Tories and Liberals even in CP Harris Decima poll.

Ignatieff is not likely to try and force an election now. He will act just as Dion did and prop up the Harper government unless he can be assured that an opposition party will help out Harper. The slim lead that Ignatieff had after people were angry at Harper for proroguing parliament has evaporated. However, the Olympics does not seem to have done much to boost Harper's ratings. No party seems to be gaining any real traction. We will now be treated to a lot of political posturing about the budget. Of course perhaps Harper will try something stupid again and provoke the opposition into forcing an election!

Political deadlock continues as Tories-Liberals both stalled: poll

By: John Ward, THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA, Ont. - The return of Parliament on Wednesday offers a series of confidence votes, but new polling data suggests that neither the Tories nor the Liberals would want to hazard a quick trip to the voting booths.

The two-week survey of political support conducted Feb. 18-28 by The Canadian Press Harris-Decima suggests the Tories and Liberals are dead even at 31 per cent.

The NDP had support from 16 per cent of respondents, the Greens had 12 and the Bloc Quebecois was at eight.

A brief spike in Liberal support, widely attributed to anger over Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament, seems to have evaporated.

The Conservatives haven't been able to cash in on their deft handling of the Haiti earthquake crisis or public euphoria over the Olympics.

"For all the hyperventilating about leads and declines, it appears that the so-called 'new normal' in Canadian politics is a statistical tie between the two main parties," said pollster Allan Gregg.

"Neither one has been able to capture the federalist vote in Quebec; the Conservatives continue to be locked out of the major metropolitan centres, while the same can be said for the Liberals in the Prairies and in most parts of rural Canada."

What about a spring election?

"There's absolutely no reason to have an election in this kind of 'new normal'," Gregg said. "None at all. Zero."

In his years of watching national politics, he said he's never seen a situation where the status quo equals deadlock.

He said only British Columbia remains a competitive region, with the Tories, Liberals and New Democrats essentially deadlocked there.

"Since 2005 there has been really very, very, little change," Gregg said.

Tories and Liberals both have pockets of solid support and solid resistance.

Ignatieff seems unable to find traction as a prime minister in waiting.

Harper seems to have gained little from the Olympic excitement. The tail end of the polling was done through the final days of the Games, when Canada was racking up its record haul of gold medals.

"I think what it is, is that the doubts about both the alternatives outweigh any kind of momentary enthusiasm that voters may have for either of their performances or personalities," said Gregg.

The stalemate will be in the political calculations as Parliament considers the throne speech, which comes Wednesday, and the budget a day later.

Gregg says he sees little chance of a major change soon. Ignatieff hasn't found a way to grab the public. And Harper has been around long enough that people's opinions of him have solidified for good or bad.

"How likely is it that there's going to be some kind of wholesale reassessment of the option he presents?"

The poll contacted 2,035 people as part of an omnibus telephone survey and is considered accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times in 20.

Don't Count Ignatieff out yet!

Perhaps this article is correct. Certainly Harper did survive his bout with low poll numbers. However, there does not seem to be any sign of Ignatieff recovering very much. I think that Ignatieff''s best bet is if Harper manages to make himself unpopular. So far any attempt to boost Ignatieff's image does not seem to have worked at all. He does not seem to have put forward much in the way of policy that has engendered much positive interest. The public is often fickle however and perhaps Ignatieff can hope for the New Year. This is from the Winnipeg Free Press.

We can't count Ignatieff out yet
Liberal leader sits low in polls, but so did Harper
By: Hill Talk / Mia Rabson

OTTAWA -- Michael Ignatieff was named by Forbes last week as someone to watch for in 2010.

The magazine said that if an election is held next year, the Liberal leader could become the Canadian prime minister "with the biggest international profile since Pierre Trudeau."

The honour was met by a lot of eye rolls around Parliament Hill.

The Liberals have been in a free-fall for much of the fall, and overall support is only marginally better than it was during the 2008 election. You know, that election in which their support was the worst it has been since 1867.

