wow. if you're a poll geek, you should check out that mainstreet pdf file. i wish more firms did this kind of polling on undecideds. it really clarifies where people are actually at. for example, quantifying that only 6% of undecideds in ontario are leaning conservative [even keeping in mind that 50% refused to answer], while 18% surveyed are undecided, is very clarifying.

and that poll gives the liberals some hope in quebec, too. hrmmn.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-polltracker-aug14-1.3190102

i've been ignoring the senate scandal fiasco as a sideshow, even a show-trial for harper to use to push his senate agenda through. i couldn't see it having much of an effect on the critical swing on the left. and conservative voters are so rigid, they'd follow their leader into a fire, or drink the kool-aid, or whatever analogy you want....

....but, that swing on the left is shutting down and stabilizing....

a lot of people attributed the 2006 loss to the sponsorship scandal, and it perhaps had some effect in shoring up that roughly 5-8% "pc swing" that was floating around after joe clark endorsed the liberals in 2004. but it was really the nature of the swing, being right-leaning. and, i think there's an argument that the ruling on gay marriage was as or more important. i think it's effect was really overblown. harper really didn't walk out of it with a higher vote total than the conservatives & reform got together through the 90s - which is what you'd expect under *ambient* conditions.

so, if the analogy is to hold, i'd argue it should actually have a minimal effect, rather than a dramatic one.

but, what the duffy thing can hurt is the red tory part of his base. that 5-8% bump that joe clark gave the liberals (and went back in '06) has been gone in most polling for months, leaving him with numbers that are not far off of what reform got in the 90s. it consequently may be a factor in moderate conservatives swinging to the liberals.

and, the truth is there's a lot of stuff like this that could even eat into the libertarian side of the reform base. something like c-51, or the attempt to make boycotting israel a hate crime, could rub civil libertarians badly. conservatives in canada have generally leaned strongly towards protections for civil rights as a balance in being "tough on crime". he's not really balancing this in ways that most conservatives *i* know would approve of.

the narrative up to now has been those attack ads. there's really no evidence they've had any effect at all. in the end, actions speak louder than words.

the flip side of this is that if you look at the liberal numbers of 28% and realize that 6-8% of this is coming from traditional conservative voters, and then you compare the remaining 20% to the 37-40% they were getting in the 90s, you quickly see just how badly the ndp have eaten into the liberal support. that's a 15% swing from the liberals to the ndp. and it might be there for a generation or more.