Barbara Yaffe points out an intriguing Core Strategies poll (warning: PDF) on the Commons seat distribution that most Canadians would like to see. While there's far more data which deserves further discussion, a few points which jump out at me:
- Most strikingly, the average preferred seat distribution (C: 91, L: 88, N: 56, G: 38, B: 34) looks to be a very close match for how seats would likely be distributed under a true PR system where seat counts were directly linked to a party's popular support - and if anything, it would give a few more seats to the smaller parties than even a straight PR system.
- Even when it comes to supporters of an individual party, there's no current appetite for a majority government: the ideal size for the preferred party of respondents ranges from 83 for Greens, to 151 for Cons. (The Cons were in majority territory among their own supporters the previous month.)
- As a general rule, parties appear likely to either rise or fall across the board: the NDP and Libs both managed to hold steady or improve their standing among voters of all parties, while the Greens saw a slight drop in most groups. But the Cons saw a precipitous drop among their own supporters, even while largely holding steady in the eyes of supporters of other parties.
- Among the interesting lower choices of voters from a single party, Bloc respondents assigned the second-most seats to the Libs despite the historical enmity between those two parties. Meanwhile, Green supporters are on the verge of preferring second place for their own party, as a 28-seat gap between the Greens and Libs (which was already the smallest among any party's supporters) was reduced to 12.
- Finally, as a mandatory "who really opposes the Cons?" note, NDP supporters assigned the lowest number of seats to the Cons for the second consecutive month at 54 - compared with 61 for Bloc supporters, 62 for Greens and 68 for Libs.
(Edit: typo.)
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