As Liberal Caucus Meets In Regina, National Political Landscape Remains Static, But "Undecided" Hits Rare High (19%) - Highest Since April 2003

Toronto, ON - As the minority governing federal Liberal Party caucus starts their national summer meeting Monday in Regina it would appear that the national political landscape has stabilized over the last few months. According to the latest Ipsos Reid national survey, provided exclusively to CanWest/Global, Paul Martin and the Liberals (36%, +1 point from a June 21-23, 2005 survey) continue to hold an 8-point lead over the Stephen Harper led Conservatives (28%, +1 point), while Jack Layton and the NDP (17%, -1 point) and Jim Harris and the Green Party (6%, unchanged) have stable levels of support.

In Quebec, support for the Bloc Quebecois (47%, -4 points) has dipped very slightly while Liberal support (26%, -1 point) remains steady.

But the poll also indicates that this summer has a rare occurrence - a substantial rise in the proportion of "undecided voters": currently, 19% of voters in Canada are undecided, refused to say whom they would vote for, or would not vote if a Federal election were held tomorrow (up 6 points from the last national political survey). Further, with the Gomery Commission having concluded its hearings in Quebec and out of the news, and with a newly appointed Governor General designate from that province, voters there -with the undecided rate now at almost one-quarter of all voters (22%, +9 points) -- may prove to be fallow ground for the Liberals to plough.

These are the findings of an Ipsos-Reid poll provided exclusively to CanWest/Global and fielded from August 16th to August 18th 2005. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 2000 adult Canadians were interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the aggregate results are considered accurate to within 1772.2 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.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:
John Wright
Senior Vice-President
Ipsos-Reid
416.324.2900
[email protected]

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