Conservative Leader Stephen Harper speaks with CTV's Mike Duffy for a year-end interview.

Leaders reflect on campaign at the halfway point

Updated Thu. Dec. 22 2005 3:31 PM ET

Bill Doskoch, Phil Hahn, CTV.ca News

Let's all sit down, have a beer, nuke some popcorn, and talk about the first half of Election 2006.

The main battle has been between the Conservatives and the Liberals, and both parties, while having made minor mistakes here and there, have largely run disciplined campaigns so far, pollster Tim Woolstencroft of The Strategic Counsel told CTV.ca.

As a result, nothing to this point has really jarred the campaign.

Since the campaign kicked off on Nov. 29, the Liberals have averaged about 34 to 35 per cent support in Strategic Counsel polls, dipping to a low of 33 and reaching a high of 36 per cent (40 per cent is considered to be the minimum required for a majority victory).

The Tories have averaged about 29 per cent support, with their lowest number being 28 and reaching a high of 31 per cent.

However, CTV's chief political correspondent Craig Oliver told CTV.ca he thinks the Tories have run a much better campaign than the Liberals.

Oliver said the Tories have been running a "smooth campaign in which they've been on top of the news and on top of the issues almost every day."

Conversely, he says the Liberals have been largely running a "reactive campaign."

Tory Leader Stephen Harper said that was the strategy.

"Our plan … for the first half of the campaign is to make sure people understand that we have a plan for the country, we have some priorities we're going to want to pursue as a government -- and we've been able to get that out," Harper said in a year-end interview with CTV's Mike Duffy.

"My surprise," he added, "is we've been able to get it out with very little competition from the other parties as to where they want to take the country."

As well, when you compare the Conservatives' campaign to 18 months ago, there's been no Cheryl Gallant popping off about abortion or Tory MP Scott Reid musing about bilingualism.

Surprisingly, in this election the biggest gaffe belongs to the Liberals' Scott Reid, an aide to Prime Minister Paul Martin, whose "beer and popcorn" remark about childcare dominated headlines back on Dec. 11.

For his part, Martin has repeatedly reminded Canadians what his minority government was able to achieve before the writ was dropped, including the child care deal (his proudest achievement) and the national benchmarks on health care.

Heading into phase two of the campaign, Martin told CTV in his year-end interview that he's feeling very optimistic.

"We've got the wind in our sails. The unemployment rate is the lowest it's ever been. What's happening outside our border, with China and India … this presents Canada with tremendous opportunities, and I want to be there at the building."

Battlegrounds

But the Liberals continue to face some unfriendly territory in this campaign. While Atlantic Canada appears ready to remain Liberal-friendly at this point, the Prairies are likely to remain dominated by the Conservatives, especially in Alberta.

A huge trouble spot for the Liberals is Quebec, where the Bloc Quebecois is poised to do better than the 54 of 75 seats it won last time. The Bloc holds a 60-20 lead in the polls over the Liberals and are almost twice as popular as the Grits in Montreal, whose Anglo neighborhoods are usually Liberal bastions.

The Liberals' attempt to frame the Quebec vote as a referendum on sovereignty clearly isn't working.

But there are still battleground areas. One is British Columbia and its 36 seats.

In the Lower Mainland, which includes Vancouver and its suburbs stretching south and east, all three parties are competitive, although the battles will likely be between the NDP and the Grits in Vancouver proper.

All three main national party leaders have been very visible in B.C. this campaign. NDP Leader Jack Layton has spent more time attacking the "do nothing" Conservatives there than he has the Liberals.

But in Toronto on Dec. 20, he tried selling Torontonians on dumping the "do nothing" Liberals in exchange for more NDP MPs (he's currently the only Toronto NDP MP; in 2004, some optimists thought the Toronto area would elect up to six NDP MPs).

That same day Harper was also in Toronto, attacking Martin's handling of the national unity file. His party doesn't hold one seat in the city of Toronto, which has 22 ridings.

Martin spent the day in southwestern Ontario promoting his party's agriculture policy.

Ontario's size (it has 14 more ridings than B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba combined) means the leaders have to slug it out there.

"I think that we all know Ontario will in the end probably be the single biggest factor in the outcome of this election," Harper told reporters on Dec. 20.

While the province has been reliably Liberal since 1993, the Tories have been working hard in the province's east, southwest and the suburban '905' area around Toronto.

For example, Harper chose an electronics store in Mississauga, prototypical 905 country, to announce a plan to reduce the GST by two percentage points.

When on Dec. 8, Martin announced his plan to ban handguns (already tightly controlled), he did it near the gun-plagued neighborhood of Jane-Finch in northwest Toronto - flanked by Toronto's popular Mayor David Miller and Michael Bryant, the Liberal attorney-general of Ontario.

The move proved popular in Ontario and Quebec, although the Liberal vote is still spiraling downward in la belle province.

Harper announced major increases in defence spending would be forthcoming under a Conservative government during a Dec. 12 visit to Trenton, the home of a major military airbase in eastern Ontario.

Gap narrowing

If you average the 15 tracking polls so far, the Liberals lead the Tories in Ontario 43.5 per cent (they were at 45 per cent in the 2004 election) to 32.3 per cent, or by about 11 points. However, the gap between the two in the Dec. 17-19 Strategic Counsel tracking poll was down to seven points (it had been 18 points in a Dec. 8-11 poll).

More importantly, the Tories are at 35 per cent, which is a level of support at which analysts think they can seriously start to eat into the Liberals' seat count (the Tories won 24 seats in 2004 with 32 per cent of the vote).

Oliver thinks the Tories are the party with momentum -- although The Strategic Counsel's Dec. 17-19 poll found 41 per cent of Ontarians saying the Liberals had momentum going towards the Jan. 23 election, compared to 27 per cent who felt that way about the Conservatives.

Nationally, the momentum figure is 30-22 for the Liberals, although both parties have seen their momentum rating fall in the past week.

The Dec. 15-16 debates didn't seem to give much of a spark to anyone's popularity or momentum. While 21 per cent of respondents to a Dec. 17-18 poll thought Martin won, 47 per cent either couldn't or wouldn't identify a winner.

Desire for change

Oliver added that the looming specter in all the polls - and one that should be scaring the Liberals -- is the widespread desire among Canadians for change in government, and the growing number becoming more comfortable with the idea of Harper as prime minister (provided the Tories are kept to a minority).

"If I were the Liberals, I'd be pretty worried about this," said Oliver.

About halfway through the 2004 campaign, polls showed that the Tories might win, although they obviously didn't come through in the end. "But this time," added Oliver, "they're running a much better campaign."

Added Woolstencroft: "They have shown that change can be accomplished without creating a lot of concern or fear. … And Harper has improved his impressions. People feel better about him today than they did at the start of the campaign."

And should the winds of change blow in the Tories' favour, Harper told CTV a Conservative minority government would pursue a "working relationship with other parties on an issue by issue basis -- and that would include the Liberal party."

"Unlike the Liberals," he added, "we don't expect to have a divine right to a majority government, so we expect that we have to work with the other parties."

As for Martin, he said the prospect of change doesn't scare him.

"Change is always occurring, and governments adjust to change." He said the Liberal government today is a "very different government" from the past because it has adjusted to a changing society with new policies on child care, cities and health.

The Liberal Leader said Canadians must also consider exactly what kind of change the Tories have in mind for Canada.

"Stephen Harper and I have different value systems; we have very different perspectives on the role of government, child care is the best example of this.

"Canadians have really got to say change, yes, but change for what?"

 

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