OTTAWA - Pundits and the pollster alike are telling political junkies to relax over a new survey that suggests Conservatives and Liberals are locked in a statistical dead heat.
The Decima Research poll, released Wednesday to The Canadian Press, put Tory support nationally at a mere 30 per cent, compared with 29 for the Liberals, 18 for the NDP, 11 per cent for the Green party and eight per cent for the Bloc Quebecois.
For a minority government that was flirting with the magic 40 per cent majority threshold less than a month ago, the comedown appears dramatic.
Decima CEO Bruce Anderson said recent surveys show "fairly clear evidence" that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's party has lost the momentum it had following a winter ad offensive and the March 19 federal budget.
A Decima survey four weeks ago had the Tories at 39 per cent, but two intervening polls put them at 34 per cent.
"I've now got 3,000 cases (interviews) that put them at 34 or 30 (per cent support)," Anderson said in an interview.
But the pollster added: "This isn't a story about how well the Liberals are doing. It's really a story about the Conservatives back to the range they were in before they did the advertising and before they had the budget. It's also a story that the Liberals aren't benefiting from that sag in Conservative support. The NDP is."
The single point between the two front-running parties is well within the survey's margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Decima polled more than 1,000 Canadians by telephone last Thursday through Saturday.
The survey comes during a rough two-week period in which the minority government has been buffeted by a series of controversies, from allegations of tortured detainees in Afghani jails to leaks on the environmental file and revelations of a prime minister hairstylist travelling the world on the public tab.
But explanations from Conservatives and Liberals alike on Wednesday pointed to more long-standing and less event-driven reasons for the dead-heat horse race.
"Canadians don't want an election, Canadians like the government they have," said Goldy Hyder, a longtime Tory strategist.
Voters, said Hyder, have "agreed to go steady with us but not much more than that at this time."
With no election in the offing to force the issue, that's as it should be: "If you want to use the dating analogy to the full extent, the worst thing you can do is try to go from first base to home," said Hyder.
Mike Robinson, a veteran Liberal, somewhat surprisingly agreed.
"People are trying to find the sweet spot and I think that, right now, the sweet spot for them is the status quo," he said.
If there was good news for any political party in the poll, it was for the New Democrats.
Over the last six weeks of Decima surveys, NDP support on average is up six percentage points in Ontario, five points in B.C. and four in Quebec.
Anderson wouldn't venture a theory on how falling Tory support appears to be translating into a rising NDP tide.
"The votes that seem to be shaking lose from the Conservatives right now are not largely going to the Liberal party," was all the pollster would venture.
