THUNDER BAY – For Michael Ignatieff, the news is just not that cheery in the latest Nanos Poll. The latest Nanos poll shows that the Conservatives have recovered support lost over the summer and early fall. The Nanos national ballot stands at 38.1% for the Tories, 31.2% for the Liberals, 17.2% for the NDP, 10.2% for the BQ and 3.2% for the Green Party of Canada.
The current configuration of national support for the Conservatives suggests that numerically a Tory majority government can be formed without a significant breakthrough in the province of Quebec.
Although the Conservatives in the past have used various strategies to get to a majority, most recently the narrow-casting of issues suggests a new majority riding cluster strategy has emerged. In this paradigm, the Conservatives narrowcast messages to clusters of ridings on a diversity of issues such as crime, the long gun registry and social issues that align with their base and which divide the opposition. With a sweeping pan-Canadian mandate more difficult to attain, it would seem that the Conservatives are more focused on clusters of ridings and issues which divide the opposition to allow the Conservatives to divide the non-Harper universe.
In a sense, this is a variation of the Chretien-era strategy which saw the Liberals benefit from a division of the Conservatives (between the Canadians Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives) and allowed the Liberals to win a majority without hitting 40%.
Also of note, the Nanos national issue tracking poll shows that Jobs/Economy and Healthcare continue to dominate the top unprompted issue of concern among Canadians.