06.02.2011 01:54 PM

Holy crap

The Liberal number depresses me, but it won’t stay that low for long.

What really blows me away is the Conservative number vis-a-vis the NDP number. If the campaign had gone for another couple weeks, would Jack Layton be Prime Minister?

OTTAWA – A new poll suggests New Democrats appear to have consolidated their support as official Opposition to the Harper Conservatives, particularly among women and urban voters.

As a new Parliament opens following the May 2 election, the Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey suggests the majority Conservative government has the support of 37 per cent of respondents — down from the Tories’ 39.6 per cent of the popular vote on election day.

NDP support stood at 34 per cent in the poll, up from 30.6 per cent of the popular vote, while the third-place Liberals slipped to 15 per cent in the survey, a loss of almost four percentage points from their election day total.

34 Comments

  1. VH says:

    but it won’t stay that low for long

    Not sure about that.

    You’re implying there’s some hidden constituency of Canadian voters who like the NDP enough to support/vote for them but, now that former NDP premier Bob Rae’s the Lib leader, they’ll realize the “errors” of their ways and want to vote for an unloved party switcher who turned his back on the very same NDP they now support.

    I don’t know which province you expect those people to live in but it aint Ontario.

    And I don’t know how or why the Fed Libs expect this to work out well.

    • Cath says:

      I think that any provincial strategists from any province going into an election campaign might start to worry about how what this poll suggests may shape the vote provincially.

      We could all be in for a very bumpy ride. Could this be a curse or benefit of having the provincial and federal elections in the same year?

  2. Sean says:

    I think the Lib numbers will stay for two more elections or at least until Layton is out.

    • Scotty Rowe says:

      I agree. It would take a significant collapse to destabilize the Conservative and NDP numbers. When have we seen dominant parties collapse federally? The PCs in 1993 and the Liberals in the last 7 years. I don’t really count the Bloc collapse because Quebec just suddenly changes affiliations every decade or so. The Bloc had twenty years, the PCs had Quebec for most of the 80s, before that it was the Liberals and a few Creditistes. Unless something on the level of a post-Mulroney right wing split, or a post-Chretien/Adscam Liberal schism occurs, we are probably stuck with this new reality for a few elections.

  3. AP says:

    I think we all need to step back and let things play out for the next couple of years before pronouncements are made about the death of one party and the permanent ascendancy of another.

  4. marta says:

    AP said it for me. we are noow in the land of OZ…

    • The other George says:

      Amen to marta and AP

      ‘Tis many a chance for a slip, twixt cup and lip” And the Cons and Dippers can only go down from here.

  5. DL says:

    In the short term the biggest question mark about the NDP surge federally and the Liberal collapse is whether Jack Layton has any coat tails for Andrea Horwath in the Ontario election this fall. You have to think that if federal NDP support in Ontario is now about 30% – while its clear that there is no guarantee those people will all vote NDP provincially – those people will give the ONDP a hard second look and the media will probably take the ONDP a lot more seriously than they would have pre may 2.

  6. Raymond says:

    People will soon enough see through Jack Handy’s veneer. His sudden rise in popularity proves many haven’t a clue what they voted for.

  7. Anyone who pretends to know what the numbers are going to do between now and 2015(ish) is either an idiot or a liar.

    What these numbers tell us is that Layton and the NDP have a chance to consolidate the transformation they accomplished on May 2. No guarantee that they can do it. But no guarantee they can’t.

    So far the Liberal response (apart from whistling past the graveyard) has been to whine and to express outrage over lost entitlement. Might I suggest to my Liberal friends that this overweaning sense of entitlement is what got you to where we are, and is not an effective strategy to get you back to where you were.

    • Pete says:

      BS…..I just came from a Liberal post election party in my riding and we celebrated the fact we had more volunteers and more donations than at any time in our history. We lost the elction nationally and that is the party’s problem to fix. We at the grass roots will move forward towards the next election in the ecpetation of winning government back becasue we will have worked hard and smart to get there.

  8. Paul R Martin says:

    Your headline was accurate. The poll result was wholly crap.

  9. Mike London says:

    “If the campaign had gone for another couple weeks, would Jack Layton be Prime Minister?” I saw that and wondered the same thing. We’ll never know of course, but I sense there would have been a loss of momentum for the NDP in Quebec had the campaign gone on another week. They may have picked up more seats in Ontario and the West, but probably not enough to get them to over 100 seats. Just my 2 cents.

  10. Dave says:

    If the campaign had gone for another couple weeks, would Jack Layton be Prime Minister?

    = = =

    Yes. In the last few days of the campaign, the Tories had their sights trained on him. Even they were worried.

  11. Bil Huk says:

    Well, the race is on.

    Can jack solidify his position as the natural government in waiting before the liberals can present an alternative vision for the country that’s relevant in this new era?

    Right after the election, so many commented on how the liberals shouldn’t rush their rebirth.

    I’m not so sure.

    Also, how long does jack stick around? You’d think that this last election result solidifies him as leader of the NDP until he wants to leave. But if the orange tent is as big as it appears to be right now, will this super-sized NDP also start to see super-sized expectations in future elections?

    put all your bias aside, just as a pure political junkie this is a frickin’ awesome era for political entertainment value.

  12. Mike London says:

    I’ve talked to several people who voted Liberal to “keep the Conservatives out.” Mostly, these were people that would have likely voted NDP. If those people didn’t vote Liberal, I wonder what would have happened? This is a political site, so I’m curious if others have heard the same.

  13. Michael says:

    If the campaign had gone for another couple weeks, would Jack Layton be Prime Minister?

    If my grandmother had wheels, would she be a bus?

    Aren’t these poll results what we normally see after an election? The parties that do well see a spike as everyone jumps on the bandwagon.

    • The Doctor says:

      Exactly. Scene in a bar somewhere in Quebec: “Yeah, I voted NDP too! Will you sleep with me?”

  14. chris says:

    Ralph Goodale is no longer the Finance Minister, nor is he even a front-bench Official Opposition member; he is now a third-party MP. He no more deserves his old office than would, say, Joe Comartin prior to the election. Why should he be allowed to stay? Tradition? It seems even being reduced to 34 seats can’t put a dent in that Liberal sense of entitlement!

Leave a Reply to Dave Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.