Canadians Voice In Early Poll Results – Left Gaining Ground
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According to the latest Ipsos-Reid/CTV/Globe and Mail poll released today, the majority of Canadians feel they do not know enough about any of the new Conservative Party leadership hopefuls to be able to form an opinion about them. Three quarters (77%) of Canadians state they don’t know enough about Tony Clement to form an opinion of him; seven in ten (69%) say the same about Belinda Stronach and more than half (55%) feel this way about Stephen Harper.
Former Alliance leader Stephen Harper has the most fans of all the Conservative leadership candidates, as one quarter (23%) have a positive impression of him. Ms. Stronach trails, with one in five (20%) saying they have a positive impression of her. With Tony Clement following further behind, having one in ten (12%) answering that they have a positive impression.
The Federal Liberal Party (48%) continues to hold a resounding lead over all of the opposition parties among decided voters (this is unchanged since the last Ipsos-Reid poll release in December of 2003). But despite a high media profile for the Conservative leadership race, the newly formed Conservative Party has not gained any momentum (19%) since the last poll conducted just after the party had been formed in December (when the Conservatives sat at 21%).
The NDP (16%, up 2 points) trail closely behind the Conservatives, followed by the Bloc Quebecois (10%, up 1 point) and the Green Party (4%, unchanged).
Meanwhile, Canadians are split when considering whether Prime Minister Martin should call an election this spring. Slightly less than half (45%) of respondents agree with the statement that Martin should not call an election this spring, while virtually the same propotion (48%) disagree.
These are the findings of an Ipsos-Reid/Globe and Mail/CTV poll. The polling for questions dealing with the Federal vote and election timeframe were conducted between January 13 and January 15th 2004, and the question concerning the Conservative Party candidates was conducted between January 20th and January 22nd. Each telephone survey is based on a randomly selected sample of 1055 adult Canadians during each time frame. With a sample of this size, the results for each question are considered accurate to within ± 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were statistically weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to the 2001 Census data.
@ January 28, 2004