Conservatives at the 40 per cent solution!

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It is not surprising that the polls are up for the Conservatives. The Liberals are nowhere it seems unless perhaps fighting in backrooms. Meanwhile Harper appears regularly making deals with Nova Scotia, announcing get tough on drugs stuff, even giving funds to VIA. He pretends to be an environmentalist leading the laggards on the environment and getting his buddies Bush and Howard on board a hot air balloon.

Conservatives' popularity rises: poll
Fri Oct 12, 2007 9:44 PM EDT




MONTREAL (Reuters) - Canada's Conservatives, ruling as a minority government, have surged in popularity to the point where they could win a parliamentary majority in the next election, according to a poll published on Friday.

The Ipsos-Reid poll for the CanWest News Service and Global National television network put the Conservatives at 40 percent of popular support, opening a 12-point lead over the opposition Liberals.

"These are the best numbers the Tories have had in years," Darrell Bricker, president of the polling firm, told CanWest.

The Conservatives were up 4 points from the previous Ipsos-Reid poll in August and were right on the "magic number" generally needed to form a majority government, he added.

"The potential is that if an election was held tomorrow, he (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) could form a majority," Bricker told CanWest.

In contrast, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, whose popularity within his own party has been questioned by other Liberals, is "a bit on the ropes and headed in the wrong direction," Bricker said.

At 28 percent, Liberal support fell 4 points from the August survey.

The left-leaning New Democratic Party dropped 1 point to 16 percent.

The Bloc Quebecois, a separatist party that fields candidates only in Quebec, was at 33 percent support in the French-speaking province of 7.5 million. The Conservatives were at 27 percent in Quebec and the Liberals trailed at 18 percent.

The poll results came as Harper turned up the heat on the opposition parties on Friday, saying he might force votes of confidence when lawmakers take up crime and other nonfinancial legislation.

If Harper fails to gain the support or at least the abstention of one of the three opposition parties in any matter of confidence, including an upcoming major policy speech in Parliament, his government could be brought down. That would force an early federal election.

The Conservative were elected in January 2006 and Harper has set October 2009 as the next election date if his government does not fail before then.

The nationwide poll of 1,000 adults was conducted from Tuesday to Thursday, and was considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20.



© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.