Forget about a majority government. So underwhelmed are Canadian voters with the current state of politics that securing even a minority government for any of the parties is now proving elusive, according to a new EKOS Research poll.
“The new normal is near parity with no single party having enough support for even a stable minority government,” pollster Frank Graves told The Globe in an email. “Welcome to the new normal. Can you say, repeat after me ... C-O-A-L-I-T-I-O-N?”
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Read the Nov. 11, 2010 EKOS poll Released Thursday morning, the survey shows Stephen Harper’s team and Michael Ignatieff’s statistically tied. The Conservatives have the support of 29.4 per cent of Canadians compared to 28.6 per cent for the Liberals. Jack Layton’s NDP, however, is at 19.3 per cent – the highest level the party has been at in two years.
Notably, New Democrats are leading among youth and Atlantic Canadians – usually the bastion of the Liberals. And Mr. Graves found that if the vote was restricted to women, the NDP would be tied with the Conservatives, who have tremendous support from older men in Alberta.
The Greens and Bloc, meanwhile, are at 10.7 per cent and 9.3 per cent respectively.
It is significant, Mr. Graves said, that no single party can reach the threshold of 30 per cent support. “In a country which historically would have seen at least one choice running in the 40 per cent region and sometime 50 per cent a decade or so ago, it’s really startling to see just how much things have changed.”
The slight lead the Conservatives had in the EKOS poll two weeks ago has all but vanished – as has the 10-point lead the Tories had over the Liberals last year at this time.
This is no fluke, Mr. Graves said. Over the past month his polling has shown one week in which the Conservatives had an edge over the Liberals. It was the result of Tory gains in Ontario, which Mr. Graves attributed to the “Ford bounce” after conservative-leaning Rob Ford was elected mayor of Toronto.
“The other three weeks it was a statistical tie,” Mr. Graves said. Looking at calculations going back to January, however, EKOS polling shows the Conservatives with an average 32 per cent support compared to 28 per cent for the Liberals.
This begs the question: “Can any single party eke out the more humble goal of even a secure minority? Increasingly, the answer appears to be that even that more modest goal may be elusive.”
The poll of 1,815 Canadians was conducted between Nov. 3 and Nov. 9; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Fighter jets
Canadians are split over the controversial $16-billion purchase of 65 new stealth fighter jets: 54 per cent of EKOS respondents are strongly or somewhat opposed to the purchase compared to 46 per cent who strongly or somewhat support the deal.
Mr. Graves found that the strongest opposition is in Quebec and among university graduates while those who support the purchase are mostly from Alberta, seniors and male.
The Liberals have been hammering away at this proposed sole-source contract, vowing that if they form government they would scrap the purchase and put the deal out to competition.
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