One recent Angus Reid poll had only one in six Canadians approving of Ignatieff. While that was up slightly from the previous month, it's still only about half the number who approve of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Last December, Ignatieff was touted as the saviour who would lead the Liberals back to victory. This December he spent fighting off rumours of a coup against his leadership and suggestions he will pull the plug himself and run back to Harvard with his tail between his legs.

For the moment, he seems resolved to stick it out. A good thing, as history has shown being down does not mean being out.

Even Stephen Harper could tell him that, if the two ever exchanged more than barbs.

In January 2003, 10 months after Harper was elected leader of the Canadian Alliance, the party's poll numbers had plunged.

An EKOS poll showed 10.5 per cent of Canadians supported the Alliance, compared to 52.1 per cent for the Liberals. It was down from the 25.5 per cent the Alliance received in the 2000 federal election. Even combined with the Progressive Conservatives' 13.8 per cent -- this was before the two parties merged -- the right-wing options in Canada were outstripped more than two to one by the Liberals in popular support. Comparatively, Ignatieff is doing pretty well.

And within 18 months, Harper had merged the two parties, won election as the new leader and turned more than a decade of Liberal majority rule into a minority.

Ignatieff certainly has a steep hill to climb, but as Harper showed, nothing is impossible.

Conservative continue to lead Liberals by wide margin

Although the Conservatives are only increasing their lead marginally the NDP improved a couple of percentage points. Among leaders Layton has the best showing with Ignatieff far the worst. The Liberal party must be starting to wonder how much better off they are for having dumped Dion! Ignatieff unceremoniously dumped the Green Shift now in the face of the polls he has dumped the dump Harper policy. Maybe the Liberals will bring out the knives and begin a dump Ignatieff campaign.

Conservatives keep lead in poll
CBC News
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives are polling nearly enough support for a majority government, according to the latest EKOS numbers. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
Support for the Conservative Party continued to hold last week, according to the latest poll results from EKOS.

Among decided respondents, the Conservatives drew 38.4 per cent support, followed by the Liberals at 26.8 per cent and the New Democratic Party at 16.7 per cent.

The Green Party had the support of 9.9 per cent of decided respondents, while the Bloc Québécois had 8.2 per cent support, according to the EKOS poll, which was released exclusively to CBC.

Last week, the Conservatives stood at 38.3 per cent support, followed by the Liberals at 27.1 per cent, the NDP at 14.5 per cent, the Green Party at 11 per cent, and the BQ at nine per cent.

Respondents in the automated telephone survey are asked: "If an election were held tomorrow, which party would you vote for?" The poll reached 3,220 respondents between Oct. 21 and Oct. 27. The results carry a margin of error of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

EKOS also asked Canadians their thoughts on the leadership of Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton, asking if any of the three should be removed immediately as leader of their respective party.

On Jack Layton, 51 per cent of respondents indicated they thought Layton should remain at the helm of the NDP, while 25 per cent said he should be replaced.

Layton had the high-water mark of support among the three leaders. On Harper, 45 per cent said he should stay, while 40 per cent said he should be replaced.

Michael Ignatieff's support was the weakest: 31 per cent of respondents said he should stay, while 46 per cent said he should go.

Ignatieff made changes in his inner circle this week. Late Tuesday, Ignatieff announced that Peter Donolo was taking over as the Liberal leader's chief of staff. Donolo left his post at the Strategic Counsel, a Toronto polling firm, to replace Ian Davey, a longtime Ignatieff supporter.

Donolo was a communications director for former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien.

Rumours about Liberal defections..

This is all Ignatieff needs. Of course as some Liberals suggest this may just be the Harper dept. of dirty tricks hard at work trying to create problems for Ignatieff. With the polls showing that the Liberals are going nowhere but down there could be more rumblings and knives quietly being unsheathed!

