From today's Globe
"Nanos survey has Harper's team at 38.1% compared to 31.2% for Liberals, with rural and suburban gains leaving coveted mandate within PM's reach despite lack of Quebec breakthrough
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The Nanos end-of-year survey is significant, revealing an emerging Tory strategy in which the governing party is concentrating on winning groups of riding with focused issues. And it appears to be bearing fruit for the Prime Minister.
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"The current configuration of national support for the Conservatives suggests that numerically a Tory majority government can be formed without significant breakthrough in the province of Quebec," pollster Nik Nanos told The Globe. "In this paradigm, the Conservatives narrowcast messages to clusters of ridings on a diversity of issues such as crime, the long-gun registry and social issues that align with their base and which divide the opposition."
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Mr. Nanos's polling suggests the ridings the Tories appear to be concentrating on are in the 905 and 416 area codes – seats now occupied by the Liberals.
He says these "key cluster" ridings had been Conservative under Brian Mulroney. In suburban ridings, Mr. Nanos believes Mr. Harper's team is using "crime as a hot button" and in the rural Liberal and NDP ridings, they are using the long-gun registry as a wedge issue.
"This basically speaks to a strategy where the Conservatives focus on rural and small town Canada along with being competitive among suburban voters," Mr. Nanos said.
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The regional breakdowns are also telling. In Ontario the Tories are leading the Liberals, 42.3 per cent compared to 35.5 per cent. Mr. Harper and his team are also ahead in Atlantic Canada, usually a Liberal bastion, by 43.5 per cent compared to 36 per cent for the Grits. In Quebec, however, the Liberals are still leading the Conservatives – 26.7 per cent compared to 18.3 per cent – although the Bloc is way ahead, polling at 40.1 per cent."
7 comments:
It's pretty clear no one can win a majority on the basis of the aggregate national vote -- but on a Riding by Riding basis it might be possible to cooper up something.
Yep, in this case, the sum of the parts will end up being worth more than the whole.
Maybe with this poll and analysis some Liberals will understand the large significance of the Fantino win (unless you listen to Warren Kinsella).
I would suggest that first and foremost we need to get the Vote Out!!!
That maybe the only path to a Liberal victory with our current leader.
Kinsella is full of it sometimes.
Just like Col. Klink musing that there has never been a successful escape from stalag 13 he reminds us of the 3 majorities won by Chretien. That trio was because of a divided right; not because of any brilliance in the part of JC or his campaign team.
His last attempt at a campaign was a colossal failure. His guy in Toronto thought he would win and also said he was in it until the end. He ended up dropping out when polling showed him at 4%. Enough said.
In a similar strategy a few years back a polling firm working for CTV was able to get very accurate election results (seat projections only) by tracking a small minority of seats.They ignored ridings in Toronto (with few exceptions) and Alberta, Quebec etc. and only followed "swing" ridings. The nationalvoting intention numbers were irrelevant.
This comment was posted by WhigWag on CuriosityCat's blog, and I think it should be posted on every blog where conbots are having pollgasms over this press release:
Calm down. First of all, they're not there (in majority terr.), yet, & Nanos -- & Taber who dutifully forwards it all completely uncritically -- is over-reaching to say they're even really _heading_ towards a majority, yet, on the basis of this poll.
So, big whoop, they went up 1 pt. among decided voters since last month. But look at how many UN-decided voters there are: fully One in Four, who aren't reflected in the above, and who could easily obliterate the diff.
And look at the 'point spread' b/w the libs & cons: 6.9. And the margin of error for those 747 committed voters: 3.6, which, er, covers an even greater, 7.2 diff. if you + it to the Libs. & - if from the Cons. So the sky is not falling: they still might actually be tied among committed voters at the moment.
www.nikonthenumbers.com/topics/show/174
Haper will do anything he can to get a majority, because he knows not getting one will get him fired as CPC leader.
And if what my cousin, who worked closely with Fantino during his campaign, tells me is true, Harper is more frightened than we all think. And we'd be surprised of what--or whom--Harper is fearful of.
Keep an eye on Harper's next cabinet shuffle, and notice where one particular "star" candidate goes, or does not go.
Am I the only one who just wants to get the next election over with? I'm sick of all this! If we win, great. If we lose, well at least we can then have a REAL leadership race. Get on with it already!
It seems that Harper's already missed his last best chance at a majority government.
I actually have a fair bit of respect for Dion...but it seems that most people (Conservatives, Liberals, or otherwise)...simply don't.
If Harper couldn't generate a majority when going up against an opponent who he successfully labeled as a 'wimp', then I don't really see a majority happening with an opposition leader against whom the most severe criticisms are that he's too well-educated and worldly to lead Canada.
Then again, when I first heard that the head of the National Citizens Coalition was leaving the NCC to run for political party leadership, I concluded that someone with such fringe beliefs was unlikely to be very influencial in Canadian federal politics...
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