Liberals (34% vs. 30% Tories) Hold Slim Lead On Eve Of Election Call As Canadians Warm To Idea Of Potential Harper Minority

Toronto, ON - According to the latest Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News, the governing Liberal Party, with 34% of voter support (-2 points from a poll conducted last week), holds a slim lead over their chief rivals, the Conservatives (30%, +3 points). Meanwhile, the NDP at 16% (unchanged) and the Green Party (5%, -1 point) hold steady. And in Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois is up 9 points and now hold 59% of federal votes in this province versus 23% for the federal Liberals (-5 points).

And while the horse-race in vote support between the two leading parties is tight heading into next week's expected election call, it would appear that the Liberals may become more vulnerable to defeat as Canadians seem to be warming to the idea of a Conservative minority government: Forty-two percent of Canadians (up 3 points from 39% last week) agree with the statement that "I'd be comfortable voting for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to form the government in the next election because we'll probably have another minority government which will keep them in check".

Further, six in ten (62%, essentially unchanged from 58% a month ago) continue to feel that the Liberal Party does not deserve to be re-elected and it's time for another Federal political party to be given a chance to govern the country.

When it comes to Party Momentum:

• Momentum for Paul Martin and the Liberal Party, while still strongly negative (-38 points), has improved 6 points;
• Stephen Harper and the Conservatives maintain slightly negative (-8 points) momentum - unchanged from earlier this month;
• Momentum for Jack Layton and the NDP is now negative (-7 points) down 11 points;
• Momentum for Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois is very strongly positive (+34 points) - up 25 points from the last survey.

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News and fielded from November 22nd to November 24th 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 factum and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

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