www.ekospolitics.

ca

LIBERALS FALLING BACK

NO PARTY CAN CRACK THE 33-POINT GLASS CEILING

[Ottawa – March 25, 2010] - For the 12th

consecutive poll this year, we see no party able
HIGHLIGHTS
to summon up more than the support of 33% of • National federal vote intention:
a stingy electorate. “This is the fly in the ¤33.3% CPC
ointment for what is otherwise a pretty positive ¤27.7% LPC
poll for Stephen Harper's Conservatives,” said ¤15.9% NDP
EKOS President Frank Graves. ¤10.4% Green
¤9.8% BQ
¤2.3% other
Canadians are relatively happy with the overall
direction of the country and satisfaction with the • Direction of government:
federal government direction continues to ¤ 47% right direction
improve. This leads to the puzzling question of ¤ 42% wrong direction
why, if Canada is up, are the Conservatives stuck ¤ 11% do not know/no response
at 33?

But there is even less to cheer the hearts of

Liberal supporters as their virtual tie early in the
year has morphed into a clear and stable Please note that the methodology is provided at the
end of this document.
Conservative lead (albeit a fairly narrow one).
In fact, the Conservatives have erased most of the gender gap and are doing very well in Alberta
and the Prairies. Things are still neck and neck in Ontario, though, and things continue to look
grim in Quebec for the Conservatives. But the crucial boomer vote is returning to the fold.

An interesting side bar is that for possibly the first time the Green Party vote is (insignificantly)
ahead with under 25 voters. Indeed, the Liberals must be looking covetously at a pretty stable GP
vote of over 10% which may be a key factor in their inability to rise above the fairly humble 30-
point mark. For GP supporters, there is small comfort in knowing that their share of the national
vote exceeds the Bloc Quebecois vote yet they are more likely to get no seats versus the 40 to 50
ticketed to the BQ.

“The big questions now,” said Graves “are can the Conservatives crack the increasingly stubborn
33 barrier and can the Liberals stop the bleeding before they descend back to Dion era support
levels?”

The Liberals are hosting a policy conference in Montreal this weekend in preparation for an
election that is widely expected this year or early next year.

This poll, which features a robust sample size, was conducted by EKOS for exclusive release by
the CBC.

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Top Line Results:

Federal vote intention

Q. If a federal election were held tomorrow, which party would you vote for?

50

40
33.3
30 27.7

20 15.9
10.4 9.8
10
2.8
0
CPC LPC NDP GP BQ Other
Other

Weekly tracking of federal vote intention

50

40

30

20

10

Other
Line
6
0
2008
Oct- Nov- Dec- Jan- Feb- Mar- Apr- May- Jun- Jul- Aug- Sep- Oct- Nov- Dec- Jan- Feb- Mar-
Election
08 08 08 09 09 09 09 09 09 09 09 09 09 09 09 10 10 10
Results

Note: The data on federal vote intention are based on decided voters only.
Our survey also finds that 12.9% of Canadians are undecided/ineligible to vote.

Copyright 2010. No reproduction without permission BASE: Decided voters; most recent data point March 17-23 (n=2511)

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Direction of government
Q. All things considered, would you say the Government of Canada is moving in the right direction or the wrong
direction?

60 Wrong direction
Right direction

50

40

30

20
May-09 Jun-09 Jul-09 Aug-09 Sep-09 Oct-09 Nov-09 Dec-09 Jan-10 Feb-10 Mar-10

Copyright 2010. No reproduction without permission BASE: Canadians; most recent data point March 17-23 (n=half sample)

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Methodology:

EKOS’ weekly tracking polls are conducted using Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) technology,
which allows respondents to enter their preferences by punching the keypad on their phone,
rather than telling them to an operator.

In an effort to reduce the coverage bias of landline only RDD, we created a dual land-line/cell
phone RDD sampling frame for this research. As a result, we are able to reach those with both a
landline and cell phone, as well as cell phone only households and landline only households. This
dual frame yields a near perfect unweighted distribution on age group and gender, something
almost never seen with traditional landline RDD sample or interviewer-administered surveys.

The field dates for this survey are March 17 – March 23, 2010.1 In total, a random sample of
2,880 Canadians aged 18 and over responded to the survey (including a sub-sample of 2,511
decided voters). The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/-1.8 percentage
points, 19 times out of 20.

Please note that the margin of error increases when the results are sub-divided (i.e., error
margins for sub-groups such as region, sex, age, education). All the data have been statistically
weighted to ensure the samples composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada
according to Census data.

1
Please note that these dates are not inclusive of the weekends, as we do not survey on Saturday or Sunday.

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