OTTAWA — The political momentum that led the Conservatives to flirt with triggering a spring election has dissipated, leaving Stephen Harper's governing party barely ahead of the Liberals, a new poll shows.
The poll conducted by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV News places the Tories three percentage points head of Stéphane Dion's Liberals, 34-31. The NDP, buoyed by gains in the West, rose three percentage points to 16 per cent.
The results suggest that all the major parties are limping to the end of the spring session of Parliament slightly bruised, and no better placed to make gains if they were tested in a general election.
In late March, as they released their second budget, the Conservatives rose to 39 per cent in a Strategic Counsel survey, edging close to the support levels usually needed to elect a majority government. But Mr. Harper nixed election talk, and the Tories fell three points in April and two more in May.
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“There was a very strong sense in late winter that the Conservatives had momentum and that the Liberals were in disarray, and that's completely dissipated,” said Strategic Counsel partner Peter Donolo. “The question is whether there was a window of opportunity that they should have gone through in terms of calling an election.”
The Conservatives have been on the defensive in recent weeks, suffering some criticism of budget measures from business groups and three provincial premiers, a controversy over the handling of the transfer of detainees in Afghanistan, and a lukewarm reception for their environment plan.
But the poll results are no boost for the Liberals: Their support essentially stood still, rising a statistically insignificant one percentage point.
The electoral truce that Mr. Dion struck with Green Party Leader Elizabeth May – promising not to run candidates against each other in the next election – did not lead to any discernible gain for the Liberals across the country. And the Greens fell three points, to 9 per cent.
The Liberal lead in Ontario shrank to three percentage points, and although the Grits regained second place in Quebec in a see-saw battle with the Tories, the first-place Bloc Québécois also increased slightly despite Leader Gilles Duceppe's flip-flop on seeking the leadership of the Parti Québécois. The Bloc had 41 per cent, the Liberals 24 per cent and the Conservatives 19 per cent in the province.
Mr. Donolo said the attention paid to Afghanistan over the past month has likely hurt Tory support in Quebec, where opposition to the mission is strongest.
“I don't think Afghanistan in the window is a great frame for the Conservatives, particularly in Quebec.”
Only the NDP can claim a real victory in the latest survey, largely because it gained 12 points in the West, mostly by eating into the Conservatives' large lead. The Conservatives dropped eight points and now have 42 per cent in the region, compared with 26 per cent for the NDP and 22 for the Liberals.
Like the Bloc, however, the gains still left the New Democrats slightly below the overall support they garnered in the Jan. 23, 2006, election.
The poll of 1,000 Canadians was conducted May 14 to 17, and is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20. Results by region have higher margins of error: five points for Ontario, 5.7 for the West, and 6.3 for Quebec.
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