indifference to all of the choices.”
The veteran pollster has come under fire of late by the Tories who charged he was giving advice directly to Mr. Ignatieff, telling him to mount a culture war against the Conservatives.
As a result, his part-time polling work for the CBC was called into question with Tory mouthpieces attacking his impartiality. But the public broadcaster has supported Mr. Graves, his polls and his analysis.
Indeed, a Nanos Research poll conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV, which was released last night, reinforces the EKOS numbers. That survey also shows the Guergis/Jaffer lobbying affair, the tussle over secret Afghan detainee documents and the controversy over abortion and the G8 maternal health initiative have not hurt the Tories.
The Nanos poll, conducted between April 30 and May 3, finds the Conservatives at 37.2 per cent compared with 33.2 per cent for the Liberals. The NDP is at 16 per cent; the Green Party is at 4 and the Bloc is at 38 per cent in Quebec.
The EKOS survey of 2,192 Canadians was conducted between April 28 and May 4; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Despite the fact that the so-called “horserace” numbers are static, EKOS notes interesting movement with women leaving the Conservative Party. There is now nearly a 10 per cent difference between Tory support among men (38 per cent) and women (28 per cent).
While men have traditionally favoured the Tories, Mr. Graves says this gap may be “unusually large” but it is not unprecedented.
“What is startling is that the Liberals, who usually have something like a mirror image of the Tories, picking up women’s votes when the Tories are losing them, show almost no gender gap at all,” he says.
Given the push on women’s issues by the Grits – maternal health and abortion and long-gun registry, for example – it’s interesting that women are not responding. The poll shows that of those who support the Liberals, 26.3 per cent are men compared to 25.9 per cent women.
Mr. Graves also points out that Liberal support is sagging in their traditional strongholds of Ontario and Toronto; they are statistically tied with the Tories in those areas. The Tories are polling at 36.3 per cent in Ontario compared to 32.9 per cent for the Liberals (this is within the margin of error). In Toronto, the Tories are polling at 37.8 per cent compared to 35.8 per cent for the Liberals.
The same goes for Quebec, where the Tories are at 18.4 per cent compared to 20.9 per cent for the Liberals. The Bloc is at 40.4 per cent.
Mr. Graves says it is hard to imagine what will wake Canadians from their “current slumber” when it comes to politics.
“The only glimmers of life are an unusually active day-to-day pattern,” he says, noting that on one of the tracking nights, the Liberals were actually leading and on the final night of the poll, the two parties were deadlocked at 28 per cent.
“This is the new reality of the ‘we-don’t-really-like-anyone’ Canadian political landscape,” he says.
