Well this article got my Eye. Who is going to win I am not sure? the early polls say the following but they will change as the campagin starts.
The polls are saying the following. So this election is up for grabs. I gut tells me that no one will get a majority.
Polls:According to The Strategic Counsel, 37% of Canadian voters are satisfied with the direction of the country and significantly more confident in the leadership abilities of the Tories and Prime Minister Stephen Harper than they are in those of his main rival, Stéphane Dion and the Liberals.
On August 29th,
Nik Nanos (who is, I believe the best and most accurate pollster in the country) showed that the Liberals and Conservatives are gripped in a deadlock (LP 35%, CP 33%, NDP 17%, BQ 8%, GP 7% I got these stats this from a follow blogger.
'September 2, 2008, 7:16:34 AM noreply@blogger.com (The Grumpy Voter)
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Stage set for election
Liberals, Conservatives point fingers at each other over possible call to polls
David Akin, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, September 02, 2008
OTTAWA -- Liberal Leader Stephane Dion says Prime Minister Stephen Harper will call a federal election because he has refused to give Harper a blank cheque to govern.
Dion met with Harper for about 20 minutes at the prime minister's residence Monday. Both he and a spokesperson for the prime minister said there is no common ground politically between the two parties.
"Yes, there will be an election. Yes, it's official," Dion told reporters gathered outside 24 Sussex Drive.
Kory Teneycke, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office, said the Opposition wants to force a vote.
"There are a number of things the government would like to move forward on. We are simply looking for broad areas of agreement where the government can proceed," Teneycke said.
But Dion said Harper should continue governing, rather than break the spirit of his own fixed election date law.
"It's a joke," Dion said. "Never will a minority government receive from any political party a blank cheque and he knows that. He's confusing two things: Does the Parliament work? Yes. Does the government have the certainty to survive? The answer is no. It was no two years ago. There is nothing new."
Harper has now met individually with the leaders of the other three parties in the House of Commons. Each one left the meeting convinced Harper was looking for an excuse to call an election.
Advisers to the prime minister say the "first window" available to Harper to call an election begins today and ends Sunday.
Harper is expected to make a major announcement about support for the auto industry on Wednesday or Thursday. And an official in the PMO said there are some "loose ends" to tie up before a campaign begins.
Conservative insiders say Harper will likely wait until Sunday to ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament, setting up an election day that could legally be held no sooner than Oct. 14.
The stakes for the election are personally high for both Harper and Dion, as well as NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe. Depending on the election's outcome, three of the four parties now represented in the House of Commons could be looking for a new leader after the election.
Harper's advisers immediately began positioning the prime minister as a leader who is a steady, trusted hand in a time of economic uncertainty. Dion will counter that claim, saying Conservatives wasted a healthy budgetary surplus left to them by the Liberals and that Harper's economic management has brought the country to the brink of recession.
Both Liberals and Conservatives agreed the key ballot question for Canadians will be which leader is more trusted by voters.
"One of the issues will be trust," Dion said. "Can you trust a prime minister who called an election while not respecting his own law? The way he's mismanaging the economy, attacking our arts and culture, mismanaging food safety will also be some issues and I told him that," Dion said.
"I think it's a question of who do you want to lead this country in uncertain economic times?" Teneycke said. "Who do you trust to lower crime rates? It's a question of trust and a question of leadership."