Pollster Nik Nanos says Liberals and Conservatives are in a statistical tie so far as national voter preference goes. But when looking only at Quebec, Nanos' firm SES Research has found that Conservative support has plunged 14 points. The BQ are the main beneficiaries of the drop, gaining 9 points.
“This illustrates the appeal that the Harper-led Conservatives had among soft nationalists in Quebec,” said Nanos in a release this morning.
The Conservative Quebec cabinet ministers, led by Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon, have been spending this week spread out across the province making several announcements. Senior aides to those ministers concede that the Quebec cabinet ministers — Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Maxime Bernier, Josee Verner and Michael Fortier– need to raise their profile in the province and, in doing so, boost Conservative fortunes.
Nationally, the Conservatives are the first choice of 34 per cent of voters surveyed. The Liberals are the preferred choice of 32 per cent. The poll was conducted by telephone between Nov. 5 and Nov 9 and the pollster says it is accurate to within 3.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The pollster did not indicate the size of the polling sample.
The NDP is at 16 per cent nationally, the BQ is at 13 per cent nationally, and the Green Party is at 5 per cent.
In Quebec, SES finds the Conservatives at 12 per cent at Nov. 9, down from 26 per cent support on Aug. 25. The margin of error for the Quebec sample, the pollster says is 6.6 per cent.
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