Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the northern territories and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff toured the whole country by bus this summer. These trips must have affected the voting intentions of Canadians. The Liberals and the Tories are now almost even according to recent poll results.

A new EKOS poll, released exclusively to CBC News, showed Thursday that the hot summer has been heating up voter intentions. If an election were held today, the Liberals would be back to back with the governing Conservatives. The poll suggests that 29.4% of respondents would vote for the Tories and 29.1% for the Liberals. The difference is well within the poll's margin of error.

The beginning of the summer looked very promising for the Conservatives with a 11-point lead over the Liberals. Then the Conservative government has managed to make a few errors that were widely and nationally criticized and were in the everyday news. These errors have started people talking about the issues. The Conservatives were criticized for intending to scrap the mandatory long-form census and as a result the head of Statistics Canada resigned. Then the federal long-gun registry has become an issue, with two big groups of Canadians who have a strong opinion on whether to have long guns registered or not, with the Conservative government claiming that the registry is wasteful and useless. The Liberals have a different view on both big issues and attack the Conservatives for this.

The NDP is not doing any better in this survey. Their support has dropped to 15.7%, down from 17.4% from two weeks ago. The Green Party has acquired more supporters and 13% of surveyed voters would vote for them according to EKOS. Support for the Bloc Québécois has remained stable at 10.9%.

In the Liberals' case, Michael Ignatieff says that the bus tour was a very good thing to do to be recognized among Canadians again and that the Liberals momentum has been stolen from the Conservatives. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff attended about 140 events where he met with Canadians in every province and territory, he was speaking unscripted and taking questions from audience members. Canadians could see the Liberal leader and figure out whether they like him or not. The new poll suggests that passion for the Liberals could be recovering among Canadians, who for the past few years had stopped believing in what the Liberals claimed.

On the other hand, Canadians had never seen the Prime minister dancing before but this has changed during his visit to the northern territories. Prime Minister just stole the show with a dance during his week-long Arctic visit at the end of August. It was an impromptu dance as aboriginals beat drums and sang traditional songs and Harper joined the dancers and made the news with the rare appearance. From now Canadians will not be able to say that the Prime Minister is shy, cold or non-spontaneous, and he looked like he was having fun. Parliament will resume on the 20th of September, it will be interesting to see what this means for the rhythm of the upcoming session and if the current polling trend continues.

Jana Paskova

Photo: ISIFA