With Three Weeks To Election Day The Tight Race Tilts Tory (33%, +1 Point) Over Liberals (32%, -1 Point)
According to the survey, if a federal election were held tomorrow, 33% of voters would cast their ballot in support of the Conservatives (+1 point from last week's survey), 32% would vote for the Liberals (32%, -1 point), 18% would vote for the NDP (+2 points), and 5% would vote for the Green Party (unchanged). In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois attract more than half of federal votes (52%, -2 points).
Currently four in ten Canadians (42%, +5 points) agree with the statement "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 which will keep them in check" - 44% of Ontarians agree with this statement.
And just one-third of Canadians (32%, -7 points) now agree with the statement "I'd be comfortable voting for Paul Martin and the Liberals in the next election because they will govern very differently next time due to the lessons they learned from the Gomery Inquiry" (11% strongly agree).
As Stephen and the Conservatives continue to build positive momentum nationally (+8 points, up 4 points from the previous sounding), they appear to have made their strongest momentum gains in Quebec (+12 points) and among Bloc Quebecois supporters (+17 points). Meanwhile, momentum for Paul Martin and the Liberals has dropped substantially (-14 points from the last survey) and is now strongly negative nationally (-35 points).
Further, momentum appears to be on the side of actual voters going to the polls: When asked how likely they are to vote in the upcoming federal election, Conservative supporters (68%) are more likely than Liberal supporters (60%) to say they are "absolutely certain". This group is particularly relevant because they generally reflect the opinions of those Canadians who will actually turn-out to vote on January 23rd.
These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News and fielded from December 29th to December 30th 2005. For this survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1,000 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 files 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