Liberal trio looking to defect, Tories say
Liberal trio looking to defect, Tories say
October 06, 2009
Susan Delacourt

OTTAWA–A Conservative government official said Monday there have been discussions with three Liberal MPs interested in crossing the floor to the Tory side over the past month.
Liberals immediately dismissed the talk as Conservative "mischief" and said it is the government that is on a raiding mission.
There has been speculation in the past few days that Ruby Dhalla, Liberal MP for Brampton-Springdale, has considered defecting to the Conservatives because her own party has refused to back her private member's bill to increase old-age benefits to immigrant seniors.
Conservatives would not name the trio – even suggesting Dhalla might not be "a good fit" in the caucus – but such talk will create more headaches for Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, already falling in the polls and trying to put out a party fire in Quebec caused by the resignation of Denis Coderre, his lieutenant in the province.
Judy Sgro (York West), the Liberals' critic for seniors and pensions and probably Dhalla's closest ally in caucus, issued a news release Monday saying she would be voting against her friend's legislation because it went against the views of the Liberal leader and caucus on government spending.
Dhalla wasn't talking on Monday about the defection speculation or the party's refusal to back her private member's bill.
In a brief email, the Brampton-Springdale MP said only that "the rumour mill is in overdrive again. ... These people need to find a topic of discussion that doesn't include the name Ruby Dhalla."
An adviser in Ignatieff's office said the talk of Dhalla's disgruntlement is being overblown by Conservatives who would like to see her cause trouble for her leader.
And indeed, Dimitri Soudas, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, sent out a mass-distributed email yesterday drawing attention to the Liberals' rebuff of Dhalla's bill. "They are voting against the (private member's bill) of MP Ruby Dhalla! Their own bill!" Soudas's email said.
Conservatives wouldn't disclose the names of the three Liberal MPs they say are considering defection, but said Dhalla was not likely to be among them. They suggested Dhalla was circulating the defection rumours to send a message to her own party about its rejection of her private member's bill.
Sgro said she didn't believe Dhalla would leave the party and "throw away her future."
The Conservatives hold 143 seats in the 308-seat Commons and would need an additional 12 MPs to form a majority. While three or four Liberal MPs would only put them a little closer to that goal, it would be another blow to Ignatieff, who last week lost his Quebec lieutenant, Denis Coderre, in a spat over nomination fights.
The Liberal leader joked on Sunday, while at the party's Quebec-wing convention, that his life these days is "a constant joy."
Jill Fairbrother, Ignatieff's communications chief, dismissed the talk of defections on Monday.
"No Liberal MP is going to work for the Stephen Harper we saw on that videotape, the one who wants to abolish the gun registry and says our courts are stacked with left-wing ideologues," said Fairbrother, a reference to a speech Harper made in September in Sault Ste. Marie at a closed-door reception with Conservative partisans.
Dhalla was one of the most staunch caucus supporters of Ignatieff's leadership, all the way back to the 2006 campaign. Bright, articulate and television-friendly, she's been seen as a rising caucus star, with aspirations of leadership herself. She ran into controversy earlier this year, however, when the Star uncovered allegations of mistreatment by two caregivers who worked for the Dhalla family.
Dhalla, who has vehemently denied that any caregivers working at her family home were mistreated, resigned her post as multiculturalism critic during the furor and waited for the dust to settle before introducing a private member's bill to increase immigrant seniors' pensions in June.
The bill proposes to reduce the 10-year residence requirement for seniors immigrating to Canada from China, India and parts of South America and Africa. Dhalla argued it was unfair for these seniors to face a 10-year rule, while others could claim benefits after three years.
But her party balked at the cost of the legislation.
"To become law, Bill C-428 will require a Royal Recommendation as it would prompt the expenditure of between $300 (million) and $700 million," Sgro said in her release. "Given the potential costs of Bill C-428, the systemic and financial implications of the measure must be evaluated in a larger context."

Federal polls shows slight Conservative lead

If results of this type continue neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals will want a fall election. Ignatieff will huff and puff but not blow the house down but rather continue with the unending drama of Dion 8 or 9 without the Green Shift! Liberals can continue to build their war chest and no doubt claim that they are making parliament work. Of course it will work in the interests of Harper policy! Of course Harper could misjudge the situation again and perhaps force Ignatieff to vote against the government or completely lose face.
Perhaps it will not be too long before some Liberals begin to wonder if Ignatieff will be able to lead them to an electoral victory of any sort!

Canada ruling Conservatives retake lead in new poll
Thu Aug 6, 2009 10:26am EDT
OTTAWA, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Canada's governing Conservatives have regained a narrow lead in public opinion over the main opposition Liberals, but would struggle to win an election now, according to a weekly poll released on Thursday.

