TORY LEAD BEGINNING TO “GEL” - October 1, 2009
ONLY ALBERTANS NOW SUPPORT WAR IN AFGHANISTAN; NEARLY HALF OF CANADIANS WANT COMPULSORY VOTING
[Ottawa – October 1, 2009] – In this week’s EKOS tracking poll, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives sustained the lead they have built up since the threat of an election first emerged in late August. The Liberals now lead only in the Atlantic provinces, and although they are holding up reasonably well in Quebec, the fallout (if any) from their internal difficulties there this week is probably not yet measurable.
“Perhaps the most interesting results from this week’s poll are not the party standings, which have remained relatively stable, but some of the other questions we asked which show the emergence of ‘two Canadas,’” said EKOS President Frank Graves.
“Conservative Canada” represents a little over a third of the electorate. For this group, the country and the Harper government are both moving firmly in the right direction,” he said. “And then there is the rest of Canada, who are less confident in the direction of the country and don’t like the direction of the Harper government.”
This week, the EKOS poll, conducted exclusively for the CBC, asked about two key issues facing the country, even if they are not always the most prominent in our day-to-day political discourse: the environment and Afghanistan.
Conservative Canada is “proud” of our national environmental position on the international stage; the rest say they are “embarrassed”.
On Afghanistan, Conservative Canada continues to support the military mission whereas among the rest of the country there is clear majority opposition.
These two policy areas are reflective of many other areas of policy where Canadians are polarized.
These cleavages also express themselves demographically. Conservative Canada is decidedly older, male, economically comfortable and Western.
“There are some signs that the electorate has now ‘gelled’ for the moment, with the CPC leading the Liberals by about six percentage points,” said Graves. “In other words, the apparent momentum of early September has reached its limit. The Conservatives are not continuing to rise closer to their majority goal; and the Liberals have seemingly stabilized for the moment at a somewhat lower level than they enjoyed in the late winter, spring and summer.”
Meanwhile, nearly half of Canadians say they would like to see a system of compulsory voting introduced to Canada.
“Canada’s rate of voter turn-out has been slipping in recent years, partly as a result of the frequency with which we go to the polls in a string of minority governments,” said Graves.
“Interestingly, there is relatively little variation across supporters of different parties for this initiative, even though it would likely have very different effects on the various parties: the Greens, who have trouble getting their supporters to the polls, for example, might well benefit more from compulsory voting than the Conservatives, whose voters tend to be more committed, and have shown more muscle in getting their supporters out to vote than the other parties in the past.”
Click here to download the full report:0779-full-report-_september-30_1
October 1st, 2009 at 9:06 am
In your “methodology section” there are two typographical errors. In the second sentence, second paragraph, you forgot to include the word “to”. The sentence currently reads, “As a result, we are able reach . . .” It should read, “As a result, we are able TO reach . . .” There is also an error in the first section of the third paragraph in the methodology section. It currently reads, “The field dates for this survey are the September 23-29, 2009.” The word “the” that comes before the word September should be removed, or the whole sentence should be changed.