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OTTAWA — A new poll suggests there could be trouble ahead for Stephen Harper's Conservatives as the governing party prepares for the possibility of a fall election.
According to The Canadian Press, Harris-Decima survey, the Liberals have pulled ahead in Ontario and Quebec, crucial battlegrounds that will determine the outcome of a nationwide vote.
Should those support levels hold during an election, said Harris-Decima senior vice-president Jeff Walker, the Tories could have difficulty maintaining their minority government, much less winning their coveted majority.
“They're really having trouble,” Mr. Walker said.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Saint-Agapit on Wednesday. (Reuters)
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Nationally, Prime Minister Harper's Tories remained stuck in a dead heat with the Liberals.
Liberal support was up slightly to 33 per cent, statistically tied with the Tories at 32 per cent and followed by the NDP at 15 per cent and the Greens at 13 per cent.
But Mr. Walker said it's the regional numbers that signal potential trouble for the Tories.
In Quebec, the Liberals appeared to be benefiting most from a collapse in support for the Bloc Québécois. Liberals were at 30 per cent, virtually tied with the Bloc at 29 per cent, followed by the Tories at 24 per cent, the Greens at eight per cent and the NDP at six per cent.
In Ontario, the Liberals enjoyed a healthy lead with 40 per cent, compared to the Tories with 31 per cent and the NDP and Greens with 14 per cent each.
In British Columbia, a three-week average of weekly telephone polling results suggests the Tories were ahead at 32 per cent, with the Liberals and NDP tied at 26 per cent and the Greens at 15 per cent.
In Atlantic Canada, the three-week average suggests the Liberals led with 37 per cent to the Tories' 32 per cent, the NDP's 21 per cent and the Greens' seven per cent.
“These numbers are not great for the Conservatives overall,” Mr. Walker said. “[They] need to win suburban Ontario and Quebec in order to maintain what they've got.”
For the Liberals, who seem increasingly bullish about forcing an election this fall, Mr. Walker said the poll suggests the time is ripe to pull the plug on Mr. Harper's minority government.
“It's hard for me to see that it gets a lot better for them than what they've got right now. What I see in this data looks like a Liberal minority, just the way the [regional] splits are going.”
The poll suggests there's been little bounce for the Liberals from Leader Stéphane Dion's cross-country summer tour to sell his risky carbon tax proposal. But Mr. Walker said Liberals can take encouragement from the fact that their support has grown where it counts most, Ontario and Quebec, despite non-stop Tory attacks on Mr. Dion and his green shift plan.
Mr. Walker warned against reading too much into the poll. He noted that voters tend to be disengaged during the summer, and that may distort results somewhat.
Still, he noted that the Tories have typically enjoyed a boost in support over the summer and other periods when Parliament has taken an extended break. That trend does not appear to be holding this summer.
On one positive note for the Tories, the poll suggests that Conservative supporters are more likely than Liberals to actually show up to cast a ballot whenever the election is called.
Fully 73 per cent of respondents who intend to vote for the Conservatives said they are certain to cast ballots. Only 62 per cent of Liberals said the same.
The telephone poll of just more than 1,000 Canadians was conducted Aug. 7-10. A survey this size has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20. The margin of error is much larger for regional or provincial sub-samples.
