OTTAWA, May 12 (UPI) -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative Party is losing support in the key province of Quebec and across Canada, a poll released Tuesday indicated.
The Strategic Counsel survey for The Globe and Mail and CTV News said Conservatives fell to 9 percent support in largely French-speaking Quebec, down 6 points from last month, and 13 points from the federal election Oct. 14, 2008.
The opposition Liberal Party stood at 37 percent and the separatist Bloc Quebecois received 39 percent of support, the survey said.
Harper sought to gain voter support in Quebec in last year's election campaign, but "this Tory bridge seems burnt to a crisp," the Globe quoted Strategic Counsel pollster Peter Donolo as saying.
The poll also showed the Liberals opened up a 5-point lead nationally, 35 percent to 30 percent for Conservatives. A month earlier, they led the Conservatives by 2 points, the poll said
The center-left New Democratic Party stood at 16 percent and the environmentally focused Green Party captured 11 percent, the poll said.
"This kind of poll means an early election is less likely than ever," Donolo told the newspaper. "There's nothing in it for any party other than the Liberals."
The poll of 1,004 Canadians was taken May 6-10 and is accurate to within 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
