Political poll paints expected picture

It's not often you get a free poll, so I say never look a gift pollster in the mouth.
With that in mind, I found it interesting perusing the recent political poll results sent to my inbox by Nik Nanos.
The latest Nanos Poll indicated that 36 per cent of committed voters would prefer the Liberals nationally and 32 per cent like the Conservatives. As well, 17 per cent would vote for the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois would get 10 per cent of the national vote and five per cent would vote for the Green party.
The results are interesting but not what I would call shocking. These numbers have not changed much from the past few months and confirm what I believed a few weeks ago, that an election would leave us with another minority government (although possibly, but not definitely, of another stripe), the lesser parties would hold their ground and Elizabeth May would still be on the outside looking in.
What caught my attention was the "impression question" about each of the two main party leaders - Conservative Stephen Harper and Liberal Michael Ignatieff.
The question was: Do you have a positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative or negative impression of (insert leader's name here). Using the different levels of positivity and negativity, the survey came up with net impression scores for each leader.
It's not really a surprise that an incumbent prime minister during poor economic times registered in the negatives. Harper's score, nationwide, was -14.8.
As well, when you have a prime minister with that kind of negative score and an official Opposition leader who is still fairly new and relatively untarnished by time, such as Ignatieff, it's also not a big surprise that he scored a positive total at 5.2.
However, what's interesting is comparing the two leaders' rankings across regions - the results show that the country remains very politically split along regional lines.
Harper's highest negatives are in Atlantic Canada (-28.6) and Quebec (-33.3). Ontario (-13.9) and B.C. (-8.4) are not quite as bad and show the PM has more support the further west he travels. However, his only positive is in the Prairie region (Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta), at 9.1. When you look at where the Conservatives have received their strongest support over the past few years, the Prairies is the answer, so this is no surprise.
Ignatieff's results are also no surprise and almost a mirror image. His strongest impressions were in Atlantic Canada (18) and in Quebec (12.9). Ontario saw a substantial drop off to 5.6. In B.C., he still had a positive number, but it was even lower at 4.5.
And, as should be no shock, his lowest numbers were in the Prairies at -11.1.
These are all very similar to what we've seen over the past 15 to 20 years. And don't expect it to change any time. The people may change, but the political leanings of each region have not, at least not on a national scale.

Jason Small can be reached at 691-1255.