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Tories gaining in immigrant areas |
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The Conservatives, fuelled partly by gains in the vote-rich 905 region
around Toronto, are widening their lead on the incumbent Liberals with
just over two weeks left for the election, a new poll reveals. The 905
region, which has a heavy concentration of immigrants, solidly backed
the Liberals in the last federal election.
Nationally, the Conservative Party is at 36%, with the Liberals at
30.8%, the New Democratic Party 17.5% and the Bloc Québécois at 10.6%.
In the 905
region, the poll gives the Tories a 4% lead over the Liberals.
The poll was conducted by EKOS Research Associates with the Toronto Star and La Presse.
The Tory gains in the 905 region (so called because of its telephone area code) are making for a close race in Ontario. In metro Toronto, the Liberals remain far ahead of the Tories, while the race is heating up in the rest of the province.
The Conservatives are also on the march in Quebec. They are in a statistical tie with the Liberals in the province, though both remain more than 20 percentage points behind the BQ.
EKOS said British Columbia may have the hottest electoral race in the country.
People in B.C. are more engaged than other Canadians, and they have been slip-sliding around, giving each of the national parties an apparent lead at some point in recent weeks or months.
But now, the Tories have established a commanding lead in the province. They have 42% support, with the Liberals and NDP both well behind in the 25% range.
These survey results were based on telephone interviews conducted between January 3 to 5, 2006 with a random sample of 1968 Canadians aged 18 and over.
A sample of this size provides a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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Newsfile 