poll

Notes from North of 49ºN

This EKOS poll was before Prime Minister Harper’s throne speech {the name of which brings out the eternal 10-tear old in me} and before the release of the federal budget.

Lower taxes? Controlling the deficit? Nope. Social investment, in areas like health, education, and jobs.

Over a month ago, I analyzed the Canadian federal voting landscape and came to the conclusion that a huge risk for Harper and the Conservative Party is poor performance in Ontario. What Ontarians want is pretty much on par with the nationwide numbers above and the Conservatives have closed the gap in the polling numbers in the province at 34.9%, compared to the Liberals at 38.0% and the New Democrats at 14.3%.

The Finance Minister Jim Flaherty noted last week that the Conservative’s budget is focusing on reducing corporate taxes to make Canada more attractive for business along with deficit reduction. He acknowledged the 8.3% unemployment rate, lower than the double digits in the US, and announced $178M CAN for job sharing agreements and youth employment.

Harper also ended a study to change the Canadian anthem, “Oh Canada” to a more gender neutral version reflecting the 1908 poem that it is based on. The current line, “True patriot love in all thy sons command,” while the poem has the line ,“True patriot love thou dost in us command.” According to an Ipsos Canwest poll, the Conservatives and Liberals were statistically tied in their support by women.

The Conservatives are in the drivers seat but on thin ice. The policy emphases in the budget are risky, in my opinion, particularly given Ontario’s higher than the national average unemployment rate of 9.2% last month.  The anger over proroguing has melted like so much Whistler slush. The Liberals have an unpopular leader in Ignatieff and the Dippers have a relatively popular leader of a relatively unpopular party.

Twitterversion:: What Canadians want: investment in social areas. Harper & Conservatives in driver’s seat but on thin ice. #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Five Iron Frenzy-“Oh Canada”

Research 2000 has a shudder inducing poll on Republican attitudes and beliefs regarding Pres. Obama. Here are the highlights via Ben Smith (Politico)

Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?
Yes 39
No 32
Not Sure 29

Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
Yes 63
No 21
Not Sure 16

Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
Yes 42
No 36
Not Sure 22

Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?
Yes 21
No 24
Not Sure 55

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?
Yes 8
No 73
Not Sure 19

I’m not sure which one of these results is more startling. Let’s go with 63% of Republicans believing that Pres. Obama is a socialist. This suggests to me that level-headed, moderates have fled the party. I still content that this “lunatic fringe” is only a fraction of the U.S. electorate and the Republicans still have structural problems they need to work out. They are primed to get closer to control of both houses of congress, but to do that, they’ll have to win back moderates and become a “normal” party again with the same problems the Dems currently enjoy.

A few caveats are in order. Research 2000 was contracted by Daily Kos to do the poll, which doesn’t mean anything in particular, but it would be useful to look at the methodology more closely. Having said that, these results give us some good insight as to why the current president is having such trouble getting health care passed through Congress. If this poll is accurate, the Republican party is a right wing party. If you’re a Republican legislator, you run a serious risk of losing your seat to a “real republican” in upcoming primaries. This fear is allowing the Republicans to enjoy an amazing amount of party discipline. In our system, the minority always wants to be the “party of no” but is usually not able to because there are centrists who can be “peeled off” by the majority. Not so with this group of Republicans.

Update: Nate Silver looks at the crosstabs and finds marginal difference between demographic groups. Take the “socialist” question for instance:

Translation…the Republican tent is shrinking. Good for maintaining party discipline…let’s see about governing.