New Poll Results

I suspect that the Harper Conservatives are going to have to ramp up their demagoguery quotient given the results of a new poll that suggests the Tory insistence on eliminating the mandatory long form census is eroding its support. Below is an excerpt from today's Political Notebook on the Globe website:

Jane Taber

1. Absent PM faces 'virtual tie.' Stephen Harper’s decision to kill the compulsory long-form census is killing him in a new national poll, wiping out an 11-point lead he enjoyed over Michael Ignatieff just weeks ago.

The latest EKOS survey shows the Conservatives virtually tied now with the Liberals, 29.7 per cent compared to 28.5 per cent. Pollster Frank Graves calls this the “revenge of propeller-heads” – the educated class in Canada, which seems to have reacted swiftly and negatively to the Tory government’s census change.

“This is really a very bad poll for the Conservatives,” Mr. Graves says. “They have slipped back into a virtual tie with the Liberals … and looked poised for a disastrous rout in Quebec.”

The two-week poll has Jack Layton’s NDP at 17.4 per cent, puts the Green Party at 11.1 per cent and shows 10.4 per cent support for the Bloc. The EKOS survey of 3,444 Canadians was conducted between July 21 and Aug. 3 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.