Here’s the first line of a story on the new Crop poll taken in Quebec:

“A new poll paints devastating picture of a Liberal party completely reduced to a rump in Quebec if an election were held today.”

Reduced to a rump? In 2006 the Liberals got 21% of the vote and now they are at 20% support. Doing the actual seat projections shows that they stand to actually gain 5 seats compared to 2006 due to the erosion of support from the Bloq and the greater equity in support among all parties.

So, the lesson is that the opinions expressed in our national media are often nothing but ill-informed water cooler chatter. The full seat projections based on the Crop results would be as follows:

BQ = 36
CPC = 20
LIB = 18

Using my usual method (see prior posts for details) here are the seat projections based on the latest SCC poll results.

This is the best of the recent polls for the CPC. In fact it is the best since the last election so it would be a fortuitous coincidence if it is the most accurate. Regardless, it is at least a hopeful sign that a majority government is within our grasp. It is certainly going to dampen whatever enthusiasm any Liberals may have for a spring election. And for Layton it would be suicide - reducing his party to below official party status.

In the recent poll by Nanos Research Canadians indicated support for laissez-faire economic policies over government intervention as their favoured means of dealing with the economic downturn. The numbers were 53% in support of laissez-faire policies such as doing nothing, lowering taxes, or reducing the debt to 44% who favoured interventionist strategies such as creating jobs or raising wages. The remainder supported measures which could not really be characterized as either laissez-faire or interventionist such as changing the country’s leadership.

Now here’s something you don’t see too often - a poll with only a 2.5 point margin of error 19 times out of 20 showing voter preference in the Atlantic Provinces. Mind you, the Herald story doesn’t provide all the details (typical). But the details for Nova Scotia are there with a slightly higer margin of error. Applying these figures to the UBC Election Forecaster the results in seats in NS would be:

Lib = 5 (-1)
CPC = 4 (+1)
NDP = 2 (same)

The two wild card ridings in this are the neighbouring ones of Central Nova (where no Liberal will be running) and Cumberland-Colchester (where Bill Casey is the incumbent). First Cumberland-Colchester: the UBC results show that there should be enough “blue” support there that Casey and the CPC candidate could slit the vote right down the middle and still have enough that whichever one is slightly ahead will beat the NDP and Liberals. So it might be 4 CPC seats or 3 plus an independent. Despite his political heritage Casey has voted with the opposition more often than the government since his ouster so that would really be a loss for the Conservatives.

In Central Nova, Dion is the only one expecting Liberals to vote Green. May will trail the field and the only issue is whether enough disenfranchised Liberals will vote NDP to upset Peter MacKay. According to this poll MacKay is still in the drivers seat by a still-comfortable margin.

So where is that extra CPC seat? In West Nova where the poll has Robert Thibault, lead Liberal on the House Ethics Committee, losing to the CPC candidate by 6 points.

The situation for the Conservatives in the region should improve even more with the war between Ottawa and St. John’s blowing over. Here’s hoping.