Liberals Lead

New Harris Decima poll, done over a two week period, which partially captures the Liberal Convention (Apr 23-May 3). Using the last HD poll as reference, the Liberals are widening their lead, and the "surge" in Quebec continues. The national results (previous release in brackets):

Libs 34% (32%)
Cons 29% (29%)
NDP 15% (16%)
Greens 11% (11%)

A large sample size(2000), and while the Liberal lead widens to 5%, it is noteworthy that HD polls continually, but only releases periodically. This is relevant, because HD actually had the Liberals ahead by this same margin in a late March poll that nobody saw. I actually emailed the pollster to ask why polls aren't released each week. I was told HD doesn't want to be simply known as a political pollster, so they scale back on public releases, even though they poll weekly. Fair enough, but still another good result for the Liberals.

What is entirely new, the Liberals continue to gain ground in Quebec, reaching a new high water mark from this pollster:

Bloc 38% (40%)
Libs 35% (31%)
Cons 9% (12%)

Two things noteworthy here. When the Quebec only CROP poll was released, it put the Liberals at 37% in the province. This score seemed high, relative to other findings, which gave some reason for caution. However, since that release, we have seen other pollsters show a 35%(Angus Reid) and 36%(NANOS) for the Liberals. Harris Decima mirrors this new high for the Liberals. Given where the Liberal Party was, this turnaround in such short order is really quite striking.

The other theme, Conservatives now have a viability problem in Quebec. Sometimes, bad polling can tend to feed on itself, and as people see a clear LOSER developing, it causes even more of them to abandon. The Liberals emergence as a clear alternative to the Bloc is heightened when people see the Conservatives in freefall. This poll is the first to put the Conservatives in single digits, almost as striking as the Liberal surge.

No more internals yet, will update when they're available. In the coming days, it will be interesting to see if the Liberals do get a slight bounce out of their convention...

UPDATE:

More internals:

In Ontario, the Liberals are at 40 per cent, thanks in large part to an NDP slide to 15 per cent. The Tories have held relatively steady from October with 34 per cent support in Canada's most populous province. The Greens are at nine per cent.

The Ontario results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

In British Columbia — where Mr. Walker said three-way vote-splitting magnifies even small changes in popular support — the Tories lead at 32 per cent, with the Liberals and NDP tied at 25 and the Greens at 14 per cent. The margin of error is plus or minus 6.2 percentage points.

The poll suggested the Conservatives remain in control on the Prairies while the Liberals maintain a significant lead in Atlantic Canada.

In Ontario, the Liberals are unchanged with 40% and the Conservatives are up 3% to 34%, NDP unchanged, Greens down 5%. The last BC numbers showed the NDP leading with 29%, Conservatives and Liberals at 26%, Greens 14%. The latest numbers look more in line with others, although the MOE is quite high. The slight uptick in Ontario and BC offset the further erosion in Quebec, which explains why the Conservative national number is stagnant.