A major factor in farmer disgruntlement with the governing Liberals is the lingering impact of the farm income crisis and the uncertainty that is creating on the farm, says public opinion pollster Curtis Johnson.
The Ipsos-Reid senior vice-president published a farmer voting intentions survey this week that shows the Conservative Party leading the Liberals nationally 60-23. The gap is greater on the Prairies.
The pollster said in Ontario a Liberal collapse in farmer support could swing many hotly contested rural ridings to the Conservatives.
In that pivotal electoral province, where 108 seats are at stake and as many as 50 are influenced by rural votes, the Liberals have dropped 18 points since the 2000 election to sit at 35 percent while the Conservatives at 56 percent are 12 points higher than the combined 2000 vote of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives.
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“With the Conservatives and Liberals running so close in the general public, the farm vote in Ontario is extremely important and the momentum right now is with the Conservatives,” said the Ipsos-Reid analysis of the numbers.
The Liberals are competitive with the Conservatives only in Atlantic Canada.
“I think there is a lot of economic stress on the farm right now and farmers are not sure the policies that have been in place hold the answers,” Johnson said.
“The financial situation has crowded out pretty well everything else as top line issues.”
Farmers appear to be taking out their economic unease on the Liberals, in part because they are in government and in part because in the midst of the greatest farm income crash in Canadian history, the Liberals have changed the major farm support program to a new scheme that farmers still do not understand or trust.
“The new CAIS (Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program) may eventually be popular but right now it’s kind of an unknown quantity,” said Johnson. “Meanwhile, the Liberals have taken away NISA (Net Income Stabilization Account), which was far and away the most popular farm program around.”
He said there is a strong correlation between farmers who see BSE as the main issue the next government must deal with and Conservative voting intentions.
“It could be that reflects a view that the Conservatives will be better able to work with the Americans on getting the border open,” said the pollster. “It may also reflect a view that the Conservatives understand the farm issues better because they are closer to farm country and already represent a lot of rural ridings.”
Johnson said one of the surprises of the survey of 1,000 farmers is that the gun registry did not figure in the top issues to be dealt with by a new government. He said fewer than six percent mentioned it as a priority item.
“When you are talking to farmers, it is raised all the time, but when they were asked about most important issues, economic concerns were at the top,” he said. “I guess that is rational, although there is no doubt most farmers consider the gun registry a pain. Perhaps they did not raise it because they know if they vote Conservative and they are elected, it will be scrapped.”
Manitoba offers one of the most striking examples of a reaction to the BSE issue, said Johnson. Because of a lack of slaughter facilities, the province’s farmers have been among the hardest hit by the closed border.
Conservative support in the province has soared 11 points ahead of the combined Alliance-PC vote in 2000, while the Liberals have fallen seven points and the NDP is down almost half to six percent.
“There appears to be a backlash against the left in Manitoba,” said the Ipsos-Reid commentary.
