Canada poised for Conservative majority
Well, it was the lead story in Tuesday's Toronto Star. According to the latest EKOS Research Associates poll for the Star and La Presse, the Conservatives are now in majority territory: "The EKOS survey of 1,240 Canadians through the weekend and yesterday found 39.1 per cent support for the Conservatives. The Liberals had 26.8 per cent support; the NDP 16.2 per cent; the Bloc Québécois 12.6 per cent; and Green party 4.6 per cent."
Of course, it all depends on how the election plays out on a riding-by-riding basis, but this recent surge of popularity -- if real, if sustained -- could lead to an outcome that only a couple of weeks ago seemed, well, unfathomable: a Conservative majority government led by (gasp!) Prime Minister Stephen Harper. If the surge is expanded, we could be looking at 1984 all over again, when Brian Mulroney's Conservatives ended two decades of almost continuous Liberal dominance with a landslide victory over John Turner's Liberals.
I'm not yet convinced, however. The Liberals have begun their ramped-up campaign to discredit Harper and to frighten voters away from the Conservatives. It worked in 2004 and it may yet work again. My tendencies are with the Liberals, and I may end up voting for my local Liberal candidate (for whom I don't much care) in a close race against a high-profile NDP candidate. But the Liberals, much like the Republicans, play dirty very, very well, and it's all quite distasteful.
There are now less than two weeks left before the election, but these polls can be deceiving. It's possible that voters will look at these poll numbers and conclude that it's finally safe to vote Conservative despite Liberal admonitions to the contrary. But it's also possible that voters will look at them and conclude that the impossible has become possible, that they could wake up on the morning of the 24th with a Conservative government and (gasp!) Prime Minister Stephen Harper. That might just stir them enough to vote Liberal once again.
I know it's already stirring me.
Don't count out the Liberals yet.
Of course, it all depends on how the election plays out on a riding-by-riding basis, but this recent surge of popularity -- if real, if sustained -- could lead to an outcome that only a couple of weeks ago seemed, well, unfathomable: a Conservative majority government led by (gasp!) Prime Minister Stephen Harper. If the surge is expanded, we could be looking at 1984 all over again, when Brian Mulroney's Conservatives ended two decades of almost continuous Liberal dominance with a landslide victory over John Turner's Liberals.
I'm not yet convinced, however. The Liberals have begun their ramped-up campaign to discredit Harper and to frighten voters away from the Conservatives. It worked in 2004 and it may yet work again. My tendencies are with the Liberals, and I may end up voting for my local Liberal candidate (for whom I don't much care) in a close race against a high-profile NDP candidate. But the Liberals, much like the Republicans, play dirty very, very well, and it's all quite distasteful.
There are now less than two weeks left before the election, but these polls can be deceiving. It's possible that voters will look at these poll numbers and conclude that it's finally safe to vote Conservative despite Liberal admonitions to the contrary. But it's also possible that voters will look at them and conclude that the impossible has become possible, that they could wake up on the morning of the 24th with a Conservative government and (gasp!) Prime Minister Stephen Harper. That might just stir them enough to vote Liberal once again.
I know it's already stirring me.
Don't count out the Liberals yet.
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
7:13 AM
1 Comments:
I suppose its one thing to hold ones nose over Liberal attacks ads in the expectation that they will bring a decent and competent government to Canada, ITs another thing to thing to support a party whose main policy platoform was anncouned in a debate two weeks before the election just when Martin's poll numbers start to slide, reversing his own statements of a few weeks previous, promising to reopen the Canadian Constitution, a sugestion that was then soundly drubbed by nearly every constitutional authority in the country, apparently none of whom the Liberals bothered to consult before suggesting this little idea. According to the estimable Peter Russell - a small-L Liberal if there ever was one, and the author of the authoritative Political Science text on the Constituion - this is a "strong argument for saying that Paul Martin is not really equipped to govern". Unless, like George W Bush, Martin plays politics with constitutional issues he intends to abandon if elected. That and the attack ads make two things Martin has common with Bush.
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Anonymous, at 12:37 PM
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