Federal Vote Support Remains Stable, But Approval Rating For Harper Government Climbs

Toronto, ON - Leading into the return of Parliament, a new Ipsos Reid national survey conducted on behalf of CanWest News Service/Global News shows a stable federal political landscape.

However, while media commentary may have suggested that Stephen Harper's Conservative Party stumbled out of the blocks after being elected, the government's approval rating has improved 8 points since early February to 62%. Further, this rise in approval has been driven largely by residents of British Columbia (+21 points) - the province most affected by the controversial cabinet appointment of David Emerson.

At the national level, the Conservatives now attract 38% of federal vote support (-1 point since the last Ipsos Reid survey), the Liberals 28% (+1 point), the NDP 19% (-1 point), and the Green Party 5% (unchanged).

In the province of Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois garner 38% support (+2 points) versus 27% support for the Conservatives (-7 points) and 20% support for the Liberals (+6 points).

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News and fielded from March 21st to March 23rd, 2006. For this survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1000 adult Canadians was 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 Census data.

Please open the attached PDF to view the full release 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