Pollsters' Corner

From The Globe And Mail:

In the new battleground ridings poll, the Conservatives seem to be making major gains in Ontario, Quebec and B.C. In which province(s) are those gains likeliest to hold?

Peter Donolo, Strategic Counsel: It's pretty early to tell just how solid these gains are. Indeed, four in ten voters in the Ontario battleground ridings and just under a third of the voters in the Quebec and B.C. battlegrounds have said they were likely to change their votes — and the data shows that those currently leaning Tory are more likely to switch.

Pay particular attention to Quebec. There may well be something major afoot there regarding the Bloc vote. In fact, after a high water mark in their first election in 1993, the Bloc went into steady decline in 1997 and 2000, with the Liberals actually beating them in popular vote in that last election. The sponsorship scandal gave the Bloc a new lease on life in the quick succession elections of 2004 and 2006, but that likely masked a longer term reconsideration that started in 1997 among Quebec voters about the continued relevance of the Bloc in Parliament.

With the sponsorship scandal now fading, that reconsideration has picked up steam. The chief beneficiaries of any re-examination at this stage are the Conservatives - outside the island of Montreal.

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