OTTAWA, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The Canadian Conservative party has made popularity gains against the Liberals, who trail by 5 percentage points in a poll published Tuesday.
A survey of 1,000 adults across the country by the Strategic Counsel for the Globe and Mail and CTV News found Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives had 35 percent support, with Michael Ignatieff's Liberals trailing with 30 percent.
The socialist New Democratic Party had 14 percent, the Greens 9 and the separatist Bloc Quebecois 12 percent, the newspaper said.
The telephone poll was conducted Sept. 3-6 and had a 3.1 point margin of error, pollster Peter Donolo said.
The findings are bad news for the Liberals. Ignatieff spoke at a party meeting last week, indicating he was prepared to bring the Conservatives down with a non-confidence vote and force a fall election after Parliament reconvenes this month.
University of Montreal political scientist Pierre Martin told the Globe he was puzzled as to why the Liberals kept a low profile during the summer break.
"They were not on the landscape. You might have expected them to announce a series of high-profile candidates so as to keep in the public eye," he said. "But they didn't. They sort of blew the summer away."
