OTTAWA - A new poll suggests saturation coverage of the Mulroney-Schreiber affair hasn't hurt the electoral prospects of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives.
Indeed, the latest Canadian Press Decima/Harris poll suggests the Tories have maintained an eight-point lead over the Liberals despite several weeks of non-stop revelations and rehashing of Karlheinz Schreiber's financial dealings with former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney.
The survey puts the Tories at 36 per cent support nationally, compared to 28 per cent for the Liberals _ unchanged from a survey two weeks ago.
The NDP was at 16 per cent and Green Party at 11 per cent.
The Liberals have been trying to link Harper's government to revelations that Mulroney, while still an MP in 1993, accepted the first of three $100,000 cash payments from Schreiber, a German-Canadian arms lobbyist who is wanted in Germany on charges of fraud, bribery and tax evasion.
Schreiber was a principal figure in the RCMP probe into allegations of kickbacks in Air Canada's purchase of a fleet of Airbus planes.
Mulroney successfully sued the previous Liberal government for $2.1 million for linking him to the scandal and the RCMP eventually closed its investigation in 2003 without laying any charges.
Harris/Decima president Bruce Anderson said the Liberal tactic of trying to link the scandal to the Harper Tories is "not working yet.''
Indeed, he said the Tories have steadily firmed up their support over the course of the year despite "the biggest political story that could have hurt'' the Harper government.
By contrast, he said the Liberals are in a worse position in every region of the country than they were in at the start of the year, when they were enjoying a brief honeymoon following Stephane Dion's selection as leader.
In the erstwhile Liberal stronghold of Ontario, the poll suggests the Conservatives are now in a statistical tie with the Liberals, with 35 per cent and 37 per cent support respectively.
The NDP was at 16 per cent and the Greens at 11 per cent.
The survey also suggests that the Tories have overtaken the Liberals in Atlantic Canada, another longtime Grit stronghold. The poll put the Conservatives ahead at 39 per cent, compared to 34 per cent for the Liberals, 18 per cent for the NDP and 8 per cent for the Greens.
In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois was in the lead with 35 per cent, followed by the Tories at 23 per cent, the Liberals at 18 per cent, the NDP at 14 per cent and the Greens at 8 per cent.
The telephone poll of just more than 1,000 Canadians was conducted Nov. 29-Dec. 2 and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points 19 times in 20. The margin of error is greater for regional results.
