Prorogation hurts PM’s popularity: poll
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/01/2010 (5830 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper is paying a price for underestimating opposition to his decision to suspend Parliament, a new poll suggests.
The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey indicates Harper’s personal popularity has taken a nosedive and his party’s lead over the Liberals has been sliced almost in half.
And contrary to Harper’s assertion prorogation of Parliament is a routine procedural matter of little interest to Canadians, the poll suggests a majority believes Parliament is “in crisis,” is opposed to its suspension and suspicious of Harper’s motives.
“He has really squandered some significant, if not goodwill, certainly respect that he’d been able to garner managing his way through the economic crisis,” Harris-Decima chairman Allan Gregg said Thursday.
The prospects for Harper’s Conservatives might be much worse but for the fact Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff remains the least popular federal leader and has so far been unable to gain much mileage out of Harper’s miscalculation. MPs had been scheduled to return to work on Jan. 25 but Harper announced on Dec. 30 he was proroguing or suspending Parliament until March 3.
The telephone poll of just over 1,000 Canadians was conducted Jan. 7-10 and is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20. The margin of error is larger for regional sub-samples.
— The Canadian Press