grits and their pollster

I am a political junkie, but even I am tiring of these annual elections. It is pretty unlikely that much will change with another one. Indeed voters may be finally annoyed enugh , that they hand the Tories a majority. Perhaps the grits should listen to their own pollster.

If the Sudbury polling presentation is in any way similar to the one the Liberals' provincial cousins in Ontario received last week – and chances are it is, given that it's coming from the same polling firm – there may be some sobering, second thoughts about the wisdom of provoking an election this fall.

Last week, in a closed-door presentation in Toronto, dozens of Ontario Liberal MPPs were treated to a presentation by Pollara president Don Guy, in which they reportedly learned it's been a good summer for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative "brand."

From this, some provincial Liberals inferred it hasn't been that great a summer for federal leader Michael Ignatieff – and that this fall may not be the best time to have an election...
It's up to Pollara's chairman and founder, Michael Marzolini, to lay out the numbers in Sudbury this week and say what they mean in the federal context. But Marzolini says election speculation is not a big part of his presentation.

"Of my 40 minutes, I'm only dedicating 10 seconds to the issue of when to call the election," Marzolini said yesterday. "After almost six years of continuous election speculation, the public really doesn't share our fixation."