Liberal Duffy analyzing the nightly Nanos rolling poll.
Let's focus on something else: The NDP may be in first place, or pretty darn close to it.
Let me explain. The Nanos research poll, probably the heaviest covered of the campaign, this morning reported national voting intentions of Conservative: 37.8 per cent; NDP: 27.8 per cent; Liberal: 22.9 per cent; BQ: 5.8 per cent; and Green: 4.7 per cent for the period ending April 26. It takes a little arithmetic with this three-day rolling poll, but when you isolate last night's numbers, you get the NDP in first place with 36.2 per cent; the Conservatives second with 35 per cent; the Liberals with 17.5 per cent, the BQ with 4.4 per cent and Greens with 6.9 per cent.
That's right. Nanos's April 26 sample had the NDP in first. This is not definitive; it has a high margin of error; it must be handled with great care. But add to that today's Forum Research poll, which showed a mere three points separating the Conservatives and the NDP, and it's pretty clear what is happening. The NDP either has closed, or is close to closing, the gap with the Conservatives.
There is no reason to believe otherwise, frankly, or that this has to come to a halt. Fact: various polls are now showing the NDP eating not only into the Liberal vote (as in Ontario) but also into the Conservative vote pretty much everywhere outside the prairies. Analysis is catching up. Fact: the NDP surge is showing no sign of abating. Fact: The NDP has a great, upbeat "closer"-style spot on television right now, while the other parties have ads that are not resonating. Fact: The Conservative response, which would probably be impressive, is nowhere to be seen, plus they just lost one of their best strategy guys at the worst possible moment. Meanwhile, the Liberals are starting to fall off the coverage radar. Fact: earned media campaign coverage is about to go dark for the Royal Wedding and the final weekend.
All of those factors would tend to continue the NDP surge. Recoil is possible, of course. But for now, there seems to be no real floor to the Liberal support (they went through that in 2008, pretended they were on a new form of solid ground and got used to it. Big mistake.) And as for the Conservatives, we know now that the Tory floor from one election to the next is around 30 per cent, but that means that Mr. Layton still has room to grow -- a fair bit in fact. And Mr. Harper has not run the kind of campaign that makes newcomers actually desire to stay in the Conservative tent.
I am seriously starting to wonder whether some sort of massive genie hasn't been let out of the bottle here. Mr. Harper has framed the campaign and its run-up as an anti-politics exercise. Putting words in the PM's mouth, I described his core pitch as being, "The heck with these elections we've all come to hate. Vote for a Harper majority and all this political crap gets out of your hair for four years." What appears to be happening here is that the anti-politics appeal has found its audience, and it's expression is "the heck with Harper and Ignatieff." The response seems not to have taken the form of Liberal voters sourly staying home and throwing the election to the Conservatives. Rather, it appears the anti-politician mood that the Prime Minister stoked has created an immense opening for Mr. Layton's positive, uplifting, take-a-chance-on-me offering.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... le2001040/