The Ekos survey for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp put the Conservatives at 34.9 percent support, up from 32.5 percent last week. The Liberals were at 31.9 percent, down from 34.1 percent.
...........................


The Liberals are threatening to present a motion of non-confidence in the government when Parliament returns in late September but would stand little chance of victory even as a minority government in the ensuing election, the survey indicates.

"For weeks now, the Liberals and Conservatives have had barely any room between them, and neither can claim any momentum," Ekos said in a statement.

No party looks capable of hitting the 37 percent level of support that would give it a good chance of capturing at least a minority government.

The Conservatives won a strengthened minority in last October's election but have lost popular support as the economic crisis hit and the Liberals accused them of not doing enough to help Canadians who were most affected.

......................................

The Ekos automated telephone survey of 2,025 decided adult voters was conducted between July 29 and Aug. 4 and is considered accurate to within 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; editing by Peter Galloway)


© Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved.

Michael Ignatieff paying a price for his silence.

Perhaps Ignatieff is unwilling to put forth much in the way of policy pronouncements because he fears the Conservative propaganda machine. However, since the Liberals are in better financial shape now they could spend a considerable amount to counteract them. No doubt Ignatieff prefers to wait until the fall when he may decide to trigger an election. Harper is not losing much if any ground in the polls however and with the economy improving slightly the Liberals may not be able to count on Harper's losing popularity because of the economy.
Maybe the money is pouring in to reward Ignatieff for his co-operative work with the Conservatives in holding at bay the socialist hordes in the NDP and those horrible separatists in the Bloc who also have social democratic tendencies!



Michael Ignatieff paying a price for his silence
TheStar.com - Opinion - Michael Ignatieff paying a price for his silence

August 03, 2009
Carol Goar

According to meteorologist Dave Phillips, Ottawa took the prize for the soggiest July in the country. The nation's capital was chilly, damp and uninviting.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says he took advantage of the bad weather to "sit at home and think thoughts." He us promising Canadians an ambitious policy agenda in the fall.

That would be a nice change.

Since Ignatieff took command in December, it has been hard to figure out what the Liberals stand for, how they would govern the country or whether they have workable alternatives.

Ignatieff may believe – or his strategists may have convinced him – that it is tactically smart to withhold his platform until an election is imminent.

But the former Harvard professor is paying a price. His party is stalled in the polls. Voters have doubts about his ability to manage the economy. He is acquiring a reputation as a leader who is more comfortable deliberating than providing a sense of direction.

Liberal MPs are also paying a price. Most have avoided the limelight since Parliament closed, not knowing what they're supposed to say. This makes it look as if they have few ideas or concerns.

It would be interesting to hear what Ignatieff has come up with after spending half the summer wrestling with the nation's challenges.

What, for example, are his guiding principles?

The Liberal leader has issued a steady stream of press releases, accusing the government of neglecting the unemployed, failing to protect Canadian-developed technology, pulling the plug on Canadian isotope production, ignoring the concerns of rural Canadians and dragging its feet on global warming.

But this running commentary is headline-driven. It indicates nothing about Ignatieff's priorities or values.

Is there any Conservative policy he finds so wrong he would be compelled to oppose it, whatever the risk?

The Liberal leader has threatened to vote non-confidence in the government's recession-fighting strategy and its refusal to extend jobless benefits to the millions of Canadians who don't qualify for coverage. But both times he has backed off.

He has said so little about most other issues – national security, fiscal policy, resource development, city building, health care, poverty, aboriginal affairs, the environment or Canada-U.S. relations – that it is hard to tell where he would draw the line.

Does he have a plan to tackle climate change?

Former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, for all his shortcomings, was at least clear on this question. He staked his career on the conviction that a carbon tax was necessary to curb energy consumption.

Ignatieff has jettisoned his predecessor's unpopular policy (which he himself advocated two years ago) but has not offered Canadians a replacement.

Has he determined which Liberal traditions he will uphold and which belong to a bygone era?

The confusion over last month's sale of Nortel Networks' wireless business to Ericsson, a Swedish telecom giant, suggests not.

