Â鶹ӰÊÓ

OTTAWA - Anyone watching polls lately might be forgiven for their frustration at the range and unpredictability of the swings from week to week.  But beneath the surface of weekly who-might-you-vote-for polls, some fascinating trends are taking shape.

Canadian voters have loosened the attachments that anchored them to traditional party choices. They're now being propelled by currents that confound those who prefer simple, clear signals from polls.

Here are a few things we at Decima see, that are worth thinking about:

First, more than half think Canada's heading in the right direction, but no more than a third say they would vote Conservative tomorrow. That gap reveals a lack of enthusiasm with the current government.  But on Election Day 2006, 65 per cent voted against the Conservatives. Today 70 per cent would. That is not what the Conservatives were hoping for, but nor is it a surging rejection.

Secondly, when Canadians voted the Liberals out of office, one big reason was the angry mood of Quebecers.  Since then, there's been a massive 18-point increase in the number of Quebecers who feel Canada is heading in the right direction. That is chewing away at the idea of sovereignty and the parties championing independence.  Hard-core "separatists'' now number less than one in five voters. Most Quebecers are neither dogmatic federalists nor separatists and competition for these voters is flourishing.

There has been another important change from the last two elections. Many voters over that period were preoccupied with avoiding a Liberal win, and almost as many were determined to avoid a Conservative victory. Fear of the worst was more potent than desire for the best. Not any more.

People are much less angry at the Liberals, and much less fearful of the Conservatives. The good news is this allows people to vote for a positive reason. The bad news is there's no sign that's happening.  Instead, there's a lack of passion of any sort. The volatility in weekly horse race polls looks like a passionate electorate, but it is probably more a reflection of the rather casual nature of how some voters feel about the choice.

The conventional wisdom about the standing of the national party leaders is also somewhat at odds with the reality. Stephen Harper's negatives are higher than those of other national leaders, but his positives are about 10 points better than his party's vote. He's made inroads in Quebec, and his net popularity (positives minus negatives) is actually better among French Canadians than among English Canadians.

Stephane Dion's image has been damaged in recent months, but his numbers are very close to those of Harper's. His popularity is better than the prime minister's in Ontario, but worse in Quebec.

The NDP has its challenges, but the party has a popular leader. Jack Layton has better ratings than any of his national competitors, and is second only to Gilles Duceppe in Quebec.

Elizabeth May has managed to create an impression among the majority of the Canadian electorate, and most of those impressions are good. She has a truly remarkable rating among voters under 25. May shares a distinction with Layton: more voters say their opinion is improving rather than fading of both leaders.

In short, what's emerging is a newly competitive marketplace for political choice. There is less aversion to more parties and a sense that no leader is either that much better or worse than their competitors.

Given this new competitiveness, its useful to take a look at what sort of shifting among parties has been going on. We've analyzed our last 7000 surveys on voting intention (between March 22 and May 7), and here's what we see:

• The Conservatives have done better at retaining the support of those who voted for them in 2006, losing only 15 per cent of their supporters. The lost points went to the Liberals (six per cent), the NDP (four per cent) the Green Party (three per cent) and the BQ (one per cent).
• The Liberals have lost 22 per cent of their 2006 voters. Ten per cent went to the Conservatives, five to the NDP, five to the Greens and just one per cent to the BQ.
• The BQ has lost 23 per cent of its support, with six per cent siphoned off by the Conservatives, six per cent to the Greens, five per cent to the NDP, and only three to the Liberals.
• The NDP has lost a quarter of its support  an even 25 per cent. Ten per cent went to the Liberals, seven per cent to the Greens, 5 per cent to the Conservatives, and 1% to the BQ.

What do these patterns tell us?

Roughly a fifth of all voters who voted one way in the last election say they'll do something different next time.  More than enough movement to produce a vastly different outcome, but that doesn't appear likely today.

That's because the bulk of shifting in the years gone by has been from Liberal to Conservative or vice versa.  That's less the dominant pattern now. For one thing, the Green Party is playing a spoiler role. In Ontario, almost one in three of the voters who have left the Liberals say they are voting Green, as do one in four who have left the Conservatives.  In Quebec, voters who have left the BQ are almost twice as likely to say they will vote Green as vote Liberal.

But this isn't really only about the Green Party.  It's not news that most Canadians are pragmatic centrists. Since politics is a market, as all parties stopped fishing where the fish weren't and started crowding around the more promising streams.

Voters have noticed, and have begun to wonder how much it really matters if they get a majority or minority government, of a red or a blue stripe, or whether they really risk anything by casting their vote for one of the smaller parties.

If parties don't compete around ideology, passion could still be aroused by a galvanizing issue. The kinds of issues that drive demand for Conservative solutions (taxes, debt, crime, security) are muted right now. Issues with more prominence today (the environment, hostilities in Afghanistan) play more to the strengths of other parties.  But right now, no party seems to have captured the imagination of Canadians.

To use a seasonal metaphor, Canadian politics has become more like the modern NHL, strikingly competitive, with unpredictable outcomes and less rigidity.  If it can't quite be said that parity rules, there's no doubt that dynasties are under unusual pressure.

Bruce Anderson is president of Decima Research.

Distributed by The Canadian Press. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not The Canadian Press.