Canada's Election Heats Up After Poll Release
October 28, 2000 - 0:0
CORNER BROOK, Newfoundland Canada's election race suddenly heated up on Friday with the release of a national poll showing momentum running against liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
The IPSOS-Reid poll, conducted for CTV and the Globe and Mail, showed the opposition Canadian Alliance Party with the support of 28 percent of decided voters, the highest level the party, or its predecessor, the Reform Party, has ever enjoyed.
With the liberals at 45 percent, they would maintain their majority for the third time if these translated into actual votes, but voters' opinions of Chretien have dramatically worsened over the last few weeks.
"The momentum in the campaign has clearly been against them," Reid pollster Darrell Bricker told CTV. "Clearly something's going on in the hustings." Thirty-nine percent of respondents said their view of Chretien and the Liberals had worsened in recent weeks, while 14 percent said it had improved.
In contrast, 28 percent said their opinion of Alliance leader Stockwell Day, a pastor-turned-politician, had improved.
Chretien called the election on Sunday, for a November 27 vote.
He called it 1-1/2 years before he had to, largely on the strength of polling data at the time.
He has sought to paint day as someone who wants to tear apart Canada's fabric, and appealed to voters here in Atlantic Canada to unite behind the liberals to stop them.
"The Liberal Party is the party that gave you medicare, and the Liberal Party will keep medicare," he told a rally of about 400 in this pulp-and-paper town on the rugged West Coast of the Island of Newfoundland.
In the back of the crowd, a knot of a few dozen health workers booed him for massive cuts in health spending he had introduced in the mid-1990s to eliminate budget deficits.
Though the small-government alliance is not the main competitor in Atlantic Canada, where unemployment is chronic, Chretien nonetheless ignored the other two main parties here, the conservatives and the leftist new democrats.
On Friday morning he was scheduled to move on to New Brunswick, the Atlantic province where the Alliance has its best hopes, and then to hit Quebec on Saturday.
In Ottawa on Thursday night, day raised C$250,000 ($165,000) from a crowd of 700 where he launched a vigorous attack on Chretien's record as one of "broken promises, mismanagement and missed opportunities." "The prime minister is wrong when he tells Canadians that only the Liberal Party speaks to the basic values of this country," he said. "This country was built by all Canadians, not by the Liberal Party." He was paying his second visit this week to the Ottawa high-tech suburb of Kanaka, Ontario. The Alliance had more members in that district than anywhere in vote-rich Ontario, and hopes to be able to make a breakthrough there.
The liberals won their majority in 1997 largely by a near sweep of Ontario. They can only lose 11 of their 161 seats nationally, in the 301-seat House of Commons, before slipping into a minority.
Day was later on Friday scheduled to hit the Alliance heartland of Calgary, in Western Canada, where Alberta Premier Ralph Klein was to share the stage with him. Before taking over as Alliance leader this year, day has served as Alberta's finance minister.
"The feeling that I have had over the last couple of weeks is that there is growing momentum and growing support for the Canadian Alliance," Day told the CTV network in an interview.
The IPSOS-Reid poll showed the separatist bloc Quebecois at 9 percent and the New Democratic Party and once-governing Progressive conservatives struggling at 8 percent.
The poll surveyed 1,500 Canadian voters from October 19 to 25 and is considered accurate to 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, CTV said.
(Reuter)
The IPSOS-Reid poll, conducted for CTV and the Globe and Mail, showed the opposition Canadian Alliance Party with the support of 28 percent of decided voters, the highest level the party, or its predecessor, the Reform Party, has ever enjoyed.
With the liberals at 45 percent, they would maintain their majority for the third time if these translated into actual votes, but voters' opinions of Chretien have dramatically worsened over the last few weeks.
"The momentum in the campaign has clearly been against them," Reid pollster Darrell Bricker told CTV. "Clearly something's going on in the hustings." Thirty-nine percent of respondents said their view of Chretien and the Liberals had worsened in recent weeks, while 14 percent said it had improved.
In contrast, 28 percent said their opinion of Alliance leader Stockwell Day, a pastor-turned-politician, had improved.
Chretien called the election on Sunday, for a November 27 vote.
He called it 1-1/2 years before he had to, largely on the strength of polling data at the time.
He has sought to paint day as someone who wants to tear apart Canada's fabric, and appealed to voters here in Atlantic Canada to unite behind the liberals to stop them.
"The Liberal Party is the party that gave you medicare, and the Liberal Party will keep medicare," he told a rally of about 400 in this pulp-and-paper town on the rugged West Coast of the Island of Newfoundland.
In the back of the crowd, a knot of a few dozen health workers booed him for massive cuts in health spending he had introduced in the mid-1990s to eliminate budget deficits.
Though the small-government alliance is not the main competitor in Atlantic Canada, where unemployment is chronic, Chretien nonetheless ignored the other two main parties here, the conservatives and the leftist new democrats.
On Friday morning he was scheduled to move on to New Brunswick, the Atlantic province where the Alliance has its best hopes, and then to hit Quebec on Saturday.
In Ottawa on Thursday night, day raised C$250,000 ($165,000) from a crowd of 700 where he launched a vigorous attack on Chretien's record as one of "broken promises, mismanagement and missed opportunities." "The prime minister is wrong when he tells Canadians that only the Liberal Party speaks to the basic values of this country," he said. "This country was built by all Canadians, not by the Liberal Party." He was paying his second visit this week to the Ottawa high-tech suburb of Kanaka, Ontario. The Alliance had more members in that district than anywhere in vote-rich Ontario, and hopes to be able to make a breakthrough there.
The liberals won their majority in 1997 largely by a near sweep of Ontario. They can only lose 11 of their 161 seats nationally, in the 301-seat House of Commons, before slipping into a minority.
Day was later on Friday scheduled to hit the Alliance heartland of Calgary, in Western Canada, where Alberta Premier Ralph Klein was to share the stage with him. Before taking over as Alliance leader this year, day has served as Alberta's finance minister.
"The feeling that I have had over the last couple of weeks is that there is growing momentum and growing support for the Canadian Alliance," Day told the CTV network in an interview.
The IPSOS-Reid poll showed the separatist bloc Quebecois at 9 percent and the New Democratic Party and once-governing Progressive conservatives struggling at 8 percent.
The poll surveyed 1,500 Canadian voters from October 19 to 25 and is considered accurate to 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, CTV said.
(Reuter)