Conservatives (33%) Continue To Lead Liberals (30%), But Vote Tightens As Ontario Goes Liberal In Wake Of Martin/Layton Deal

Toronto, ON - According to the most recent Ipsos-Reid national survey of 1000 Canadians conducted from April 26th to April 28th, 2005 and provided exclusively to CanWest/Global, volatile Ontario voters have rebounded in the wake of the deal this past week between Prime Minister Paul Martin and NDP Leader Jack Layton, returning the Liberals to front running status in the seat rich province (40% for the Liberals vs. 33% for the Conservatives). It will be remembered that this volatile group of voters decided the last Federal Election in a weekend conversion to the Liberals and delivered them a Minority government. It would appear what was dubbed last time as the "highway 401 election campaign" may be headed for a repeat in 2005.

But, despite a rebound in Ontario, the Conservatives still lead the country in a tight race for voter support. If a Federal election were held today, 33% of decided voters would support the Conservative Party (down 1 point), 30% would support the Liberals (down 1 point), 17% would support the NDP (down 1 point), and 5% would support the Green Party (unchanged).

In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois sits at 48% support (up 4 points) and holds a 27-point lead over their next closest challenger in this province, the Liberals (21%, down 7 points).

These are the findings of an Ipsos-Reid poll provided exclusively to CanWest/Global and conducted from April 26th to April 28th, 2005. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1000 adult Canadians were interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the aggregate results are considered accurate to within 1773.1 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 each sub-grouping of the survey population. These data were weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to the 2001 Census data.

Please open the attached PDF to view the complete factum including grahical displays of vote trends and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

Dr. Darrell Bricker
President & COO
Ipsos-Reid Public Affairs
(416) 324-2900