New Ontario Provincial Poll

Angus-Reid has a new Ontario provincial poll out.So, a huge result for the Progressive Conservatives, with strong numbers everywhere. The Liberals are down very low, while the NDP is at 20%.

The Tory strength is distributed across the province, but is especially high in the Hamilton-Niagara area (51%) and in the North and East (47% each). In the GTA, the party is still at 38% and is even at 33% in the 416 area code.

The Liberals are hovering between 31% and 34% in the Toronto area, but are down to 19% in Hamilton and 22% in the East.

The NDP is doing best in the southwest (27%).

The big problem for the Liberals is that Ontarians' opinion of Dalton McGuinty has worsened. This is the case for a whopping 54% of the province, while the same can be said for only 16% of Ontarians when it comes to the Progressive Conservative leader, Tim Hudak. He benefits from having the best "improvement" score with 15%, which is still relatively low.

Certainly bad news for the provincial Liberals, and good news for the Progressive Conservatives. Of course, an election is a few years away so there is plenty of time for Ontarians to forget about the HST issue.

New British Columbia Provincial Poll

As part of the Innovative Research poll I posted about on Friday, respondents were asked for their provincial voting intentions.This shows a very close race, but is very different from the Mustel Group and Angus-Reid polls taken at a similar time. Innovative Research puts the BC NDP at about 15 points lower than those two polls, the BC Liberal result is also lower. The big beneficiaries in this poll would be the BC Conservatives, at more than 10 points than the other polls.

Not sure what this divergence means. Perhaps the voting public in British Columbia is very volatile, or perhaps this is just an anomalous result. The federal numbers looked fine.