At The One Year Anniversary Of The Federal Election

Toronto, ON - Coinciding with the first year anniversary of the last Federal election, a new Ipsos-Reid survey of 2000 Canadians, provided exclusively to CanWest/Global and conducted from June 21st to June 23rd, 2005, shows that momentum for Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party has plummeted since late April 2005 as a much higher ratio of Canadians today say their impression of this leader and party has worsened, rather than improved, over the last few months.

Today, Stephen Harper and Conservative Party momentum sits at -26 points: 43% of Canadians say their impression of this leader and party has "worsened" versus 17% who say it has "improved". This represents a major drop from an April 22-24th, 2005 survey that had Conservative momentum as even nationally (at this time 27% of Canadians had a "worsened" impression and 27% had an "improved" impression).

Momentum for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives is negative in every region of the country, but is most pronounced in Atlantic Canada (-35 points/-44 points from April), Ontario (-31 points/-25 points from April), and British Columbia (-30 points/-32 points from April). Among Conservative Party supporters, momentum has dropped 21 points from +49 points and now sits at +28 points.

As for momentum among the other major parties and leaders:

• Paul Martin and Liberal Party momentum holds steady but is still strongly negative (-43 points/down 3 points),
• Jack Layton and the NDP hold their ground at +12 points (unchanged), and
• Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois have positive momentum among the Quebec public (+16 points), up 3 points from April 2005.

The survey also asked Canadians to offer their Federal vote intentions. The results show that if a Federal election were held today, 35% of decided voters would cast their ballot for the Liberals (+1 point), 27% for the Conservatives (-2 points), 18% for the NDP (+2 points), and 6% for the Green Party (unchanged).

In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois sits at 51% support (unchanged) and now hold a 24-point lead over the Liberals (27%, +5 points).

Among all Canadians, 13% are undecided, refused to say whom they would vote for, or would not vote if a Federal election were held tomorrow.

These are the findings of an Ipsos-Reid poll provided exclusively to CanWest/Global and fielded from June 21st to June 23rd 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.

Please open attached files to view full press release and detailed tables.

For more information on this news release, please contact:
Darrell Bricker
President & COO
Ipsos-Reid
416.324.2900
[email protected]

Ipsos-Reid
Ipsos-Reid is Canada's market intelligence leader and the country's leading provider of public opinion research. With operations in eight cities, Ipsos-Reid employs more than 300 researcher professionals and support staff in Canada. The company has the biggest network of telephone call centres in Canada, as well as the largest pre-recruited household and on-line panels. Ipsos-Reid's Canadian marketing research and public affairs practices are staffed with seasoned research consultants with extensive industry-specific backgrounds, offering the premier suite of research vehicles in Canada--including the Ipsos Trend Report, the leading source of public opinion in the country--all of which provide clients with actionable and relevant information. Ipsos-Reid is an Ipsos company, a leading global survey-based market research group.

To learn more, please visit www.ipsos.ca.

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