Fun With Poll Numbers

The latest Environics poll confirms the continuing tailspin of the Liberals:

Per Our Great Public Broadcaster:

Stephen Harper's Conservatives are supported by 33 per cent of Canadians.
Paul Martin's Liberals, who currently hold a minority government, are the choice of 27 per cent.
The New Democratic Party under Jack Layton has 24 per cent.
Gilles Duceppe's Bloc Québécois has 11 per cent support nationally, but that becomes 51 per cent in the province of Quebec.
The Green Party, led by Jim Harris, is supported by two per cent.

Taking the regional breakdowns in the poll and running them through Prof. Antweiler's Election Forecaster , the entrails read:

NF: LIB 5, CON 2
NS: LIB 5, CON 3, NDP 3
PE: LIB 4
NB: LIB 7, CON 2, NDP 1
QC: BLQ 67, CON 5, LIB 3
ON: LIB 48, CON 38, NDP 20
MB: CON 8, NDP 6
SK: CON 9, NDP 4, LIB 1
AB: CON 28
BC: CON 20, NDP 13, LIB 3
YT: LIB 1
NT: NDP 1
NU: LIB 1

Total: Conservative 115, Liberal 79, Bloc Quebecois 67, New Democratic 47

Moving east to west:

The Atlantic numbers show little movement because of a spike in NDP support which would do nothing to elect NDP members outside the Halifax region while drawing off too few Liberal votes, thus allowing Liberal incumbents to hold on by narrow margins. A shift of 2-3 percentage points from the Liberals to the Conservatives, however, would tip 5 to 7 seats to the Tories.

The Quebec numbers will finish Paul Martin politically and personally; he'd lose his own seat under this scenario. The Tories get their hoped-through Quebec breakthrough in the formerly straight Liberal West Island and Outaouais enclave. Everybody in Cabinet gets turfed except possibly Stephane Dion.

416 brings it home again for the Liberals in Ontario, but more 905 ridings drop into Tory hands, and the few remaining right-leaning rural Grits go with them. The resurgent NDP cleans up in Northern Ontario, Toronto south of Bloor Street and Hamilton with a couple outliers.

The steady ebbing of Liberal support in Manitoba reaches low tide, from 11 seats in 1993 to zero.

Saskatchewan's 13 Tory seats in 2004 were the result of a bizarre strategic voting failure by NDP voters who switched to the Liberals at the last second, but only just enough to lose both their seats and let the Conservatives come up the middle. This despite two strong independents--Jim Pankiw and Grant Devine--bleeding off Tory votes (and Larry Spencer to a lesser degree).

Alberta: 'Nuff said. Landslide Annie finally runs out of miracles.

British Columbia: NDP gains mostly at the Liberals' expense, but the populist vote that once went Reform/Alliance, comes home to the NDP. The new Conservative party, for better or worse in B.C., will be seen as another establishment party. Such is the price of success in the East.

I'll be back with newer polls and analysis later today and tomorrow.