Industry critic Marc Garneau said he saw no reason for Ottawa to intervene. "If we want to play in the big leagues, we have to play by international rules."

A day later, Ignatieff sent out a different message, demanding that the government review the transaction, given the "unique and strategic nature" of the Canadian technology pioneer's assets. He sounded like an economic nationalist – but one with sluggish reflexes.

Has Ignatieff thought about how to restructure Ontario's battered manufacturing sector, restore civility to Parliament, make democracy matter to disengaged voters or marshal the energy and optimism of young Canadians?

He hasn't said so. He apparently feels no urgency.

With luck, it will be sunny in Ottawa this month. Ignatieff needs to get out of his study. The Liberals need to show some life.



Carol Goar's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

No Fall Election?

Perhaps Ignatieff wants to wait and see if he will ever get poll numbers near a majority; otherwise, it would seem he would rather work with the Conservatives than the Bloc and NDP. The Liberals are no real alternative to the Conservatives just more of the same but a little bit slower perhaps in moving to the right. Both Ignatieff and Harper are pro-US and will make sure that we lose more lives and spend more money to be junior partners in the U.S. empire building.
If anything Ignatieff is even more pro-US empire than Harper. The latter is just an admirer of the U.S. conservative movement whereas Ignatieff is a big fan of U.S. humanitarian imperialism so much so that he even supported the war in Iraq at first.

Summer poll could cool talk of election
TheStar.com -- Summer poll could cool talk of election

July 30, 2009
Tonda MacCharles
Ottawa Bureau
OTTAWA–The political rhetoric is still flying, but are Canadians listening?

A survey by Angus Reid Strategies for the Toronto Star shows the federal Liberals with 34 per cent support and the Conservatives with 33 per cent – a statistical dead heat. The result is a warning for any party thinking of plunging into a fall election: No wind of change is blowing across Canada.

The poll shows the shaky economy is still voters' top concern, despite a declaration by Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney that the recession is over, and no party's leader has clearly won the trust of a majority of Canadians on the issue.

If anything, Canadians trust Carney more than either Prime Minister Stephen Harper or his Liberal rival Michael Ignatieff to manage the economy, but Carney's trust ratings dropped after his suggestion the economy was finding its footing again.

Yesterday, cabinet ministers distanced the Conservatives from Carney's economic optimism.

"To say we're out of the woods – I don't think that's the position of our government," said Industry Minister Tony Clement.

"We're still focused on the economy. We're not focused on a fall election, quite frankly. That's what the Liberal leader of the Opposition is focused on, but that's not our focus. Our focus is the economy."

Still, politics, and not the economy, appeared to dominate the agenda, with Conservatives and Liberals trading accusations of political bad faith and skulduggery as the Tories concluded a summer caucus meeting yesterday.

Conservatives privately fanned a CTV report that suggested Liberals planted a false – and since retracted – story with a New Brunswick newspaper that the Prime Minister pocketed a communion wafer. The Liberals called the suggestion nonsense, and pointed to a CPAC video of the incident as self-explanatory.

Publicly, the talk turned to employment insurance reform, on a day after statistics showed a sharp spike in claims for jobless benefits.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said Ignatieff is living in an "academic fantasyland" by clinging to a proposal to set 360 hours as the national standard for accessing unemployment benefits.

Finley is member of a bipartisan working group struck in June to study EI reform – part of a deal Harper worked out with Ignatieff to avert a summer election.

Ignatieff, who had suggested he'd be flexible on a national standard as long as EI was reformed, then slammed the Tories for failing to bring forward to the working group a single "serious" proposal to help the self-employed, as promised.

The Angus Reid poll offers little encouragement for such tough talk.

Conducted Monday and Tuesday, it shows public approval for the opposition Liberals stands at 34 per cent – an increase of four points from two weeks earlier.

The governing Conservatives' support held at the same level as two weeks ago at 33 per cent. The poll of 1,012 people has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, which means the two parties are in a virtual tie.

The NDP was at 16 per cent support, down two points. The Bloc Québécois was at 10 per cent and the Green party 7 per cent.

