A few points, from closer analysis:
BC: huge drop-off for the Conservatives here from their 44% last election, down to 31% now. Most of that is being siphoned off by the Greens (up from 9% to 18%), but the Liberals are also up a few ticks (19% to 23%), which are the first signs of life for the Liberals in a long time in BC. The Green numbers can't be taken too seriously as third-party support always drops when the chips are down, but still, it means that Conservative support is a lot softer.
In Alberta, Conservatives are down from 65% to 51%, which still isn't grounds to panic. More surprising is that the Liberals have gained support from 12% to 18%. I'd guess this is as good as Alberta has polled for the Liberals in a long, long time.
Hard to judge the Sask/Manitoba numbers, since they're lumped together by Ekos. However, the provinces combined had a 51%-17% lead for the Tories in the last election, and that's shrunk to 41%-27%. NDP are also dropping here.
In Ontario is where the numbers start to get bad. Last election, the Tories won the province 39% to 34%. That's flipped to a 38% to 31% lead for the Grits. That alone could be a huge swing in seats, but the breakdown between GTA and the rest of the province would tell how badly it affects Conservative support.
Liberals hold steady in Quebec while the Tories drop a few points and the Bloc rise. Also, Green makes big gains here, which distort the numbers from likely election results.
Atlantic Canada is hard to read again, since the numbers for all the provinces are grouped together. The overall numbers are actually up for the Conservatives from the last election though, 29% to 33% in the region. Liberals drop off slightly.
Overall, it's an absolutely awful poll for the Conservatives, no way to sugar-coat it. The only bright side is that a lot of the votes that they lost to the Greens (in Quebec and BC in particular) would likely come back in an actual election. But the breadth of the increase in Liberal support is a more worrying sign.
Now, the Liberals have just gotten a huge boost simply by doing nothing. But they can't continue to do nothing all the way to an election: the question is whether Ignatieff will be able to so much as open his mouth without losing all of that gained support. It remains to be seen...
edit: Angus Reid also had a poll out today, though it has a much smaller sample size. Numbers are a bit different but the trends are the same. Basically, its numbers are better for the Tories than the Ekos numbers in western Canada (though still bad), while being much worse for the Tories in Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
Last edited by octothorp; 01-14-2010 at 02:43 PM.
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