02 December 2005

The first SES rolling poll results of the campaign

The first poll by SES Research for the Canadian Parliamentary Affairs Channel (CPAC) shows the Liberals with the support of 37% of decided voters, up from 34% on the day the campaign started. The Conservatives are steady at 29% with the New Democrats dropping from 20% to 15%.

Margin of error for the national figures is 3.1% at the 95 percentile confidence interval.

The regional figures open up much wider margins of error and therefore are less reliable in indicating voter choices.

SES has developed a leadership index for ranking opinions of party leaders as to trust, competence and vision for Canada.

Paul Martin's cumulative score on the index is 84, compared to 58 for Stephen Harper, 39 for Gilles Duceppe and 25 for Jack Layton. The margin of error in each of the three categories is plus or minus 5%, therefore making the changes within the individual categories thus far statistically insignificant, even though on the cumulative score, Martin's number has gone from 76 on Monday to 84 on the last day on which polling data was collected. Martin is the only leader to have increased his leadership index by more than 5 %.