Canadians love those Democrats, poll finds
Tue Jan 8 2008
By Alexander Panetta
OTTAWA -- A new poll suggests Canadians would root en masse for whichever leading Democrat winds up facing the Republicans in this year's U.S. presidential election.
The Canadian Press/Harris Decima survey suggests Canadians so overwhelmingly favour the Democrats, it barely matters whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton win today's New Hampshire primary.
The better-known Clinton is Canadians' favourite candidate for president but Obama still trounces the Republicans for the affection of Canadians, the survey suggests.
Respondents said they felt closer to the Democrats by a 4-to-1 margin. The survey, provided exclusively to The Canadian Press, said 49 per cent of Canadians expressed a fondness for the Democrats while only 12 per cent did the same for Republicans.
Perhaps most surprisingly, the poll says the Republican party would get creamed in a hypothetical election in which only Canadian Conservatives -- who are supposedly more ideologically in tune with the Republicans -- voted. They favoured the Democrats by a 47 per cent to 23 per cent margin.
The telephone poll of 1,000 respondents was conducted Jan. 3-6, and has a plus or minus 3.1-percentage-point margin of error, 19 times out of 20.
-- The Canadian Press