2004 Democratic Primary

[Canadian observer]

Environics has published its most recent poll.  The interviews were done in the week before Parliament was dissolved (May 12-18).

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Environics/CBC/Radio-Canada Poll
Interviews conducted from May 12th to 18th '04

Federal voting intention in Canada

Sample Size: n=2,100 individuals (1,000 in Quebec - 1,000 in the rest of Canada)
MoE: 2.14%

LPC 38%
CPC 29%
NDP 21%
BQ 11%

Regional breakdown

Atlantic

LPC 63%
CPC 24%
NDP 12%

Quebec

Bloc Québécois 48%
LPC 32%
CPC 10%
NDP 10%

Ontario

LPC 46%
CPC 29%
NDP 22%

Prairies
Note : The sub-sample includes Alberta

CPC 51%
NDP 24%
LPC 24%


British Columbia

NDP 36%
CPC 34%
LPC 27%

[Canadian observer]

The general mood in the area where I live is the expectation of a Liberal minority.  That may be far from being good news for the Grits.

The Quebec Polling Firm Léger Marketing did a poll in which they asked the respondents their voting intentions in the case they're certain Liberal would get a minority : Liberals support falls in Quebec from 35% to 25% ...

Paul Martin doesn't seem to impress in the first days of the campaign.  In his first speech of the campaign he was struggling with his words.  His first attacks on Stephen Harper weren't succesful.  In that regard, the Conservative leader had one of the best répliques: "You can be Canadian without voting Liberal".

On a more interesting note in Quebec, the Liberal slogan in my province is Allons droit devant avec l'équipe Martin (Translation: Let's go straight ahead with the Martin Team).  The french newspaper Le Devoir ran a story on that slogan, which was the same used by Canada Steamship Lines for a Human Resource program.  CSL was a company owned by Paul Martin.  Before publishing, Le Devoir got a call from David McKinnon, the spin doctor-in-chief for Martin.  He asked the newspaper not to publish the article because it could harm their campaign.  No fools in Le Devoir ... They ran the story and put McKinnon quotes in it ...