Most Canadians (78%) Say Election Over Holidays Won't Affect Their Party Vote

Toronto, ON - With the possibility of a federal election campaign during the December holidays becoming more and more of a certainty over the past week, a new CanWest News Service/Global News survey, conducted by Ipsos Reid, indicates that most Canadians (78%), while not necessarily desirous of an election at this time of the year, will not let an election during the holidays affect which party they decide to vote for.

And when Canadians are asked to consider the motives behind the Liberal government's announcement on Monday of a major new plan for cutting taxes, 70% say they believe this was "just an attempt to buy votes" and they will not let this "influence how they will vote in the next federal election" (26% feel the tax plan was a good idea and makes them more likely to vote Liberal because of it).

In terms of the federal voting landscape, if a federal election were held tomorrow, the Liberals would receive the most support with 36% of the decided votes (+2 points from November 8-10, 2005 survey), the Conservatives would rank second with 27% of votes (-1 point). The NDP (16%, -3 points) trail the two front runners considerably, while the Green Party continues to register low on the federal radar screen (6%, +2 points). In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois take 50% of federal votes (-6 points) versus the Liberals who would take 28% (+7 points).

These vote numbers fall against a back-drop of only 35% of Canadians saying they feel "comfortable voting for Paul Martin and the Liberals in the next election because they will govern very differently due to the lessons they learned from the Gomery Inquiry", and four in ten (39%) saying they feel "comfortable voting for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to form the government in the next election because we'll probably have another minority which will keep them in check".

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News and fielded from November 14th to November 15th 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:

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