Majority Of Canadians (57%) Feel Spring Is Best Time To Hold Election

Toronto, ON - According to the latest Ipsos Reid national survey conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News, the majority of Canadians (57%) feel that there should not be a federal election until the spring as there's a lot of important work that still needs to be done by the government. Thirty-nine percent, however, believe that politics in Ottawa have become dysfunctional and that we need an election now to clear the air.

The survey, conducted among 1000 Canadians from November 8th to 10th 2005, also reveals that Paul Martin and the Liberal Party continue to suffer from strong negative momentum among the Canadian public (-44 points/essentially unchanged from a June 2005 survey). Meanwhile Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, while still experiencing negative momentum overall (-8 points), have made some positive gains in the past few months (+18 points from a -26 score in June) - these gains have largely been driven by an improved impression of this leader and party among Ontarians (-7 points/ up 24 points from -31 points in June).

Jack Layton and the NDP (+4 points) continue to enjoy positive momentum, but have dipped somewhat from June (-8 points from this time). In Quebec, Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois have positive momentum (+9 points), but are down 7 points from +16 points in June.

When asked to consider the likely outcomes of the next federal election, slightly more Canadians say they would prefer a minority government led by Paul Martin and the Liberals (48%) over one led by Stephen Harper and the Conservatives (42%).

And as for vote intention, this survey indicates that Paul Martin and the Liberals have rebounded slightly from the survey conducted last week and now attract 34% of the decided vote (+3 points). Stephen Harper and the Conservatives (28%, -2 points) now trail the Liberals by a 6 point margin, with the NDP (19%, unchanged) and the Green Party (4%, -1 point) registering far back from the front runners.

In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois (56%, +4 points) and the Liberals (21%, +1 point) hold steady in federal vote support.

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News and fielded from November 8th to November 10th 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
Dr. Darrell Bricker President &COO
Ipsos-Reid Public Affairs
(416) 324-2900