OTTAWA - With politics rarely in the news and Prime Minister Stephen Harper keeping a low profile, a new poll indicates the Conservatives jumped to a seven-point lead over the holidays.
While Canadians were busy stuffing stockings and carving up turkey, the federal Tories were busily bolting to a sizeable advantage over the Liberals, says the new Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey.
The pollster suggests the Tories had fallen slightly behind the Liberals by mid-December, then leapt past them over the holidays to hold a 37-30 edge by the first week of January.
NDP support among 1,000 Canadians polled from Jan. 3 to 6 dipped in British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario as the party's national support dropped to just 13 per cent.
Harris-Decima's president says there's nothing unusual about a government becoming more popular the less Canadians see of it.
Bruce Anderson says governments tend to do better when Parliament is not sitting and they're not facing daily attacks from opposition parties that wind up generating news coverage.
"That's probably true for many governments if we went back over time,'' Anderson said.
"When they're in the House of Commons, when they're debating the issues of the day, there's a better chance that they're going to be on the defensive rather than talking up their agenda.''
The prime minister's spokespeople noted that while Harper may not have been slugging it out in Parliament, he has been very visible over the last month.
He did a slew of year-end interviews in December. Then he heralded his government's one-point cut in the GST for Jan. 1. Harper issued holiday greetings, and also appeared in public to comment on the killing of Benazir Bhutto.
"I would argue that Canadians felt well informed on what this government is doing,'' said Harper spokeswoman Carolyn Stewart Olsen.
"Canadians are feeling the country is in good hands with this PM.'' The Tories suffered similar woes in the spring, then regained support over the summer holidays and through the autumn before they were hit again with bad news in November and December.
Anderson says the Mulroney-Schreiber affair contributed to a December dip for the government, as did the criticism it faced at an environmental summit in Bali.
On Dec. 19, a Harris-Decima survey recorded the Tories at a 32-30 disadvantage behind the Liberals.
"When it (the government) is setting the agenda and not on the defensive we see numbers that are more like 37,'' Anderson said.
"When it's on the defensive we see numbers that are more like 33, 32, 31 and 30.''
Although the provincial samples contain a larger margin of error, the Tories' numbers in Quebec may cause them some concern.
It is the province where they most need to gain seats to win a majority government. But Harris-Decima suggests they have fallen to a 13-point deficit behind the Bloc Quebecois.
The Bloc led the Conservatives 41 to 23 in the province and the Liberals were at 19 per cent.
Anderson says Quebecers may have been particularly attentive to criticism of the Tories' climate-change stance at Bali.
The picture was much prettier for them in B.C., where they led the Liberals by 13 points, and in Atlantic Canada where they appeared to have gained support and only trailed the Liberals by four points.
Liberal Leader Stephane Dion seemed markedly less eager Wednesday to force a quick election than he was only a month ago.
He said his party doesn't intend to try to introduce a confidence vote before the next budget in February or March.
"I have no plan to do so for now,'' he said.
And he repeatedly refused to "speculate'' on whether the Liberals will bring down the government over the budget, saying he'll wait to evaluate its contents.
Dion's non-committal responses were in stark contrast to his apparent eagerness in December for an election early in 2008. At that time, he appeared to be setting the stage for a winter or spring election, warning that Liberals, who abstained on confidence matters throughout the fall, would not continue to prop up the government for much longer.
"2008 will be another ball game,'' he said then. "You cannot keep alive forever a government who wants to die.''
Liberal insiders say Dion continues to personally favour an early election. However, some of his top advisers prefer to wait as long as possible and have persuaded Dion to at least keep his options open.
With the economy slowing, the Mulroney-Schreiber hearings set to resume and a renewed debate over Afghanistan imminent, some strategists contend the Harper government is going to increasingly find itself in trouble with voters.
The latest poll contains plenty of bad news for the NDP.
The party -- which won a historic Quebec byelection in September and hopes to take more seats in the province -- sagged to eight per cent in Quebec. The Green party had nine per cent in the province.
It was almost as bad for New Democrats in Ontario. In that province, Liberals held a 40-37 lead over the Tories, while the NDP was at 12 per cent and the Green party was at 10.
"When you look at Ontario, the Green party really is edging ahead of the NDP in critical parts of the province,'' Anderson said.
"That's pretty big news.''
The poll is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.