Meanwhile, Ignatieff's momentum score has dipped 5 points since early July. After Ignatieff took over leadership of the party last December and through the spring, his momentum grew as Harper's numbers dropped. Now, the poll shows Harper's momentum is holding steady.

"What we have seen in the summer is that Ignatieff's numbers have come back down to earth a little bit," said Jaideep Mukerji, a spokesman for the polling firm.



He said Ignatieff's honeymoon period appears to have ended, due in part to Tory attack ads and a poorly executed ultimatum over EI reforms as the parliamentary session ended.

According to the poll, slightly more people are unhappy with how the federal government has handled the economic crisis, but overall more Canadians still trust Harper to manage the economy over Ignatieff.

"With the numbers as they are, clearly no party is in a position to get a majority, and neither party seems to be able to get a clear advantage over the other," said Mukerji.

"It would be difficult for any of the parties to look at these numbers and think that they've got a great shot at really shaking things up."

With files from Joanna Smith


om

Canada Ruling Conservatives well ahead in new poll.

This is from Reuters via Canada.com. I wonder if this polling organisation has connections to the Conservatives since it seems to regularly give them larger margins than other pollsters according to this article. With these results and the rather uninspiring results of the recent byelections we can expect Dion to sit on his hands while making bleating sounds with his mouth.

Canada ruling Conservatives well ahead in new poll
Reuters
Published: Tuesday, March 18, 2008
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's ruling Conservatives have taken a commanding lead over the opposition Liberals but do not have enough support to obtain a majority government in the next election, a poll showed on Tuesday.

The Strategic Counsel survey for the Globe and Mail and CTV put support for the Conservatives at 38 percent, down one percentage point from a poll done by the same firm a month ago. The Liberals were steady at 27 percent.

The Strategic Counsel regularly gives the Conservatives large leads. Polls by other firms show either a narrow Conservative advantage or a tie between the two parties.


Under Canada's first-past-the-post electoral system, a party needs to capture around 40 percent of the public vote to stand a reasonable chance of winning a majority of the 308 seats in the federal Parliament.

The Strategic Counsel poll of 1,000 Canadians was conducted between March 13 and 16 and is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Bernadette Baum)





© Reuters 2008

Poll: Liberals 33 per cent, Conservatives 31.

This is hardly enough to enthuse the Liberals about an election. However the Conservatives may fear the decline of the economy and other problems so they seem intent on provoking or embarassing the Liberals. The Liberals may feel that too much caving in will damage the brand but on the other hand they may decide that it would be better to wait and see if the polls get better. So far inaction doesn't seem to hurt them much. It will be interesting to see what the Liberals do. The ball is in their court.

Liberals take slight lead: poll
Fri Feb 8, 2008 9:08am EST

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's opposition Liberals have taken a slight lead over the ruling Conservatives in an opinion poll released on Friday, but both parties are well short of the level needed to form a majority government. The Nanos Research...";



OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's opposition Liberals have taken a slight lead over the ruling Conservatives in an opinion poll released on Friday, but both parties are well short of the level needed to form a majority government.
The Nanos Research survey put the Liberals at 33 percent and the Conservatives at 31 percent.
Under Canada's first-past-the-post electoral system, a party needs 40 percent of the vote to stand a chance of winning a majority of the 308 seats in Parliament -- the Conservatives won a minority government in January 2006 with 36 percent of the vote and have 126 seats in Parliament.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he wants to govern until the next scheduled election date of October 2009, but some party strategists want an election earlier to take advantage of a still-strong economy and what they say is the weak leadership of Liberal leader Stephane Dion.
Parliament faces three confidence votes between now and the end of March, and Dion says he is ready to go to the polls.
"Calling an election is fraught with risks for them both," pollster Nik Nanos wrote in a commentary. He said the survey showed that repeated efforts by the Conservatives to portray Dion as ineffectual had had no effect.
"The reality is that the Tories are not fighting Dion ... they are fighting the Liberal brand," he said.
Nanos Research predicted the result of the January 2006 election to within 0.1 percentage points for the top three parties.
The firm's poll of 1,002 Canadians was conducted between February 2 and 4 and is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; editing by Janet Guttsman)
© Reuters2008All rights reserved.