Harper Tories fall in poll but hold a small lead.

 

The Conservative Party is holding a small lead over the Liberals in the latest survey from Ipsos Ried. In a telephone poll of 1,000 adult Canadians was carried out between January 19^th to 21^st, 34% said they would vote for the Conservatives if an election were held today while 31% said they would vote for the Liberals. The NDP would take 17% of the vote nationally, while the Bloc Quebecois would take 9% and the Greens 8%.

The survey comes as the Harper government is under persistent criticism over the prorogation of Parliament and at the same time receives laurels for their handling of the response to Haiti's devastating earthquake.

The survey put the Conservatives down 3 percentage points from the last Ipsos-Reid survey in November and the Liberals are up 7 points. Ipsos Reid President Darrell Bricker says the gap has narrowed, "The Tories did get a gust wind in their sails last fall that seemed to carry on for a while, but the minute we hit the prorogation situation things seem to tighten up again."

Bricker says we will have to wait until the government has delivered its Speech from the Throne and budget to see if the change will hold or if this is temporary. Another question that remains up in the air is whether the government's handling of the response to Haiti has lessened the impact of criticism over prorogation.

If an election were held today, the key battleground would once again be Ontario. The Liberals lead in Atlantic Canada, the Bloc has the lead in Quebec, and west of the Ontario-Manitoba border the Conservatives lead every region. In Ontario it is a different matter, the Liberals sit at 38% in the country's biggest province while the Conservatives have 37% and the NDP sit at 15%.